Like many mothers, Joann Lombardo was torn about her decision to put her baby daughter in day care and go back to work.
"At one point, I thought, 'OK, you know what, maybe it's time I stay home, because I started feeling guilty," she said. "She's constantly sick. She's so little."
Other moms, though, erased Lombardo's anxiety.
"A lot of people said hang in there, because by the time your daughter reaches kindergarten, she's never going to be sick," she said.
A report in the December issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine backs up with that those parents already knew.
Researchers found that children who attend large group day care facilities before age 2½ appear to develop more respiratory and ear infections at that age, but fewer illnesses later.
"These children who acquire lots of infections during day care, first of all, it did not harm them. It actually stimulated their immune systems," said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of the Department of Preventative Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Children in smaller day cares or who stayed at home had fewer illnesses when they were young but got sick once they went to school.
Lombardo said that was worse for children in the long run.
"It's better off that they miss the school now with the day care as opposed to when they are actually in the school system," she said.
Researchers said there is a possibility that stimulating the immune system early could also give long-term protection against asthma, but more studies are necessary.
The more exposure 6-month-old infants have to media, particularly media directed toward older children and adults, the less developed their cognitive and language skills may be at 14 months, according to research published in the December issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Suzy Tomopoulos, M.D., of the New York University School of Medicine-Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City, and colleagues studied 259 mother-infant pairs to investigate the effect of media exposure at age 6 months on development at 14 months.
The researchers found that 249 of the infants (96.1 percent) had been exposed to media by the age of 6 months, with a mean total exposure of 152.7 minutes per day. Longer duration of exposure was predictive of significantly lower cognitive and language development at 14 months in both unadjusted and adjusted analyses. The researchers assessed three types of content, and just one — older child/adult-oriented — was related to lower language and cognitive development at 14 months. They did not find significant associations with young child-oriented content.
"This study is the first, to our knowledge, to have longitudinally assessed associations between media exposure in infancy and subsequent developmental outcomes in children from families with low socioeconomic status in the United States. Findings provide strong evidence in support of the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations of no media exposure prior to age 2 years, although further research is needed," the authors write.
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