Winter is here, which means the season of sickness too is here. While viruses and sickness run throughout, winter is when the chilly weather further makes it worse for those prone to sickness. Especially, if they are kids, as their immunity is not fully developed.

Does that mean it is inevitable for kids to be sick?

Anytime a child is exposed to another child, they will fall sick. This is because germs are transferred in the air or by touch, and children, being curious, always touch things, including their own faces, mouths and easily pick up germs and spread them. While prevention is impossible, there are steps that can be taken to reduce this.

Experts and medical professionals recommend to follow the vaccine schedule by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Vaccines have be proven to protect people, children, and infants from serious and deadly infections.

While sicknesses like a common cold do not have a vaccine, good hygiene can help prevent the spread of germs. Teaching your kids to wash hands after touching toys, or any other surface and other people is a great way to start it.

Exposure to germs at an early age strengthens child's immune system

Is there really any truth in the statement? When we encounter infections, our immune system creates antibodies that either prevent future infections or help the body fight them off more effectively, often leading to milder illness. The "hygiene hypothesis" proposes that living in an overly clean environment might hinder the immune system's development, potentially increasing the risk of allergic conditions like asthma.

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Although research has explored this idea, many immunologists (experts in the immune system) have raised concerns and expressed disagreement with the hypothesis.

In reality, most children don’t grow up in sterile environments. They are naturally exposed to a variety of germs, providing ample opportunities for their immune systems to strengthen and adapt.

Sanitizing Child's Toys

It is a good practice to regularly disinfect your children's toys and anything they share with others or take to school.

It is important to know the difference between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting. While cleaning removes visible dirt, sanitizing decreases the number of germs on the surface, whereas disinfecting kills germs.

Also make sure to read the labels correctly and prevent any toxic toys to make its way to your kids, so it cannot be inhaled or ingested.

How to disinfect toys?

You can start by cleaning all the toys that has come in contact with your child's hands and mouth with soap and water. Then, use a sanitizer to clean everyday items, things that remain in your child's environment. Then use disinfectant, especially if your child is sick or if someone sick has touched your child's toys.

If you are wondering which sanitizers to go for, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website has come up with a list of approved sanitizers and disinfectants that are effective.

A fever in an infant or young child is often dismissed as a routine infection. However, recurrent or unexplained fever could sometimes point to a urinary tract infection (UTI), which, when associated with an underlying abnormality, may put the kidneys at risk. Identifying UTIs early is particularly important in infants and toddlers who cannot communicate their symptoms.

When Fever May Signal a UTI

Unlike older children, infants and toddlers cannot explain symptoms such as pain or burning while urinating. A UTI may therefore present only as fever, poor feeding, reduced milk intake or irritability.

Whenever a child has a febrile UTI, we should look for an underlying cause. One such condition is vesicoureteral reflux (VUR), where urine flows backwards from the bladder towards the kidneys.

How Reflux Can Affect the Kidneys

When bacteria are present in the bladder, this backward flow can carry infection towards the kidneys. Repeated kidney infections can cause renal scarring, particularly in young children.

Repeated scarring can affect kidney growth and function and, in severe cases, contribute to chronic kidney disease later in life. This makes timely evaluation and management important.

Also read: No Washrooms for Women: The Shocking Health Risks of UTI, Hyperuricemia & More

Not Every Child Needs Surgery

After a documented febrile UTI has been treated, children may require evaluation for an underlying cause based on their age, history and clinical findings. If VUR is identified, treatment depends on its severity. Not every child with reflux needs an operation. Management depends on the grade of reflux and the child’s clinical condition.

VUR is graded from 1 to 5. Low-grade reflux, particularly Grades 1 and 2, can often be managed through monitoring and, in selected cases, antibiotic prophylaxis. Many children may outgrow the condition as the urinary system matures.

Higher-grade reflux, especially when associated with recurrent infections or renal scarring, may require intervention. Options include minimally invasive Deflux injection or laparoscopic and robotic-assisted surgery in selected cases.

Also read: AIIMS Performs Second Dual Kidney Transplant Using Organs From 70-Year-Old Donor: How It Can Expand Donor Pool?

Prevention Goes Beyond Antibiotics

Constipation, bowel and bladder dysfunction, and improper toilet habits, which can contribute to recurrent UTIs, should also be given attention. Encouraging children to void regularly and managing constipation can help reduce infections.

In the present era, urinary abnormalities may be suspected during an antenatal ultrasound (TIFFA scan) allowing early postnatal evaluation and monitoring.

Early Detection Can Protect Kidney Health

The message for parents is simple: recurrent fever in a young child should not always be dismissed as a routine infection. Identifying a UTI and investigating an underlying problem such as VUR at the right time can help prevent recurrent infections, reduce renal scarring and protect kidney health in the long run.

By Dr. G. Ravindra Varma, Managing Director and Senior Consultant Urologist, Andrologist, Uro-Oncologist, Laparoscopic and Robotic Surgeon, AINU, Visakhapatnam

We have often linked screen time with poor outcomes, especially when it comes to children's brain health. But a new Finnish study has learnt that children who spent more time on screens from childhood through adolescence tended to show better cognitive processing as teenagers.

The findings are based on an eight-year follow-up of the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children (PANIC) study. It challenges the commonly believed idea of screen time being automatically harmful to children's developing brains.

The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Eastern Finland and published in Pediatric Exercise Science.

However, researchers also emphasise that that the findings do not mean that children should simply spend more time on phones, tablets, or computers. What children are doing during that screen time may be more important than the number of hours alone.

Children With More Screen Time Performed Better On Cognitive Tests

The study is based on 260 adolescents composed of 124 girls and 136 boys, with an average age of 15.8 years. Researchers followed their physical activity, sedentary behaviour and screen use over a period of eight years. At the end of the study, the researchers examined learning, attention, and working memory.

They found that greater cumulative screen time from childhood into adolescence was associated with better cognitive processing during adolescence. Despite the suspected correlation, researchers did not establish that screen use itself improved children's cognitive abilities.

That distinction is important because the study was merely observational. It just identified a relationship between screen time and cognitive performance but could not prove cause and effect.

Also read: Lindsay Clancy Trial: What Postpartum Psychosis Really Looks Like, From A Survivor

Researchers Say What Children Do On Screens May Matter More

Petri Jalanko, a doctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä and first author of the study, said the findings suggest that screen use should not automatically be viewed as harmful. “The findings suggest that screen time can support children’s and adolescents’ cognitive processing.”

He said the type of activity children engage in could be an important factor. “Teachers and parents should encourage children to use devices and screens in such ways that promote active thinking, problem-solving, creativity and learning.”

This could include activities like educational games, creating digital content, researching topics, coding, solving problems, or using technology for learning rather than passive consumption.

Also read: Diabetics Must Undergo Retinal Screening To Protect Eye Health: AIIMS Doctors

Not A Free Pass For Unlimited Screen Time

The findings should not be interpreted as evidence that more screen time is always better. Researchers did not determine an ideal number of hours children should spend on devices. They also did not show that watching videos or scrolling social media for longer periods directly improves cognition.

Instead, the study reinforced the idea that “screen time” is not one single behaviour. A child using a tablet to solve a mathematics problem is doing something very different from a child spending hours passively scrolling through short-form videos.

Jalanko said, “We should not regard screen time solely as harmful but seek balance between physical activity and screen time that promotes active thinking.”

Eero Haapala, senior researcher in the study, and Jalanko emphasised that the relationship between physical activity, sedentary behaviour and cognition is complex.

Haapala said, “Our study indicates that the connections of physical activity and sedentary behaviour to cognitive processing are complex and depend on the sex, the type and assessment method of physical activity and sedentary time.”

For nearly a year after her first son was born, Belinda Stischok did not fully believe she was alive. In her mind, several realities had folded into one, and the life she was living felt like something else entirely - more like an afterlife, a different timeline, anything but the present.

This was not a dream or an ordinary breakdown.

It was — a condition most new parents have never heard of until it is too late — and one that is suddenly back in public conversation because of the ongoing Lindsay Clancy trial.

Clancy, on trial in Massachusetts, has told the court she heard a male voice in her head telling her, again and again, to kill her three children. She did so, and then jumped from a second-floor window, an act that left her paralyzed. Her defense says doctors repeatedly failed to grasp how serious her condition was and sent her home with heavier doses of medication instead of real intervention.

Diary entries read in court this week described a mind "desperate to get a mental break." Prosecutors have rested; the trial is ongoing.

For mothers who have lived through something similar, the case is not abstract. Belinda is one of them. Today she is healthy, married to her husband Kyle, and raising two sons in Florida. But getting there took nearly a year of a psychosis so consuming that, at its worst, she did not recognize her own child.

A Textbook Pregnancy, Then Silence

Also read: Lessons From The Lindsay Clancy Case: Can Families Spot Early Signs Of Postpartum Psychosis?

There was nothing about Belinda's background that suggested trouble ahead. A former personal trainer and competitive bodybuilder, she describes herself and Kyle as disciplined about health, careful about routine.

"Worrying about a mental health episode was never on the forefront of my mind," she said. "It wasn't anything I even knew could happen."

Her pregnancy was heavily researched and carefully planned - she wanted an unmedicated, natural birth. That plan started slipping the moment doctors pushed to break her waters during labor, against her wishes, and her own physician was not even available for the delivery. Looking back, she calls that her first real red flag.

At home with a newborn, she pushed herself hard, insisting on shifts, spotless floors, and constant vigilance. "Rest was never in my vocabulary," she said.

At her six-week check-up, she was given the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, a routine nine-question screening. She lied on every answer. "You don't want to answer these questions and then hear, oh, you're not well, we're taking your baby," she explained. She never mentioned the test to Kyle. Even with the lies, she was flagged for mild depression — and dismissed it.

When Reality Started To Splinter

The real break did not happen for another nine months. Kyle began noticing things that made no sense — Belinda staring directly into the sun for minutes at a stretch, filling pages with disjointed writing and equations.

"It was very unnatural," he said. "The only thing I could relate it to is that your wife is being possessed, because it's no longer her."

From the inside, Belinda describes it as her timelines collapsing into each other. She stopped believing Kyle was her husband or that their son was their son. She believed she had already died, and that this new life - the one she had once been told medically impossible - was some form of afterlife.

It is a description close to what Clancy has reportedly told people close to her: an out-of-body sense of having left her own life. Both women have described hearing voices, being placed on shifting combinations of psychiatric drugs, and having thoughts of harming someone.

Belinda's first hospitalization came after she barricaded herself outside the nursery, terrified someone would hurt her baby. It was 2020, and because of the COVID-19 pandemic chaos, no one told Kyle where she had been taken. He had to call hospital after hospital to find her.

She was still breastfeeding and says she "begged for a breast pump" — instead, she was sedated. She was held 72 hours, sent home with medication she later threw out, and noticed her breast milk had turned a strange greenish-blue from the drugs. She spent days pumping and dumping before feeding her son again.

Two weeks later, after an argument with her husband in the middle of a rough night, she walked out of the house barefoot and kept going, hearing voices telling her there was "better for you on the other side." A friend spotted her and alerted Kyle, who called the police.

This time, she was held for nine days, medicated with the antipsychotic Abilify, and placed in isolation, at times without access to a bathroom. During that stretch, Kyle, frightened and out of options, took their son and left to stay elsewhere.

"He was protecting our child," Belinda said. "I have no resentment." Still, she says learning her husband and baby were gone was the hardest single moment of the entire experience.

What The System Missed

Read More: Why Miscarriage Needs Emotional Care At Par with Medical Treatment: Doctors Explain

What stays with both of them is how little warning they were given. "They hand you a pamphlet for the epidural," Belinda said.

"Why not hand me one on what it means if you're not sleeping, not eating, not showering?" She is also open about how quickly the system reached for medication over conversation. However, she credits later talk therapy with a postpartum specialist for helping her recover.

Watching Clancy's trial, Belinda sees both familiar and unfamiliar territory. She hesitates to call what Clancy has described pure psychosis, pointing out that Clancy was journaling and naming her distress as it happened — something Belinda says she was incapable of doing herself.

"When you're in psychosis, you're not aware enough to seek help," she said. "You're already gone."

Belinda and Kyle went on to have a second son, delivered at home under a midwife's strict instructions: rest, bond, nothing else. It made all the difference.

Kyle's advice to other fathers is simple: "Don't give up, there's a light at the end of the tunnel."

Belinda's, however, is about permission: "It's okay to not be okay. You just have to seek help when you notice it."

She is also wary of how the Clancy case might land on struggling new mothers. "It can help mothers understand this can happen to anyone," she said, "but I worry the hate people are throwing at Lindsay online will stop other moms from speaking up."

For Belinda, that fear is exactly why she chose to tell her own story out loud.