ADHD kids may look as they are capable of crossing solo, but even if they’re stopping and looking both ways they don’t seem to be as adept at judging how much time they need to cross safely.

“In our study, the outcome of crossing the street was much worse for kids with ADHD than for their peers without ADHD,” the study’s lead author, Despina Stavrinos, an assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Alabama, told HealthDay News. “Kids with ADHD left much less time to spare to cross, and there were several close calls,” she said.

Results of the study, published online July 25, will appear in the August print issue of Pediatrics.

The researchers chose to look at street crossing because it requires a lot of quick information processing and executive decision making, both places where ADHD suffers tend to be lacking.  Parents of ADHD kids may need to put extra emphasis on helping their children learn to make this kind of basic, but dangerous, life decision carefully and cautiously.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part two

The films take crashed an impressive 72% in its second week from $169.2 million domestic to a mere $47.4 million.  The only other films to drop as heavily in the history of box office results have all grossed less than $20 million their first weekend.  Among films that have opened above $100 million dollars, only Twilight: New Moon is even close with a 70% drop.

Warner Brothers, the studio behind the mega popular franchise, is hardly concerned, however.  Deathly Hallows, Part Two has taken in more than half a billion dollars internationally and is up to $833.9 million as of Tuesday.  It’s well on it’s way to making more than a billion dollars in theaters alone.  So what’s with the big box office crash?  Our guess is, everyone had pretty much seen the film already!

Janis Winehouse, Amy’s mother, has admitted to The U.K. Daily Mail that she felt her daughter’s untimely death, “only a matter of time,” after spending the day with her just twenty four hours before the singer passed away.  It’s a parents worst nightmare, watching your child slip away, and Janis Winehouse is doing it on an international stage.

“She seemed out of it. But her passing so suddenly still hasn’t hit me,” she told The Mirror, another U.K. tabloid regarding her last day with her daughter.  She also shared that Amy said, ‘I love you mum’ at the end of their day together.

“They are the words I will always treasure,” Janis told the Mirror. “I’m glad I saw her when I did.”

Winehouse has taken a place in the so called “27 Club” – a long list of talented musicians who have succumbed to drug and alcohol problems in their twenty seventh year.  She’s in unfortunately good company on a list that includes Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Jim ­Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

As parents, this is a great moment to discuss drugs an alcohol with teens.  Answering any questions your teens might have about Winehouse, and what’s happened to her, should provide some openings to help them see how dangerous substance abuse can be.

Captain America

By all accounts, Captain America is earnest, straightforward and likable.  It knows what it is and it’s not trying to pretend to be anything fancier.  Scott sums up what he likes about the movie like this:

“…though there are plenty of the usual digital enhancements and overscaled effects, the pseudo-operatic grandiosity that has become a staple of the genre is mostly missing. Instead “Captain America,” like its unapologetically corny hero, is propelled by unpretentious and plucky ingenuity.”

Don’t expect, however, that Captain America will be the next innovation in action movies.  The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt points out: “‘Captain America’ lacks the deft touch, appealing character interaction, and sophisticated storytelling skills of Marvel Comics’ ‘X-Men: First Class.’ And let’s not even bother to compare this to Christopher Nolan’s ‘Batman’ series.”

And indeed, why would you even think to compare Captain America to Batman Begins?  Other than the fact that both of their heroes wear masks, they aren’t particularly related stories, or worlds. Enjoy Captain America for the simple, easy to digest fun it is, rather than wishing it was an Oscar worthy opus, and it seems sure to deliver on expectations.

“She’s brought so much joy, and I love her to pieces,” Richards, 40, told Us Weekly. “She is a cuddle bug. She loves being hugged and held. She’s such a beautiful little baby and little soul.”

Though she’s “been with her since the day she was born,” Richards confided to Us that the adoption progress was long and difficult. “Some people think if a celebrity wants a baby, they get one the next day. The adoption took two years, and there were times I felt discouraged, times when I got close to adopting a baby and it fell through. But I knew the right baby would find us.”

And find them she did!

Miley was spotted at the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday with her newest fuzzball, who is apparently named Floyd.  She introduced her new friend officially on Twitter on Friday.

“I’m so in love with him it is ridiculous,” Cyrus, 18, wrote. “His name is Floyd.”

Floyd joins Mate, a german shepard, and Lila, a morkie, in keeping Cyrus company on tour, and pretty much everywhere else.  Of course, it’s easier to take them along when they’re little, like Floyd.  As Cyrus pointed out when she first introduced Mate to the world, puppies make easier tag-a-longs than full grown dogs.

“It’s so great that Mate is a puppy so I can take him everywhere,” she wrote in her official blog at the time. “But it won’t be long until he’s his full size!”

Floyd looks like he may be a husky or an Alaskan klee kai, so he’s likely to be just as difficult to tote around when full grown as one hundred plus pound Mate, now a grown up shepard.

“YAY!!! I MET GREAT people at a casting. & im going to be in the New Charlie Angels movie! Good luck to the other amazing Casties ,” she tweeted.

Of course the show, which will star Minka Kelly, Rachael Taylor and Annie Ilonzeh as the famous all girl team of detectives who work for the mysterious Charlie, who will be voiced by Robert Wagner, is not a movie.  It’s a TV show.  And ABC will not confirm whether or not Abraham actually got the job she thinks she’s got.

It seems likely, however, that if she does get the job, there will be more than one camera crew shooting on the set of Charlie’s Angels show while Farrah is working there as an extra, because this seems like an opportunity too good for Teen Mom’s producers to give up!

Leno asked the very pregnant Fischer if her parents were excited to have their first grandchild on the way.

“This is the second grandchild,” Fischer, star of The Office, replied, “but first grandson.”

That, of course, let the cat out of the bag.  Leno caught the word, “grandson” immediately and demanded confirmation.

“This is the exclusive, Jay,” says Fischer, 37, told him. “When I went to my movie premiere the other day a reporter asked me if I knew what I was having, and I said I do, but I’m not sharing that yet because I’m [going to] have Jay be the first to know.”

She added another little secret to her big reveal – she’s due in in the fall!

“September we’re in what they call the home stretch,” she told Leno.

Fischer’s pregnancy has been worked into the plot of The Office this year, so expect Pam and Jim to have another little one on the way as well.

“Pam and Jim snuck away last season on Valentine’s Day, and they had sex,” Fischer told People Magazine. “The story is that they conceived this baby at that time and were keeping it a secret until we come back from the summer.”

Apparently the plot twist was not planned because of Fischer’s pregnancy, it’s just a fortunate coincidence.

“When we started shooting that episode, I thought to myself, ‘If everything goes well, this is going to be a very, very convenient coincidence,’” she told People. “I think I found out I was pregnant when we were shooting that episode.”

Justin Bieber, always a fan of hijinks and pranks, happened across a wedding in Malibu a few days ago and gave the newlyweds, and their family, the surprise of their lives.  Justin and his girlfriend, Selena Gomez, wedding crashed the beach side reception and joined the fun for some karaoke.  The video is up on YouTube, because, what else do you do with video of Justin Bieber unexpectedly showing up at your wedding?  The description of the video reveals exactly how Bieber ended up there:

“Last night at my cousin Jeanine’s wedding reception, out of nowhere, Justin Bieber shows up while one of his songs was being karaoked by one of the wedding guests.  He stated that he was driving by the reception in Malibu and heard a party and his song being sung, so he decided to check out the event and ended up making a celebrity appearance.”

Bieber then posed for pictures with the Bride and Groom while Gomez waited to one side.

“WEDDING CRASHERS last night,” Bieber tweeted about the incident. “hahaha. too funny. crazy story.”

This Sunday both David and Victoria Beckham tweeted pictures of their spouse with their newest little one.  First David, tweeting a beautiful picture of his wife and daughter sleeping together with the caption, “I took this picture of my two girls sleeping…”

Then Victoria tweeted an absolutely adorable picture of her hubby rubbing noses with his daughter with the caption, “Daddy’s little girl!”

Both Beckhams are clearly taken with their new munchkin.  David wore pink and white cleats in her honor at his match this week, which were embroidered with the names of all four of his children.  He spoke of how much he’s enjoyed having a daughter in a video on his website:

“To have another girl in the family is really incredible. We’ve got three beautiful healthy boys already and we’re so lucky to have that and now to have a beautiful little girl. Having a daughter is a whole new thing. Having pink in the house, having lilac in the house… and you have to be a lot more delicate with girls than boys and I’m not used to that so it’s a whole new experience.”

Beckham also clarified where Harper’s name came from: “A lot of thought goes into our children’s names and Harper was a name that we’ve loved for a long time for a couple of reasons. One reason is Harper’s an old English name which we loved and one of the other reasons was Victoria’s favorite book is To Kill A Mockingbird and the author was Harper Lee. It’s a very strong, passionate book. That’s where Harper came from.”

Here we go again.  Rebecca Black, the tween whose vanity music video turned out so incredibly badly that it became a comedy internet phenomenon, has come back for more.  Her mother paid $4,000 for Friday to be released on ARK Music Factory vanity label.  When it hit the internet, it was dubbed, “the worst song ever” by critics and rewarded for its ridiculousness with 160,000 million hits on YouTube.

So is Black’s follow up awful enough to get the same kind of attention?  Not really.  Watching her new video, My Moment, mostly makes you feel sorry for the semi-talented song writer who wrote the song for her.  It’s catchy, but Black is a fourteen year old girl without a ton of training or natural charisma.  The video could have, and probably should have, been shot by one of her friends with a handheld.  If Black had gone out and made this video with her friends it would have been more fun, and probably had more energy and been more natural than this force fed production.  But as is, it feels a bit like watching a little girl playing dress up who doesn’t quite understand the game.

If nothing else, these videos are solid proof that you can’t artificially replicate the Justin Bieber effect – it happens or it doesn’t.  If you try to construct that “discovered on the internet” feeling, you end up with nothing but a joke.

“This morning [Jared] and I welcomed a beautiful and healthy little baby girl into the world,” Trump, 29, shared with her Twitter followers. “We feel incredibly grateful and blessed. Thank you all for your support and well wishes!”

The little girl, born to Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, was born on Sunday, July 17th, in New York City.  Trump and Kushner, who owns the New York Observer, married in October 2009.  Ivanka, the daughter of famously wealthy Donald Trump, admitted to People Magazine, “We have our work cut out for us to ensure that our daughter is grounded and not spoiled.”

Regardless, Ivanka is thrilled to have her little girl.  She tweeted on Monday: “Jared and I are having so much fun playing with our daughter! Arabella Rose is beyond adorable. She’s truly a blessing.”

It was little Arabella’s grandpa who first announced her name, and he went a more traditional route than Twitter.  He shared the baby’s name on Fox & Friends Monday morning.

“I just left the hospital and the baby is beautiful. [Ivanka's] doing great,” Trump told Fox & Frineds. “Arabella Rose is the baby’s name — I just found that out by the way.”

It’s always nice to remember that teenagers are still teenagers, even when they’re famous pop stars.  Selena Gomez, TV, music and movie starlette and girlfriend to one of the most famous teen idols of the moment, Justin Bieber, proved it recently when she met had a fan girl moment over meeting Shia LaBoeuf backstage when both were visiting the same TV studio.

Apparently, dating a famous guy doesn’t mean you don’t have celebrity crushes of your own!  Eighteen year old Gomez was so flustered at meeting her celeb crush that she half ran away, excited and flustered just like you’d think your own teenage daughter would be if she randomly ran into Shia LaBoeuf and was caught off guard.  LaBoeuf very kindly followed her and gave her a hug, saying ”Hey, it’s nice to meet you, thanks for being so sweet to me.”

After getting her picture taken with LaBoeuf, Gomez allowed herself to have a full blown geek out, “Oh my gosh, he’s so handsome! I’m so embarrassed!” She also called her handlers out in a cute, joking way, ”You guys suck, you used my fans as bait! Now he thinks I’m crazy–tell him I’m sorry.”

I already liked Gomez a lot – she’s adorable, talented and seems to be a genuinely good kid.  This just makes me like her more!

Denise’s older daughters, Sam, age seven, and Lola, age six, are the product of her marriage to Charlie Sheen.  Sam, Lola and Denise named their new addition together. Joni was selected to honor Denise’s mother and Sam and Lola picked out their new sisters first name.  The family’s statement to Access Hollywood didn’t specify what inspired their choice, but I bet any parent of little girl’s can guess!

“Eloise Joni Richards is named after Denise’s mom [Joni], and Denise and her daughters Sami and Lola chose the name Eloise,” the actress’ rep told Access in a statement. “Denise and Eloise’s big sisters couldn’t be happier and feel incredibly blessed.”

A while later, Denise Tweeted her thanks, directly to her fans.

“Thank you all for your sweet messages. The girls and I are over the moon and so is my dad Grandpa Irv…xo,” she Tweeted.

Richards’ latest project, Blue Mountain State aired in the beginning of this year.   She has played everything from a Bond girl to dizzy blonde to big gun wielding, alien fighting soldier in Starship Troopers.

Haley Joel Osment was famous for seeing dead people when he was a little tyke, now he’ll play an adapted version of Victor Frankenstein, a literary character famous for waking the dead, in the new film adaptation of the Steve Niles graphic novel, Wake the Dead.

Wake the Dead is an adaptation of the classic Frankenstein story.  Osment’s character, Victor Franklin, is a new take on Victor Frankenstein, the original moster creating doctor.

Scout Productions and Slasher Films — a production company created by Guns ‘n’ Roses guitarist Slash — are working together to produce the film.

There are several Frankenstein projects are coming to theaters soon, but this one will start shooting this fall.  Meanwhile, Osment is also working on Sassy Pants with Ashley Rickards (“Kill Me Now,” “Fly Away,” “One Tree Hill”), Anna Gunn (“Red State,” “Breaking Bad”), Jenny O’Hara (“Mystic River,” “Devil”) and Diedrich Bader (“Napoleon Dynamite,” “The Drew Carey Show,” “Outsourced”).

Osment was nominated for an Oscar for his iconic childhood role in The Sixth Sense.  Now we’ll have to see if he can live up to his early promise!

“We’re no longer engaged,” Maynard told People after taping an interview, which will air on “The Bachelorette” on July 11.

Maynard, a single mother, is speaking out now in hopes of ending the flurry of  ”media speculation.”  All she wants for herself and her daughter, Ricki, 6, is to “move on and get back to normal.”

Of the reasons behind the break up, all she would say was, ”Just because we love each other doesn’t mean we’re right for each other.”

Womack says he’s to blame for the split.

“The demise of our relationship was completely my fault,” he told People.  He did not agree to join the interview with Emily for the ABC reality series.

Giffords entered the auditorium at Space Center Houston to a standing ovation, according to ABC News.  She was there to watch her husband Mark Kelly receive his Spaceflight Medal for his recent trip on Space Shuttle Endeavor.

ABC’s Gina Sunseri reports that Giffords stood during the event.  Rising from her wheelchair to kiss and hug her husband after he received his medal, then turning to smile and wave a the crowd.  Giffords also reportedly was active in talking to those seated around her.

Giffords attended her husband’s first space shuttle launch date in April, which was aborted due to weather, but she was kept out of the public eye.  This is her first venture back into the lime light.

“I never thought he’d respond,” she told the NJ Post in May. “I was so shocked when the White House called! It was all a dream come true.”

Payton told the President, and the press, today, after meeting Bieber in person, that his story, as told in “Never Say Never,” inspired her greatly and made her want to reach out to others and share her story. “We were so amazed by his story and how he never said never,” she told Yahoo’s Music Blog. “It inspired us to believe in ourselves and share our story to encourage others.”

Payton has been persistent in her dream.  When she set out on her quest to meet Justin Bieber she messaged him on Twitter and wrote to Hollywood executives related to his work. She says she hasn’t just done all of this to meet her idol, however.

“I did it to honor my father,” she the NJ Post. “My father is the reason that we all came together today. I miss and love him and don’t go a day without thinking about him.”

Photo via DailyMail.co.uk.

You know what they say about bad bargains… sometimes they’re just not worth the money you save.  That seems to be what’s happening in Riverside California, where, in order to save $2 million dollars a year, a brand new school, Hillcrest High School, is being left empty.

California is in a serious budget crunch, there is no denying it.  And, unfortunately, like many places in this country California is willing to let school budgets be among the first to suffer from cut backs.

Wendell Tucker of the Alvord Unified School District told USA Today that the district’s $130 million operating budget had been cut by $25 million.

“When the California budget goes down and income in the state goes down, funding to K-through-12 education goes with it,” Tucker told USA Today. “We made a number of budget adjustments. Right now, we simply are out of adjustments, and it’s not feasible … to open this school.”

That’s a steep cut, for sure, but considering the fact that the district is being forced to shell out $1 million to keep the school buildings from deteriorating, wouldn’t it make sense to make an effort to dig up the other two and get some kids out of the over crowded high school that the new buildings were meant to relieve and at least be getting some bang for the city’s educational buck?  Kickstart.com has helped many an artist raise that kind of money – maybe it’s time to start a little grassroots fundraising for local schools.

According to Alvord school board member Ben Johnson, the decision not to open Hillcrest was a choice between laying people off and keeping the school closed. “Choosing between people losing jobs and opening the school site, I couldn’t in my mind justify one more person out of a job,” he said.

A tough dilemma for sure.  What do you think?  How should administrators facing these kind of choices prioritize their shrinking budgets?

The pair got married Wednesday in New York in a very small ceremony. In fact, there were only four guests present!  Craig’s eighteen year old daughter, Ella, Weisz’s four year old son, Henry, and two friends.

Weisz was previously engaged to Oscar-nominated director, Darren Aronofsky, whom she was with for nine years.

“David and I did propose to each other, but over five years ago!” Harris tweeted this weekend. “We’ve been wearing engagement rings for ages, waiting for an available date.”

Harris and Burtka are parents to twins, Harper and Gideon, who were born in October of last year via a surrogate mother.

Harris’ always active Twitter feed has been dominated by news of the marriage equality act of late.  On Friday night, just before the vote, he put the hopes and dreams of many same sex couples quite succinctly with the following tweet:

“I’d sure love to get married. Please, NY Senate, vote in favor of marriage equality today. My family would really appreciate it.”

Congratulations, NPH, we can’t wait to see the wedding pictures!

And, congratulations to the New York State government and all of the politicians there who had the guts to vote this bill through.  As Republican Roy McDonald of Saratoga, one of four Republicans to join the Democrats in voting the bill through, put it:

“You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad and you try to do the right thing,” McDonald, 64, told reporters.

“You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, f— it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing.

“I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing and that’s where I’m going with this.”

So should parents in the U.S. be worried? Scarlet fever is a form of the Group A streptococcus. Almost 80% of people over the age of ten have antibodies to scarlet fever, whether they’ve had the disease or not.  That’s why young children are the ones for whom there is the most concern. In order to cause scarlet fever, rather than strep, the bacteria must also produce a certain toxin. It causes a skin reaction, leading to the characteristic bright red rash that gives the disease its name.  That rash, which turns skin red and bumpy, like sand paper, is one of the key symptoms of the disease.  Also high fevers, a bad sore throat and occasionally vomiting or belly pain.  A child suffering from scarlet fever may also have a bright, strawberry red tongue, potentially with white bumps, and skin on their fingers and toes may peel.  Knowing the symptoms is important as is prompt treatment.  Thankfully, traditional penicillin still seems to be working to treat the disease, even in some of its resistant varieties.

So what’s wrong with Cars 2 that is making critics so grumpy?  Apparently, it’s Mater.  Mater was a loveable but not so bright sidekick in the original film.  Now he seems to have stolen the show… and critics wish he’d give it back.

A.O. Scott of The New York Times pointed out that “built to move merchandise.” The film, Scott wrote, “takes the bold, arguably generous and ultimately calamitous step of pushing its lovable, goofy second banana to the center of the action. Lightning’s racing exploits are secondary.”  Mater being, of course, the second banana.

TIME magazine’s reviewer, Mary Pols, was even more disappointed that Mater was the star of the show.  She wrote that “this ['Cars 2'] is Mater’s movie. It’s a Materthon. I would call it Materific if he didn’t leave me longing for ‘WALL-E’s’ robot to crush him into a silent cube.”

The consensus, as summed up by RottenTomatoes.com, was, “Cars 2 is as visually appealing as any other Pixar production, but all that dazzle can’t disguise the rusty storytelling under the hood.”

That being said, however, RottenTomatoes also points out that 77% of audience members who have seen the film and reported back to the site liked the movie, giving it four out of five stars.  That tells me that this may really be a case of critics expecting too much and being too cynical of the merchandise possibilities (certainly a factor in Pixar’s decision to extend this already weak franchise) to give a movie aimed at younger kids its due.

Ow! Mom! Brainfreeze!

It’s a familiar summer complaint.  Your kids are eating ice cream, somebody starts scarfing a little too fast and boom — their head suddenly feels like it’s about to explode.

So why does this happen?  What is it about cold stuff (sucking down half a slurpee in ten seconds or less will give you a raging headache too, so easily that the 7-Eleven corporation actually trademarked the term, “Brainfreeze” in 1994) that makes a person’s head hurt?  It’s a question any adult who is in close proximity to children, summer time and ice cream can expect to be asked.  So here’s the answer:

Blame your hard palete.  Otherwise known as the roof of your mouth.  When the cold substance of your choice touches the roof of your mouth it triggers the nerves up there to cool down.  They send a 911 cool down message to your brain and the brain constricts its blood vessels to chill the joint out.  When warm blood comes rushing back through those blood vessels, you get yourself a stabbing, migraine like headache for a minute or two.

The good news is, brainfreezes won’t kill you.  Even better, you can avoid getting them all together if you eat a little slower and don’t let your chilled beverage or treat touch the top of your mouth.  Of course, if you happen to be participating in a brainfreeze competition with your kids… then scarf away!