🚑↗
Some illnesses are counted in hours. If a boy has sudden severe pain on one side of the scrotum, it is testicular torsion: the blood vessel attached to the testicle has twisted shut and cut off its blood supply. If it is treated within 6 hours, 97.2% of testicles are saved. By 19 to 24 hours, only 42.5% are. This kind of pain can't wait until school lets out or until exams are over.
- Top value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
🩺↗
Scoliosis is a sideways curve of the spine. A brace is a hard-shell vest worn on the body to hold the spine in place. Worn while the bones are still growing, it kept 75% of children from curving to the point of needing surgery, versus only 42% of children who were just watched without a brace. The time when a brace can work follows when the bones finish growing, not the middle-school or college entrance exams. If you wait until after the exams, surgery is often the only option left.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
🛡️↗
A child bullied by peers is about 2.2 times as likely to have thoughts of suicide, and about 2.6 times as likely to have attempted suicide, as a child who is not bullied. When a school receives a report, it has to investigate immediately. If the incident is judged to be bullying, the school must discipline the students involved, and serious cases may not be hidden and must be reported to the public security authorities (公安, the police). So report on the same day, ask the school to go through the formal determination process, and keep a written record.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
🌳↗
In first grade, an extra 40-minute outdoor class every day cut the share of children who newly became nearsighted over three years from about 40% to about 30%. The National Health Commission (卫健委) recommends at least 2 hours outdoors in the daytime every day, or 14 hours a week in total. Cloudy days count, and so does standing outside during a school break.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
📱↗
The National Health Commission (国家卫健委) asks for no screens at ages 0 to 3 and as little contact as possible at ages 3 to 6. For primary and secondary students, use that is not for study should be no more than 15 minutes at a time and no more than 1 hour a day. The reason given is that long periods of close-up eye use bring myopia on earlier. The evidence linking screens to myopia is not that firm. What has actually been shown to work in a trial is 2 hours outdoors every day.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Buys life
- For: Child under 3, Child aged 3–18
👓↗
Myopia does not get better by itself, and the prescription does not go back down. It is also more than a matter of “just wearing glasses.” Compared with people who are not nearsighted, the chance of myopic maculopathy is more than ten times higher with mild myopia and several hundred times higher with 600 degrees (度, the Chinese unit for eyeglass strength) or more. Retinal detachment is about 3 times higher with mild myopia and about 13 times higher at 600 degrees or more. So the earlier a child becomes nearsighted and the faster it gets worse, the greater the risk to carry later.
- Top value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
📋↗
Primary and secondary schools organize a health checkup for students once a year. The key items on the report are overweight, obesity, undernutrition, abnormal spinal curvature, poor eyesight and tooth decay, which are the easiest to let slide. Don't glance at height and weight and put the report away. If any of these items is abnormal, take the child to a specialist to get it sorted out that same year.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
🫶↗
American prevention guidelines recommend screening children aged 12 to 18 for major depression; for ages 11 and under the evidence is not enough. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among children aged 10 to 19. The school's yearly psychological assessment is only a broad survey and can't be taken as a diagnosis. If the child says they feel awful, or eating, sleeping, interests or grades suddenly change, go straight to a psychiatry or clinical psychology department.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
👁️↗
The State Administration for Market Regulation (市场监管总局) has said plainly that “with current medical technology, myopia cannot be cured.” Ads that use claims such as “restore,” “reduce the prescription,” “myopia cure” or “prescription repair” are to be dealt with strictly. When you see such words, rule the product out and don't bother comparing prices. Eye-protection devices count as medical devices, and online platforms are responsible for checking that sellers are qualified to sell them.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
- For: Child aged 3–18
👁️↗
In a dilated eye exam (散瞳验光), an eye drop is put in first to relax the muscle inside the eye that does the focusing, and then the prescription is measured. It is done at a hospital and is the most accurate way to diagnose myopia. The National Health Commission (卫健委) states that the drops do not damage healthy eyes and that vision returns to normal after the drops wear off. Don't treat a single computerized test at an eyeglass shop as a diagnosis, and don't hold off on glasses for the child out of fear that the prescription will go up.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
🦷↗
A pit-and-fissure sealant (窝沟封闭) uses resin to seal the grooves on the chewing surface of the big back teeth, so food debris can't get stuck in them. Two years after it is done, the chance of cavities is about one eighth of that without sealing. Without it, 16% of tooth surfaces get cavities, and with it only about 5%. It is still effective after four years.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
🎮↗
Only about two or three people in every hundred really meet the bar for “gaming disorder.” If the questionnaire's cutoff is set low and it is aimed at teenagers, the share comes out inflated. In real records from game companies, how much someone plays has almost no link to how good their mood is. Under the rules, minors may play only from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Saves time
- For: Child aged 3–18
🏳️🌈↗
Among middle school students in China, children who like the same sex or like both sexes were about 3 to 5.5 times as likely as others to have attempted suicide in the past year. Research abroad has found that children who were strongly rejected by their families in adolescence later attempted suicide far more often. Children whom parents sent for “conversion” attempted suicide most.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
👐↗
Children who are often hit have more aggression and psychological problems, are more distant from their parents, and are hit harder more often. Whether hitting makes a child obey on the spot is unclear from the evidence. Children who were often yelled at and called stupid at age 13 went on to have more trouble and more depression, and parents being affectionate otherwise did not cancel that out.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- Disputed
- For: Child under 3, Child aged 3–18
👪↗
In trials that assigned parents by lottery, courses that teach parents specific ways to manage children led to fewer problems with children hitting and breaking rules, and the parents' moods got better. Parents also hit and scolded less, most clearly right after the course and still visible a year or two later, though much smaller. A course of this type was also tried in Shanghai and it worked.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- For: Child under 3, Child aged 3–18
🛡️↗
The law expressly forbids using methods that harm a child's body and mind to curb internet addiction. At a special training school in Hefei, a newly delivered boy was handcuffed in a confinement room and died after about 44 hours. At Yuzhang Academy (豫章书院) in Nanchang, students were locked in confinement; several of those in charge were sentenced, and the parents' demand for a refund of tuition was not upheld by the court.
- High value
- Evidence C
- Buys life
- For: Child aged 3–18
