Latest news with #Appelbaum
New York Post
3 days ago
- Health
- New York Post
How screen time is ‘locking up' kids' vision and causing behavioral issues
On average, children spend a staggering seven to eight hours per day on screens, and one expert is warning that we're not seeing the full picture of these devastating devices. 'Screen time has become the new pandemic and it's ruining all of our eyes and brains,' Dr. Bryce Appelbaum, board-certified optometrist, tells The Post. He noted that in addition to cognitive, social, and emotional development, screen time negatively affects vision development — and could be partially to blame for the rising cases of behavioral issues. Advertisement 3 In addition to cognitive, social, and emotional development, screen time negatively affects vision development and could be partially to blame for the rising cases of behavioral issues. Africa Studio – 'We get locked in and collapse our periphery and get this tunnel vision, and then we get the dopamine release in our brain, and it makes us want to come back for more and more,' Appelbaum said. So yes, screens are addictive — but the problem he's pinpointed is that they can also impact kids' still-developing eyes. And when kids have functional vision issues, the doc said, the symptoms can look a lot like ADHD. What are screens doing to kids' eyes? The visual skills needed for screen engagement are vastly different than those needed to engage in a three-dimensional space, he explained. Advertisement 'Vision is intended to guide our movement, not to be staring at these machines all day long,' he said. 'We need to maintain that flexibility. When we're on screens for too long, our focusing muscles — the inside muscles behind the eyes that make things clear — are literally locked up and under tension.' According to Appelbaum, these inner muscles are not designed to work that hard for an extended period of time, and tasking them with bearing that load leads to inflexible visual systems and inflexible visual thinking. 'Children don't have the brain and vision development to handle staring at screens,' he said. Advertisement 'That's going to be a kid who has ants in their pants or is listening to the teacher with their ears rather than with their eyes.' Dr. Bryce Appelbaum 'It's creating a world of kids with a visual system that's locked up, causing nearsightedness, mental health and depth perception issues, and poor interpersonal connection because we're stuck on these 2D devices, inches from our face, blasting all this high-energy light at us.' Previous research published in JAMA Pediatrics has shown that children should be prohibited from screen time until the age of 3, as it can lead to developmental delays. 3 Dr. Bryce Appelbaum, board-certified optometrist, tells The Post that screen time is the new pandemic. Dr. Bryce Appelbaum / Facebook But why would vision problems lead to behavioral ones? Advertisement Researchers at Drexel University discovered that babies and toddlers who are allowed screen time are more likely to display atypical sensory behaviors associated with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Appelbaum maintains that excessive screen time compromises the development of functional vision, creating a scenario where the eyes don't work together to support coordination or focus. Convergence insufficiency — an eye coordination problem that makes it difficult for the eyes to focus on near objects such as books or computer screens — is commonly misdiagnosed as ADD or ADHD-like behavior. 'Somebody that can make their eyes point in the same direction — great. But then after 30 seconds, if they have this fragile coordination, that's going to be a kid who has ants in their pants or is listening to the teacher with their ears rather than with their eyes,' he said. A 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed a shocking uptick in ADHD diagnoses among American children. In contrast to screen-based learning that became ubiquitous during COVID-19 lockdowns, old school educational practices like copying from the blackboard require the visual flexibility of going from near to far, activating the inner and outer eye muscles to strengthen and work synergistically. 3 A 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed a shocking uptick in ADHD diagnoses among American children. – Advertisement 'Reading print requires different eye movements across the page that are more sequenced, methodical and organized than on a screen. With a screen, you can dart your eyes all over the place, take in a lot of the information, but you don't have the eye movement control needed for other tasks,' he said. How can parents protect the visual and behavioral health of their children? Priority number one is limiting screen time. A 2024 study found that reduced daily screen time helped children better process their emotions and improve their social interactions. Advertisement Another helpful strategy is to encourage physical activity, blinking, and vision breaks during periods of screen use. 'The eyes are a muscle; if you were to squeeze your fists for an extended period of time, after a few seconds, your hands start to hurt. But if you let go and come back and let go and come back, you release that tension.' Appelbaum noted that digital performance lenses can be a support system for developing eyes as they make it easier for the brain to access and utilize vision. Advertisement 'If you train the eye-brain connection and make it so that you have robust tracking, focusing, convergence, and visual processing, then screens are less terrible and they're not going to impact development and life the way they would otherwise.' Appelbaum maintains that incorporating limits and strategies to protect the eyes guarantees success in the future. 'You can develop the right visual foundation to thrive in this digital world. It just requires a lot of brain and vision training.'
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Can America Get Unstuck?
How the Privileged and the PropertiedBroke the Engine of American Opportunityby Yoni AppelbaumRandom House, 320 pp., $14.99 THE MAGIC BEHIND AMERICA'S BYGONE period of rapid economic development and strong civic culture wasn't unions or low immigration rates or the after-effects of World War II, but mobility—not just socioeconomic but geographic. And the secret to that mobility was cheap, abundant, and easily available housing in growing, job-rich markets, the basic means to the end of seeking opportunity. Or so argues Yoni Appelbaum in his new book on housing, Stuck. Housing policy might sound like a wonky, white-paper topic, but anyone who has moved or tried to buy or rent a home recently knows it touches deeply on everyday life. Stuck joins M. Nolan Gray's Arbitrary Lines (against zoning), Derek Thompson's and Ezra Klein's Abundance (against overregulation), and a raft of other recent books addressing the problem of housing affordability, zoning and land-use regulation, and the (lack of) housing supply. Appelbaum's particular contribution is his use of quite a bit of unfamiliar history from the rapidly growing, highly mobile nineteenth century to illustrate how our housing crisis is really a mobility crisis, and why, in his telling, it doesn't have to be this way. For Appelbaum, the deputy executive editor of the Atlantic, the problems started with the anti-growth turn of the twentieth century, especially the imposition of zoning and the early FHA regulations on lending that severed the housing market from the economy, creating the once-strange notion of 'expensive' cities. Everyone but the very rich was squeezed out of urban housing markets, and the gates of economic opportunity closed. Today, Appelbaum writes, 'too many Americans . . . live where they are able, not where they want; they experience their lives less as the result of their own decisions than as the consequence of vast and impersonal forces. And with that decline in agency has come a deep embitterment.' Appelbaum reports that half of renters now spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Most of America's pleasant, walkable, amenity- and job-rich urban places, formerly full of middle-class families, have become inaccessible to all but the wealthy. The housing market now dictates settlement patterns, rather than following from them. Americans used to move to affordable housing where they could find economic opportunity. Now they hope to find economic opportunity where they can afford the housing. Things are getting worse, but we can make them better together. Join our pro-democracy community and help us grow. NOW IT ISN'T QUITE THIS SIMPLE. In their earliest years, American settlements inherited the European concept of the village as a communal institution, with the power of exclusion. This town-as-private-club model manifested in different ways in Puritan New England and the Virginia colony, but at a high level, the stuffy European rules applied. Over time, Americans invented the (unevenly applied) rights to leave a community, to join one, and eventually to truly belong. This, Appelbaum explains, was revolutionary. Once the province of ne'er-do-wells, moving became associated with economic success. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't keep restless, opportunity-seeking Americans bound to the communities of their birth. What is distinct about America, Appelbaum argues, is this right of the individual to choose whatever community he wants as his home. The modern legal understanding of freedom of movement and residency evolved piecemeal. Appelbaum notes that freedom of movement, per se, is not obviously derived from the Constitution. But over time, we struck down or stopped practicing laws and customs like the New England village's 'warning out' or laws allowing states to essentially means-test new residents, sending those deemed too needy back to 'their own' states to become public charges. As those practices fell away, Americans adopted the understanding that an American could move anywhere, and be a resident, legally speaking, simply by dint of being somewhere. This entailed not just expanding individual rights, but reimagining what a community was: not an actual institution with the power to determine its residents, but merely the sum of the individuals who chose to call it home, for as long as they wanted to. Join now The freedom to join new communities fueled economic growth and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, but it was never entirely uncontested. Concerns about real problems like urban overcrowding—especially in the era before public health—are hard to separate from prejudice and nativism, given that the slums and overcrowding tended to be in immigrant and/or non-white neighborhoods, and that racism could be laundered as social reform. Appelbaum quotes Berkeley professor and apartment skeptic Oliver Miles Washburn as saying in 1914: 'There is no relief except by building closer and higher—by crowding more people into already occupied areas.' That's a pretty handy working definition of a city, from the foundation of Jericho to the present day. It is clear from the history of zoning that many Americans despised immigrants more than they loved freedom and free enterprise. Not all opponents of free movement were racists or nativists—many of the anti-growthers later in the twentieth century were population-growth alarmists. As for modern NIMBYism, Appelbaum casts it partly as a reemergence of the old 'village as club' model: Not far to the south [of where Appelbaum lives], two lawn signs sit side by side on a neatly manicured lawn. One proclaims, NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE FROM, WE'RE GLAD YOU'RE OUR NEIGHBOR, in Spanish, English, and Arabic. Beside it, another reads, SAY NO, urging residents to oppose the construction of an apartment building that would house the new neighbors the other sign welcomes. Ironic, yes. But also instructive. In theory, the drives toward inclusion and exclusion should exist in tension. In practice, though, progressivism has produced a potent strain of NIMBYism, a defense of communities in their current form against those who might wish to join them. As Appelbaum explains, not being invited into that club means not attending its schools, with all the attendant implications for socio-economic mobility. Share THROUGH THE CHAPTERS OF THE HISTORY of this evolving freedom of movement, Appelbaum illustrates how central moving was and still is to American society. There's a long passage on 'Moving Day,' from the time when leases expired on the same day (typically May 1), and large chunks of many cities would move all at once. This secular holiday, written about frequently in newspapers, was enabled by a much lower share of homeowners relative to renters. In fact, it was not until 1950 that a majority of Americans owned their homes, as renting allowed people frequently to change homes, or neighborhoods, or cities, or states. 'A home,' Appelbaum writes, 'was less an investment than a consumer good.' Appelbaum also implies that the modern college homecoming celebration descends from the New Hampshire governor's 1899 announcement of 'Old Home Week,' a week of parades and celebrations for former New Hampshirites to come back (and spend money at local businesses). By the turn of the century, in other words, mobility was so widespread that former residents of states were large populations in their own right. But around that same time, having used the new freedom of movement to build its economy and cities, America nullified that freedom with a flood of land-use regulations and government lending standards. It's not necessary to endorse the proclamation of some progressive housing advocates that anyone has a right to live anywhere they want to observe that the freedom of movement isn't worth much if people can't afford to be where they want to go—namely, growing, job-rich cities. But surely, most Americans would agree we at least possess a right to seek opportunity. And mobility is so closely tied to seeking opportunity that putting affordable homes out of proximity to that opportunity in effect encroaches even on the right to work. Many of the early zoning advocates saw apartment buildings or tenements not as stepping stones or lower rungs on a ladder, but as buildings that created poverty. The nativist urge to get rid of the housing the immigrants live in worked in tandem with utopianism, in which urban planners imagined that in sawing off the lowest rungs of the ladder, it would be somehow easier to climb. The FHA required localities to impose zoning codes in order for homes to qualify for FHA mortgages, which in effect made suburban stasis national policy. Later on, environmental laws would be arguably misused to tie up development proposals in endless litigation. It simply became much more expensive and frictional to build housing in places where people, infrastructure, and jobs already were. Share WHILE IN MANY WAYS STUCK fits into a body of technocratic, center-left public policy work, it is suffused with a deeply conservative sensibility: the understanding that the past contains a great deal of wisdom, that government bureaucrats cannot centrally plan economic growth or human settlements, and that their hubris eroded a lot of accumulated, informal wisdom by which Americans turned freedom into both wealth and civic engagement. The effect is a little like what George Taylor might have felt upon finding the head of the Statue of Liberty. Another feature that differentiates Appelbaum from the crowd of proudly urbanite neoliberals with globes in their Bluesky handles (not derogatory) is his attention to civic engagement and participation in religious and associational life. Appelbaum argues, perhaps counterintuitively, that mobility, not localism, is what generates civic participation, sociability, tolerance, and pluralism. 'Left to their own devices, most people will stick to ingrained habits, to familiar circles of friends, to accustomed places,' he writes. 'It's people who remain where they are who tend to end up bowling alone.' Most of us can think of a period of change and uprootedness in our own lives—moving into college, starting a new job, settling down in a new city—and remember a feeling of adventurousness and hopefulness, a drive to meet people and check out the new surroundings. That acute, nervous loneliness is a kind of social glue. It's as if American communities used to be long continual welcome parties, which have petered out as newcomers stop arriving. 'With Moving Day, Americans made a habit out of change,' Appelbaum writes. 'The annual ritual of relocation, for all its inconveniences, provided the impetus to overcome inertia.' (This is not even all that long ago; in New York City, at least, Moving Day survived into the 1940s.) By contrast, the dull, chronic loneliness of feeling stuck somewhere acts as a force of attrition against the willpower to go seek out opportunities and create ties. But, after all, Appelbaum's whole point is that it's not our fault that we're stuck. At least, not the fault of those who inherited the housing market the planners of the twentieth century broke. Share THE BIGGEST FAULT IN STUCK is not in Appelbaum's history but in his use of history, in its implications. Appelbaum's basic observations—Americans used to move more often, housing used to be more affordable and come in more varieties, and housing construction used to keep pace with economic growth in specific cities—appear well supported, but what are the arguments? What are we to make of this vanished world that was our country in the nineteenth century? The Moving Day churn, the town and city homecoming parades, the civic boosterism and rapid growth, the striking out and reinventing oneself and going bankrupt and reinventing oneself again: Are these arguments and analyses of what is possible today, or are they merely a description of a volatile, passing period in a nation's economic development? Is Appelbaum arguing for, in effect, a kind of national Peter Pan policy, in which the nation never must grow up? Toward the end of the book, Appelbaum argues briefly that, since he's identified the specific public policies that destroyed American mobility, an alternate path was still possible. But more than that, he argues that it is still possible—that our development is not path-dependent but that all options are still available to us. Even if mistaken policies can be rescinded, many decades of anti-growth policies have broken the cultural continuity with our old nineteenth-century selves. Governments can restore the conditions in which that period of growth took place, but neither governments nor markets can necessarily restore the culture of growth and boosterism and moving around that was bound up with that old policy regime. But we should hope that that restoration is possible, because it is clear what its absence is costing us—in GDP, in economic opportunity, in vibrant social ties, and in the welcoming, pluralistic attitude buoyed by the belief that the future will be better than the present. Share The Bulwark
New York Post
14-05-2025
- Health
- New York Post
Could your child's ADHD really be an undiagnosed vision issue?
Are we seeing the signs and symptoms of ADHD clearly? A 2024 report from the CDC revealed a staggering uptick in ADHD diagnoses among American children. But many of these young patients could actually be suffering from an undiagnosed problem that can be detected with a more thorough vision test, board-certified optometrist Bryce Appelbaum, O.D., FCOVD tells The Post. Advertisement 4 Functional vision is compromised when the eyes aren't working together to support coordination or focus. Alexis S/ – What is functional vision? ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is a developmental disorder characterized by inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsive behavior — but Appelbaum says that many of these symptoms are 'identical' to ones for functional vision issues. Functional vision is compromised when the eyes don't work together to support coordination or focus. Essentially, 'the muscles responsible for clarity are having a hard time turning on, staying turned on, or having flexibility,' Appelbaum said. A common vision diagnosis that looks like ADD or ADHD-like behavior is convergence insufficiency, an eye coordination problem that makes it difficult for the eyes to focus on near objects, such as books or computer screens. Advertisement 'A change in eye movement is a change in attention, whether voluntary or involuntary. If we can't control our eye movements, we can't control our attention,' he said. How functional vision problems impact behavior According to Appelbaum, people with convergence insufficiency are three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. But standard eye tests fail to accurately measure functional vision, focusing instead on eyesight and eye health. 'A thorough functional vision exam goes beyond just the ability to see; it looks at that eye-brain connection,' he explained. Advertisement 'Somebody that can make their eyes point in the same direction — great. But then after 30 seconds, if they have this fragile coordination, that's going to be a kid who has ants in their pants or is listening to the teacher with their ears rather than with their eyes.' 4 Appelbaum believes every child should have a thorough, comprehensive functional vision test before kindergarten to ensure they're visually ready for learning and eventually, reading. Prostock-studio – Appelbaum said missed or misdiagnosed vision problems can result in unnecessary struggles in the classroom and beyond. Advertisement 'Children can struggle with reading or navigating through space, or even with ball sports or social interaction, because the input from their eyes to their brain is scattered and not filtered appropriately,' he said. What can be done about it? Even though the eyes are the body's dominant sensory system, two out of three children enter school without ever having a vision screening. Appelbaum believes every child should have a thorough, comprehensive functional vision test before kindergarten to ensure they're visually ready for learning and, eventually, reading. Kids can literally go off medication after doing the right type of work… They can focus their eyes so they can focus their mind. Bryce Appelbaum Once a functional vision problem has been diagnosed, it can be treated and, in most cases, corrected with vision performance training. 'It's like PT for the eyes, but really for the brain through the eyes,' he said. 'With the right type of work, you can raise somebody's awareness of what they're doing so they can learn how to self-correct and self-monitor until the eyes and brain are working fluidly together as a team.' 4 Appelbaum said missed or misdiagnosed vision problems can result in unnecessary struggles in the classroom and beyond. linkedin/dr-bryce-appelbaum Treating ADHD Advertisement One in nine children aged 3-17 is diagnosed with ADHD, but a 2021 study in JAMA Network Open reported 'convincing evidence was found that ADHD is overdiagnosed in children and adolescents.' For people with milder symptoms, 'the harms associated with an ADHD diagnosis may often outweigh the benefits,' the researchers concluded. ADHD is typically treated with a combination of behavior therapy and stimulant medication, the latter of which comes with a slew of side effects and drawbacks. The array of stimulant medications used to treat the disorder — Vyvanse, Adderall, Concerta and Ritalin, to name a few — may be accompanied by adverse side effects. Advertisement 4 ADHD is typically treated with a combination of behavior therapy and stimulant medication, the latter of which comes with a slew of side effects and drawbacks. David L/ – Stimulants can cause appetite loss, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, changes in blood pressure and heart rate, and more. Drug misuse was also suggested among other 'potential harms' noted by the CDC. In 2022, the Drug Enforcement Agency issued a warning to manufacturers of ADHD drugs that it was concerned about 'aggressive marketing practices' by companies — in particular, telehealth providers such as Cerebral — that could be driving excessive prescriptions. Advertisement Appelbaum believes children with behavioral issues rooted in vision problems can quickly and efficiently transition off these medications. 'Kids can literally go off medication after doing the right type of work because their eyes and brain are working together, and the need for stimulation is gone. They can focus their eyes so they can focus their mind,' he said. For Appelbaum, the mission to educate parents about the relationship between vision and behavioral issues is a personal one. As a child, he struggled with focusing in the classroom and responding on the soccer field. His father, an optometrist, and mother, an occupational therapist, 'put together a plan of action to help facilitate the development that was necessary for me to soar in life.' Advertisement This plan included vision performance training. 'This was 37 years ago. What took me years we can now accomplish in a matter of months based on innovations, new protocols. We see improvements rather quickly, especially when the brain has more opportunities for learning.' Appelbaum maintains that while vision testing and training can benefit children diagnosed with ADHD, the positive effects are available to adults as well. 'Any brain at any age can learn new tricks,' he said. 'We need to put our vision first and look into the eye-brain connection, which goes beyond just going to the eye doctor and seeing if you need glasses. We must look at the functional visual skills because so much of our potential can be unlocked through vision.'
Atlantic
15-04-2025
- Business
- Atlantic
Who's to Blame for America's Housing Crisis?
Stuck In Place In the March 2025 issue, Yoni Appelbaum considered why Americans stopped moving houses—and why that's a very big problem. Yoni Appelbaum's 'Stuck In Place' accurately describes how restrictive land-use policies in America's most economically vibrant cities have choked off opportunity for many Americans. That said, I'm skeptical that homeowners would be as open to new development as Appelbaum thinks. One person's exorbitant expense—money paid for rent or to purchase a home—is another person's income. Increasing the housing supply to deliberately moderate or even lower prices threatens homeowners whose retirement plans include cashing in on the equity stake in their home. Twenty-five years ago, William Fischel named this political economy the 'homevoter hypothesis': Voters lobby the local land-use authorities to protect their vested real-estate interests, thereby excluding newcomers from their communities. Americans have grown accustomed to rapidly rising home values, and our federal, state, and local governments encourage this through zoning, mortgage, and tax policies. It's no wonder people eagerly use the power of the state to privilege themselves, even if they couch it in lofty terms such as opposing 'greedy developers' and 'protecting neighborhood character.' Eric Fidler Washington, D.C. Yoni Appelbaum's article on the ills caused by progressives' neighborhood preservationism is thought-provoking, well researched, and convincing to a point. But it can't serve as a blanket explanation for all of America's current sociopolitical ills—nothing fits that bill. Arguments like these can lead to scapegoating and a backlash that itself goes too far. Zoning laws should certainly be loosened—but do we want to open every last historical landmark to the wrecking ball and allow every last green space in America to be paved over just so someone can make a quick buck? Surely we can strike a new, better balance. Potomac, Md. I read Yoni Appelbaum's lament over decreasing American mobility with bemusement. Some people value establishing and maintaining deep bonds with family, friends, and community over chasing after money. Here in rural northeastern Kansas, I dwell among people who live on the same land that their forebears homesteaded in the mid-19th century. They possess a sense of rootedness and purpose as vital contributors to their local community that cannot be exchanged for cash. They also tend to be thrifty people who save, so other than them tipping off friends about the latest sale at the fabric store, I've never heard them mention or complain about money. Because of the quest for upward mobility, I know many couples whose grown children choose to pursue lives in California or Florida or New York and then cram into airports during the holidays. They would have saved themselves considerable time, money, and stress if they'd never left home in the first place. FaceTime and texting cannot babysit for you, mow your lawn, rescue you if your car breaks down, or run errands for you if you are sick. Mindlessly moving from one place to another in pursuit of the next promotion is not only extremely expensive—it has contributed to the loneliness epidemic. Neighbors no longer know one another; newcomers find themselves surrounded by strangers. And if they are transients who will jump at the next opportunity to relocate, I doubt that they will try to establish any meaningful connections. The pursuit of more money through mobility is a dominant theme in our culture, but not everyone buys into it. I've discovered meaning and fulfillment by staying in one place. Margaret Kramar Lecompton, Kan. Here's another reason fewer Americans are moving far from their hometowns: the increased economic and social power of women. Women do a disproportionate amount of unpaid work in the form of child care and elder care. Women know how difficult it is to raise kids far away from the support of extended family. For the men who were the breadwinners and decision makers of previous generations, caring for children (to say nothing of aging parents) was not their concern. To modern couples who earn money and make decisions more equitably, the demands of child care and elder care are powerful incentives to stay close to home. Emily Murbarger Philadelphia, Pa. Yoni Appelbaum's theory that progressives are to blame for America's housing crisis ignores a far more obvious culprit: greed. The reason no one is building affordable housing is that it simply isn't as profitable as luxury townhouses and condos. Downtown Milwaukee, for instance, teems with new apartment complexes marketed to those who can afford the $2,000 rent. There needs to be an incentive to build housing for the people who clean and service these units, especially as wealthy Americans turn their backs on the public sphere. Otherwise, our cities risk becoming hives of affluence. David Southward Milwaukee, Wis. I wholeheartedly agree with Yoni Appelbaum's three principles for restoring dynamism and mobility to our cities. We need more consistency and less discretion in our land-use rules. We need more tolerance for the messy process of change to the built environment. And we need to embrace growth and abundance. But the correctness of Appelbaum's conclusions only deepened my frustration with the blame he placed on Jane Jacobs. Although she deserves criticism for inspiring a strain of progressive NIMBYism, Jacobs was no evangelist for freezing cities in amber. She famously attacked 'separation of uses'—then a key facet of planning orthodoxy—in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She advocated instead for mixed-use streets where people and businesses would age in and out over time in a constant process of urban self-regeneration. That's exactly the dynamism that Appelbaum wants. True, Jacobs's prescription was not as accurate as her diagnosis. It seems strange that she thought historic-preservation laws could be 'zoning for diversity' rather than zoning for gentrification. But in the '50s and '60s, the government invested enormously in suburbanization, often by leveling neighborhoods to build highways. Americans should be a mobile people because we choose to be, not because Uncle Sam gives us an eviction notice. Jacobs's fight is more understandable in that context. The problem isn't what she did then; it's that some self-described progressives still insist on her approach 70 years later in radically changed circumstances. Fortunately, they are drowned out more and more by a new progressive movement that proclaims, 'Yes in my backyard.' Michael Whelan Ann Arbor, Mich. There are times when moving house makes sense—say, a job change, or a significant change in the size of one's family. But there is also much to be said for simply being satisfied with what one has. I do realize that it is not a typically American attitude, but it is an attitude that can bring about a fair degree of happiness. Perpetual striving leads only to more striving. Allen Murray Mebane, N.C. Behind the Cover This month, our cover spotlights four stories on threats to American democracy. George Packer examines President Donald Trump's Orwellian tendencies. Anne Applebaum reports on the right's dangerous embrace of Viktor Orbán's Hungary. Aziz Huq recounts how the constitutional and legal foundations of the Weimar Republic eroded. And David Brooks describes the nihilism at the core of the MAGA movement. For the cover image, the illustrator Ricardo Tomás created an imperiled American flag, its stars and stripes on the verge of collapse. — Paul Spella, Senior Art Director A caption in 'O'Keeffe in the Frame' (February) misstated the location of Twilight Canyon. It is in Utah, not New Mexico.
CBS News
29-03-2025
- Health
- CBS News
Does your child have ADHD or vision problems? Optometrist says both share similar symptoms
Does your child have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder or a functional vision problem? Neuro-optometrist Dr. Bryce Appelbaum, a Maryland-based doctor board certified in vision therapy and graduate of the Illinois College of Optometry, says an ADHD diagnosis isn't complete without ruling out a functional vision problem. "Symptoms of ADD or ADHD and functional vision problems are so, so similar," he said. "If our eyes can't coordinate together as a team. If the inside muscles of the eyes are having a hard time focusing and making something clear and keeping it clear, from difficulty tracking our eyes, it's so much harder to sustain visual attention than it should be, and our mind's ability to stay focused is deeply embedded in our eye's ability to stay focused." So, how can this impact a child's behavior? "A child who is squirmy with desk work, loses their place with reading or prefers to rely on their ears rather than their eyes in the classroom setting or reading at home with mom or dad, those are clear signs of a functional vision problem impacting their ability to use their eyes together," Dr. Appelbaum said. For parents and teachers, Dr. Appelbaum says they can start assessing the child by looking at their performance. "A smart child whose performance drops throughout the day, or a child who is avoiding reading, preferring to be read to, or a child whose even having a hard time maintaining eye contact. Those are clear signs that vision is not guiding, leading and isn't developed like it's intended to." Dr. Appelbaum says research shows one in 10 kids has a vision problem significant enough to impact learning. More than 80 percent of what a child learns in the classroom comes through the visual processing of information. For more about functional vision problems, follow Dr. Appelbaum on Instagram . Additional information can be found online at MyVisionFirst and ScreenFit .
