children

The board game that was removed for making children steal food rations from Titanic survivors

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There have always been games with a morbid theme, but they are certainly not a thing of today. Already in 1975, board game creators were racking their brains to come up with the darkest and most impactful idea for the whole family. And what better way to spend an afternoon of harmless fun in the company of loved ones that one of the greatest tragedies in the history of modern locomotion. It sinks. When in 1975 Ideal Toy Corporation put on the shelves ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’the slogan printed on the box left no room for imagination (or interpretation): “Play while the ship sinks… and then face the dangers of the open sea.” From 8 years and older, be careful. The controversy, of course, was immediate, the game was withdrawn from the market, and although it was reissued under different names, today it is a sought-after piece for collectors of classic board games. How to play. The game has two phases. First, players are ship’s officers who must navigate the cabins of the Titanic rescuing passengers and stocking up on food and water rations as the ship sinks. In the second phase, with the liner already under water, survivors in boats race to reach the rescue ship. The first to arrive with two passengers, two rations of food and two of water wins. What does it look like? The board is cleverly articulated into two pieces joined by clips. Every time someone rolls a 1 or 6 with the dice, the board “sinks” into the bar, and more and more squares of the ship’s hull disappear under the water. If an empty lifeboat touches the water, it is removed, and if the player cannot find a place in any boat, he loses. In 1975, the idea was very ingenious: a board that is transformed. Ideal itself had already explored these possibilities with a previous success, ‘Mouse Trap‘, in 1963. Storms and cannibals. But the real morbidity (and, let’s face it, the distancing from historical facts) came with the modifying cards that threw the players against “violent storms, cannibals, the cruel sea and each other,” as the instructions. Actually, the game has little to do with what happened on the Titanic, and in that sense it is quite modest: there are no mention of real passengers and the tropical islands with cannibals have nothing to do with the frigid North Atlantic where the real ship sank. The controversy. Ideal received criticism for turning tragedy into entertainment. The game was withdrawn from the market and re-released under the name ‘Abandon Ship’, with all references to the Titanic eliminated, something not difficult because as we have said, the game had few authentic elements, except perhaps the unmistakable silhouette of the cruise ship on the box. Because of this, the original version of ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ has been revalued and It is easy for it to reach approximately 150 euros on websites like eBay. Too soon. The Titanic sank in April 1912 and Ideal recovered from the tragedy 63 years later. What is significant is that the remains of the ship, located by oceanographer Robert Ballard in 1985, had not yet been found. The 1,500 bodies that lay four kilometers deep certified, with bodies included, the magnitude of the tragedy. But ten years before, after the sinking of the Titanic, there were only ghosts missing in the sea, a myth about the unfathomable dangers of the ocean. In 1975 you could still make a board game about it. In Xataka | AI is so good at chess that it is changing something: the way humans play it

YouTube invests a million in AI content for children just as it has just declared war on AI content for children

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Google’s AI Futures Fund just injected a million dollars at Animaj, a Parisian studio that produces children’s animation generated with artificial intelligence for YouTube. The decision comes seven weeks after the platform’s CEO publicly stated that combating AI sloplow-quality content generated with AI, was the priority of the year. Down the slop. On January 21, 2026, Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, published his annual message about resolutions for the new year, including an unambiguous directive: combat AI slop It was the priority of the year for the platform. Seven weeks later, Google’s AI Futures Fund injected $1 million into Animaj, a Parisian animation studio that produces AI-generated children’s videos for YouTube. The problem. A analysis of more than 15,000 channels identified 278 dedicated exclusively to produce AI slop: Together they accumulated 63,000 million visits, 221 million subscribers and advertising revenues estimated at 117 million dollars annually. A user who opens Shorts finds that one in five recommended videos belongs to that category. He children’s segment concentrates the worst: YouTubers with more than a million followers explain in tutorials how to generate “simple and repetitive” children’s songs with ChatGPT, run them through a video generator and obtain content that could bring in “hundreds of dollars a day.” The channel JoJo Funlandfor example, published more than 10,000 videos in its first seven months (50 per day on average), a figure that took Sesame Street twenty years to reach on its YouTube channel. The volume would be worrying in itself, but what makes it a problematic issue is that many of these videos pass as educational, and in reality, There are psychologists who describe them as “AI disinformation for babies on an industrial scale”: they promise to teach vowels and show consonants or recite made-up country names. The solution. In July 2025, YouTube renamed its “Repetitive Content” policy as “Inauthentic Content”, which expanded the scope of moderation teams, who could now take action against channels that published videos that were technically different from each other but manufactured without human intervention. In January 2026, the first wave of large-scale application arrived. The platform removed 16 channels with a total of 35 million subscribers and 4.7 billion accumulated visits, which represents a sum of 10 million dollars in annual income. What is Animaj? Animaj was founded in 2022 by Gregory Dray (veteran director of YouTube Kids in Europe) and Sixte de Vauplane, convinced that low-quality children’s content on digital platforms was a problem before generative AI, and well-applied AI could be part of the solution. The company has acquired brands with proven prestige, such as Pocoyo and Maya the Bee. Its channels have 22 billion annual views and 242 million unique monthly viewers, making it the fifth largest children’s digital audience in the world. according to the company itself. The million from the AI ​​Futures Fund is also strategic: Animaj is the first children’s content studio to receive direct support from Alphabet’s technology accelerator. The deal includes early access to unreleased versions of Veo, Gemini, and Imagen, plus direct support from the Google DeepMind and Google Labs teams. With those tools, Animaj says it can go from concept to published episode in less than five weeks (four times faster than traditional animation) and aims to reduce the production cycle of a feature film from six years to eighteen months. In Xataka | The future of the Internet is to be flooded with AI. And there are those who have already seen a business niche: content made by humans Header | edward stojakovic

Donating cash to children is exempt from personal income tax for parents. It is not free for children

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Young people do not have it easy to get ahead in a context of very tight salaries and with him housing prices skyrocketed. Therefore, helping children or a family member financially becomes the natural impulse. However, this willingness to help may have tax consequences What is important to know before making the transfer. In a binding query Addressed to the General Directorate of Taxes (DGT), a body dependent on the Treasury, a person raised the possibility of helping his family financially through a cash donation. The consultation made it abundantly clear: anyone who donates cash has nothing to fear on their tax return. The same cannot be said about the person who receives it. ​What the Treasury says about the donor’s personal income tax. The General Directorate of Taxes responded to a person who wanted to donate cash to his mother. The DGT pulled the file and argued its response in a previous binding consultation, in which a father raised the tax consequences of donating cash to his children. The Treasury’s response establishes that “for the donation of money, no capital gain or loss will be computed for the donor,” which implies that on the part of the person who gives that money there is nothing to declare or pay in the Income Tax. The technical reasoning is quite logical and simple. When money is donated, there is no difference between the value at which it was acquired and the value at which it is transmitted, so there is no alteration in the donor’s assets that justifies paying taxes on it, as established in article 33.1 of the Law on Personal Income Tax. When the gift is not money, the story changes. The organization itself takes advantage of the consultation to remember that the exemption from personal income tax taxation Applies exclusively to cash donations. That means that if parents They donate a home to their children that they bought 20 years ago for 100,000 euros, and that at the time of donation its value is 200,000 euros, must pay personal income tax for that increase of 100,000 euros in its value between the date of purchase and the donation. The same occurs with shares or other assets with market value that may increase in value between the purchase price and the donation price. The most curious thing is that this principle does not apply in the same way if that same property had lost value since its purchase, the donor would not be able to deduct that loss. Children do pay the Gift Tax. It should be noted that the fact that the father does not pay personal income tax for that donation does not mean that the transfer of assets has no consequences for the person who receives it. The child who receives the money is obliged to declare the donation and settle the Inheritance and Donation Tax. This tax falls on the person who receives the donation, not on the donor. The amount to be paid for the child or family member depends on factors such as the amount received, the degree of relationship and, above all, the autonomous community where the recipient resides for tax purposes. Depending on what requirements are met, the amount to pay may be close to zero euros, but it is necessary to complete the procedure. If the donation is not declared within the established period, the Treasury may impose penalties and interest. A tax that depends on the communities. The Inheritance and Donation Tax is partially transferred to the autonomous communities, which means that each community sets its own bonuses, reductions and tax rates. This generates very notable differences between paying this tax in one community or another. Madrid and Andalusia, for example, apply a 99% bonus on donations between parents and children, which in practice means that the recipient barely pays taxes when making this type of donation. At the opposite extreme, communities such as Catalonia or the Valencian Community have more demanding tax systems, with progressive rates and fewer bonuses. A particularly striking case is that of Extremadura, which has extended the exemption up to 200,000 euros in donations for children to buy their first home. In Xataka | The Great Wealth Transfer: the movement from boomers to millennials that will transfer millions between generations Image | Pexels (Kaboompics.com)

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs wants to prohibit them for children under 16 years of age

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For years, Spain (the West, in general) has had a problem with energy drinks. According to 2025 data, 38.4% of students from 14 to 18 years old declares having consumed them in the last 30 days. And so it shows in sales: last year 105 million liters were sold; which represents a growth of almost 39% in the last four years. And today, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has just announced that wants to take action on the matter. As explained, it will prohibit the sale of energy drinks to children under 16 years of age and will impose an additional restriction for drinks with more than 32 mg of caffeine (per 100 ml) up to 18 years of age. Does it make sense? Is it a real problem? Will the ban help? What does the Ministry want to do? For a start, Consumption wants transfer to the legal level something that was already explicitly indicated in the recommendations of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition. Something that also already applies in specific environments and areas of the country. However, the regulation has details that will merit detailed analysis. For example, the threshold of 320 mg/L is striking in one context (the european) that sets notices starting at 150. Above all, because a gray area will be created for drinks labeled “high in caffeine” that can be sold to minors under 18. We will have to read the details of the rule to study its implications, but what does seem certain is that, with this step, Spain is going to enormously simplify one of the big problems that its regulation had on this issue: the disparity in minimum ages throughout the country. And that, we hope, will simplify its approach from social policies and public health. But what’s the problem with all this? The image of kids with huge 500 ml cans and bright colors has become ‘normal’ and the growth is enormous (in the United Kingdom, where we have longer series, the consumption of these products increased by 155% between 2006 and 2014). And how says the Spanish Food Safety Agency (AESAN), “the consumption of more than 60 milligrams of caffeine in adolescents aged 11 to 17 years (about 200 milliliters of energy drink with 32 mg of caffeine/100 ml) can cause sleep disturbances.” And this is just the beginning of the problems it can cause. “From 160 milligrams of caffeine (500 milliliters of an energy drink with 32 mg of caffeine/100 ml), (the consumption of these drinks) can cause general adverse health effects: psychological effects and behavioral alterations and cardiovascular disorders.” An invisible health problem. Because, as we know, lack of sleep is related to immunological problems, metabolic, cardiovascular, emotional and cognitive; with disorders such as diabetes or of the obesity. It leads us to be more tired and irritable, raises our stress levels and makes us take more risks and make more mistakes. None of this means that we are going to develop one of these diseases from consuming energy drinks, but it is clear that it puts us in a complicated situation. Above all, because it coincides with what we already know from other sources. “Energy drink consumption, even infrequent, was associated with several negative health indicators. Reporting of several health-compromising behaviors increased with frequency of energy drink consumption.” They are the conclusions by Maija Puupponen and her team at the University of Jyväskylä. And how explained Julio BasultoTo begin with, these drinks are correlated “with a significant increase in the likelihood of insomnia, nervousness, anxiety, depression, impulsivity, and poor academic performance, among others.” As if that were not enough, its frequent consumption can generate “hypertension, loss of bone density, osteoporosis, poor psychological, physical, educational and general well-being, among other consequences.” But the problem goes beyond health: it is cultural. And energy drinks have become a “prestigious” cultural practice among young people that is linked to an enormous amount of risk behavior. Nobody wants to compare it with tobacco, of course: but the truth is that many of the psychosocial mechanisms involved They have everything to do with tobacco. At some point there had to be a national debate about this and better sooner than later. Image | Diego Calabresa In Xataka | It’s not just sugar, hundreds of industries try to deceive us: we have a problem and it’s time to look for solutions

Since we were children we have been told that Jupiter is enormous, colossal, exaggeratedly large. Turns out not so much.

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There are things that we learn in childhood that accompany us throughout our lives and one of them is to recite the Solar System at once, which has its disadvantages: for those of us who are already old, mentioning Pluto (which It is no longer a planet) either make mistakes when estimating distances interplanetary. Another classic misconception is the size of Jupiter. Data from the Juno mission published in Nature Astronomy They change the shape and size of the colossus of the Solar System. Jupiter is flatter and smaller than we thought. We knew that Jupiter was the largest planet in the Solar System, a gaseous colossus whose mass exceeded that of the rest of the planets combined, which gave it the power to be almost the conductor of the orchestra (with the permission of the Sun) as long as its gravity had a lot of weight. Its large magnetic shield protects its moons from solar radiation, it has iconic clouds and storms in astronomy and its Great Red Spot It exceeds the Earth in size. But there is something wrong with its shape and size. The Context. The missions Voyager and Pioneerdating back to the 1970s, established figures that today we read in science books: that Jupiter has an equatorial radius of 71,492 kilometers and a polar radius of 66,854 kilometers. With this model, the planet was assimilated as a sphere flattened at the poles (oblate spheroid). These dimensions were calculated with just six indirect measurements with profiles of radio occultation. The discovery. Because what Juno has seen shows that the equatorial radius is approximately 8 kilometers smaller and the polar radius is about 24 kilometers smaller than previous missions said. Qualitatively, Jupiter is flatter. The first thing that comes to mind is: How important are eight kilometers on a planet 140,000 kilometers wide? Well scientifically, it has it. In fact, it’s the difference between whether the laws of physics fit or not. Why is it important. Well, because although the difference is comparatively minor, the fact that it is smaller and has a flatter shape has thermodynamic implications. Thus, it suggests a colder atmosphere enriched with heavy elements that better suit what the Galileo probe measured in 1995. Additionally, having accurate geometry is essential to understanding what’s inside and interpreting the gravity data provided by Juno, so we can accurately map how its mass is distributed inside and how hydrogen behaves under extreme pressures. On the other hand, knowing Jupiter better is getting closer to the recipe of how the Earth was formed and going beyond: facilitating the understanding of thousands of other exoplanets giants that we are discovering in the stars. Radio occultation operation diagram. MPRennie Wikipedia Juno’s look. Both Pioneer and Voyager and Juno use radio occultation, that is, they use the same physical principle. The radio occultation technique consists of measuring how a planet’s atmosphere bends and slows down the radio signals of a probe when it is hidden behind it. By analyzing the delay and deviation of these waves from the Earth, the scientific team can precisely calculate the density and pressure and therefore the exact shape of the planet. Of course, from a technological point of view there has been half a century of evolution and it is noticeable in terms of quality due to its multiband operation, precision and repetition. Thus, the probes of the 70s mainly used one radio band while Juno uses two, which allows, among other things, to eliminate noise. Likewise, the original ones were passing missions in front of the planned June orbit, that is, we have gone from having six points to an almost complete map. And finally, ground-based tracking systems are night and day when it comes to measuring changes in frequency and signal arrival time. In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury In Xataka | We knew that there was water on Mars, but not how much. It turns out that 3.37 billion years ago an ocean covered half the planet Cover | NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Helping children with up to 200,000 euros to buy an apartment does not count as a donation

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The housing crisis is one of the main problems for young people (and not so young) in Spain. In this context, family support in the purchase of a home is a key element: many young people need the help of their parents or relatives to be able to assume the entrance of a house. The main obstacle to this family aid is that the Treasury consider it as a donation and, therefore, is subject to tax obligations. A measure of the Government of Extremadura that has entered into force in 2026 seeks to eliminate this obstacle and allows parents or direct relatives of young people can donate to them up to a maximum of 200,000 euros without having to pay the Inheritance and Donation Tax. However, this exemption is not a blank check. There are strict rules that must be followed to avoid a tax scare. Donation for first home. The Government of Extremadura has updated its regulations on the Inheritance and Donation Tax (ISD) to allow a 100% reduction in this tax for the first 200,000 euros donated to descendants, provided that this donation is intended for the purchase of your first habitual residence in Extremadura. He article 21 of the new tax regulations establishes an exempt limit of 200,000 euros that covers cash donations as help for the purchase of housing, but also extends to direct transmission of homes or plots of land to build it (in this case it is limited to 120,000 euros). In this way, the exempt amount of 180,000 euros that was already contemplated by the previous regulations is increased and new requirements are added. It is not a blank check. To benefit from this exemption, the recipient must be under 36 years of age when the donation is formalized and tax base in personal income tax It cannot exceed 28,000 euros individually or 45,000 euros jointly. This focuses help on young people with medium or low incomes who do not have the necessary capital to make a down payment or build their own home. This exemption does not apply if the recipient already has assets greater than the first tranche of the state ISD scale, set at more than 402,678.11 euros. Furthermore, the donation must be registered in a public deed before a notary, specifying that it is intended for the first home and habitual residence, the purchase of which must occur within a maximum period of six months. On the other hand, the beneficiary must be listed as the owner of the home for a minimum of five subsequent years, except for death or justified causes such as job transfer. Other conditions to take into account are that that first home and habitual residence must be in Extremadura, which has a double usefulness since it not only contributes to eliminating fiscal barriers to facilitate this donation, but also seeks the reduce depopulation of the territory. Practical cases. Suppose that parents donate 190,000 euros to their 32-year-old daughter in Cáceres to buy her first apartment in February 2026. The beneficiary meets the age, income and personal income tax requirements, formalizes the donation before a notary and signs the purchase of her home on time. This family must complete the Inheritance and Donation Tax settlement process, but the payment will be zero euros as it is 100% subsidized. However, the daughter must live in and be the owner (even if it is shared ownership) of the apartment she has purchased for at least five years. If you sell it after a year due to an unjustified move, you will lose the tax credit and must regularize the donation with a surcharge. In Xataka | The Great Wealth Transfer: the movement from boomers to millennials that will transfer millions between generations Image | Unsplash (Christian Dubovan)

In their obsession with overprotecting them, parents are depriving their children of something very important: frustration.

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We live in the era of hyperparentingsince never before had there been so much information about parenting, and paradoxically, never had so much guilt been felt. The fact that some parents are terrified of giving a bad answer, a separation or too much screen time will irreversibly ruin their children. But the truth is that we are overprotecting children. An expert. Faced with this anxiety, child psychologist Ana Aznarauthor of ‘Educating also means saying no’proposes a paradigm shift: realistic parenting. His thesis is that overprotection is creating a generation with low tolerance for frustration and that parents need to regain authority (not authoritarianism). And given this, science has a lot to say about the true weight that parental decisions have in children’s adult lives. The myth of determinism. One of the greatest sources of anxiety in these cases may be the idea that what happens in childhood is an immutable destiny. But this is not entirely the case. A classic study that followed thousands of people born in 1958 and 1970 pointed out that all childhood variables together, such as economic status, family traits or health, only explain between 2.8% and 6.8% of the variability in life satisfaction at age 30. This does not mean that childhood does not matter, of course it does. The evidence indicates that human development is cumulative and plastic, causing subsequent factors to take a greater step in the adult phase. With this we we refer to adolescencethe first social relationships or the work environment that have great weight. Paradox of overprotection. Although the pretext, which is basically to avoid the child’s suffering, the truth is that this style of education has important side effects. This is something that has been validated by sciencewhich found that parental overprotection is positively associated with internalizing problems such as anxiety and depression. The mechanism is perverse in this case, because by “clearing the path” of obstacles, we prevent the child from Build your frustration tolerance. Recent studies link intrusive parental overinvolvement with less autonomy and poorer emotional adjustment in adulthood. This means that making a child never get frustrated by being in a constant cloud makes the adult break down at the first “no” in real life like at work. The problem of screens. Currently one of the big questions is when to give the mobile phone to children for the first time. Science suggests that the important thing is to offer it but educate about its use from the first moment. A study on the Canadian population showed a clear relationship here: exceeding 2 hours a day of recreational time in front of screens is associated with a greater probability of anxiety and psychosocial difficulties. The real thing. However, the key nuance provided by organizations such as the American Pediatric Association is displacement. The problem is not always the pixels themselves, but what the child stop doing by looking at the screen: sleeping less, moving less and socializing less face to face. The strategy backed by science is not just to “remove your cell phone”, but to “fill your life” with alternatives such as sports, sleep or free play and monitor the quality of the content, rather than obsessing only with the stopwatch. The conflict. Something that can be deeply internalized in families is that witnessing a divorce within the family destroys a child. But the reality is that the most important thing is the climate of coexistence as a study that analyzed hundreds of families points out. This clearly showed that the quality of the relationship between parents, such as support or the absence of hostile conflict, is a much more reliable predictor of child well-being than whether or not they live with both biological parents. In this way, a home with two parents in constant war is, according to PMC data, a more toxic environment for the development of children than having a single-parent family where there is calm. Images | Christian Mai In Xataka | Those born between 1950 and 1970 have a psychological advantage over other generations: they are entering their “peak”

Until now, Mexican children under 14 years of age did not have to pass an interview to enter the United States. That’s over

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Mexico is preparing for an image that is difficult to see in recent years. With the changes in immigration policy and of access to the United States As a backdrop, the Trump administration has decided that both Mexicans under 14 and those over 79 will no longer be exempt to pass an interview with a consular officer to obtain their “non-immigrant” visas. In practice, this will affect children and the elderly who want to travel to the neighboring country to spend their holidays, for studies, business or for medical reasons. What has happened? That the US State Department has changed slightly the guidelines that Mexicans who want to apply for a nonimmigrant visawhich is used for tourism or business trips. And it has done so in an aspect that has generated some expectation in the country. From now on (from a few months ago actually) and as a general rule, Mexicans under 14 years of age and those over 79 must undergo a consular interview in person to obtain the document, just like the rest of the population. So far both (children and elderly) They used to be exempt. What does the US say exactly? The guideline collected in the official website of the US Embassy and Consulates in Mexico is quite clear: “All applicants for non-immigrant visas to the US, including those under 14 years of age and those over 79, will generally be required to appear for an in-person interview with a consular officer.” There are some exceptions, although for specific cases and as long as those involved meet “certain requirements”, such as presenting the petition in their country and not having been rejected before. For example, applicants for diplomatic visas or those who want to renew their B-1, B-2, B1/B2 permits or Border Crossing Card or Folio are exempt from the obligation. Of course, your passes cannot be expired for more than 12 months. This is also new, as remember The Country. Before they could take advantage of Dropbox process (visa interview waiver program) for 48 months following the expiration date of the document. Screenshot of the official website of the US Embassy and Consulates in Mexico. Why is it important? For several reasons. The first, as has been responsible for highlighting part of the Mexican press, is that in practice the change will mean that children and octogenarians will have to meet in person with a consular officer if they want to obtain their visa. In the case of minors under 14 years of age, it is no longer useful for their parents to come alone with all the documentation. The second reason is that the concept of “nonimmigrant visas” is broad. The list published by the US Department of State shows that its vast range includes those people who want to cross the Mexican border for business, tourism, to receive medical treatment, as athletes, to study or work as seasonal agricultural workers, among other cases. What do you recommend doing? The range is so wide that there are those who advises plan the procedures well in advance, especially at the busiest consulates, and starting from the base that the applicant will most likely have to pass the interview. The US administration itself remember That, if necessary, the consulate can request this procedure even from those who are exempt. Is it something exceptional? No. The US has tightened the access conditions for citizens of other countries (not just Mexico) and has become stricter with the requirements required of applicants for family-based immigrant visas. At the end of 2025 even transcended a proposal from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that proposes that foreign travelers who want to cross the border in the United States must reveal up to five years of their network history. In the case of consular interviews for Mexican visa applicants, the change in criteria has come up against another handicap: a confusion in the dates. As remember The ImpartialIn July 2025, a guide was published that advanced the changes and stated that these would come into force as of September 2. According to a later update, the change was activated later: in October. Images | Global Residence Index (Unsplash) and Francesca Albert (Unsplash) In Xataka | More and more Americans want to live outside the US but they have a problem: Europe is closing its doors

There is such a fever for melatonin in children that in the US we already have cases of “overdose”

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Over the last decade, melatonin has gone from being a specific resource for him jet lag to become a permanent tenant of millions of families and is present in many places to buy it. And it’s cheap, can be bought without a prescription and has an aura of “natural”. However, science is pointing to a problem it is creating: the use of these hormones in children has skyrocketed. Its main use. At a time when stress is accompanying us on a daily basis, insomnia is undoubtedly a serious problem for anyone, and solution that seems easier is melatonin. Under the pretext that it is something natural and without a prescription (in its lowest concentrations), it can be abused indiscriminately. The problem arises when children who cannot sleep well are also given a melatonin gummy so that they can sleep. Something that has already triggered cases of overdose and chronic treatments without medical supervision. The blind experiment. The study, led by the University of Kansas, has put figures to a trend that pediatricians have been observing in consultation for some time. By analyzing 19 studies (which include children up to 6 years old), researchers have drawn a worrying picture: between 2009 and 2021, accidental ingestions and overdoses of melatonin in minors in the US grew by 500%. And it is something that seems quite normal, since at the beginning the use of melatonin is applied to help sleep on a difficult night, but in the end it is becoming chronic by showing that between 40 and 50% of children who start the treatment continue taking it two or three years later. The problem is that today There is no solid data on the long-term safety or effectiveness of melatonin. in typically developing children. The legal vacuum. One of the big problems in Spain and the European Union is the product label. Currently, melatonin can be found as a dietary supplement in supermarkets, health food stores and countless other places. But it is also available as a medicine with pharmaceutical quality controls and intended primarily to treat chronodisruption severe. This is why some experts, such as Carlos Javier Egea Santaolalla, president of the Spanish Federation of Sleep Medicine Societies (FESMES), warn that this is a major public health problem. The proposed solution? That melatonin is always considered as a medication that must be prescribed to guarantee control of the duration and dose administered. Recommendations under supervision. It is the right thing to do when we talk about using melatonin in the little ones in the house, since it has been seen how it can be useful in children with ADHD to advance sleep. But the problem is that there are no studies that tell us about the consequences of using it for more than two years in a row. This is something that is also conveyed by the Spanish Sleep Society (SES), which recognizes that melatonin is a valuable tool in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). A quality problem. When purchasing melatonin as a supplement, the consumer is faced with a “lottery” of formulations. Previous studies have shown that the actual amount of hormone in an over-the-counter gummy or pill can vary drastically from what the label says (sometimes up to 400% more). For Spanish experts, medicalizing its use would not only limit unnecessary consumption, but would guarantee that what the child ingests is exactly what the doctor has prescribed. In this way, the scientific community has pointed out that melatonin is a powerful drug that disrupts the endocrine system, not a magic solution so that parents can rest. Images | Annie Spratt Myriam Zilles In Xataka | I got my hands on some “sleep headphones” in the hopes of finally falling asleep. It came out regular

there are too many daycares for so few children

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There are few places more sensitive to the winds of the demographic winter than daycares. Germany knows it well. Until not so long ago parents they saw them and desired to find a place in the busiest metropolises in the country, which sometimes forced them to sign up for eternal waiting lists. Today the situation is different. At least in Berlin, where the decline in the birth rate (along with other factors) has given the turn to the tortilla: Now the problem is not with parents unable to find space, but with daycare centers with hundreds of vacancies. Nothing they haven’t already experienced in Japan. The problem of daycares. In Germany, families with babies have long been accustomed to daycare being a headache. Of course, not always for the same reason. For a long time the country, especially the most populous cities, dealt with a shortage of supply. There were few places for children. There was even a shortage of qualified personnel to care for them, which led some kindergartens in the country to sign personnel abroad. Today the situation is different: in some areas of the country (including Berlin) there are daycare centers in which there are plenty of places and what is scarce are children to occupy them. So much so that there are centers that have had no choice but to close your doors. Others search shapes to attract users. a mother explained recently how he applied to ten schools (kitas) for your child. Eight said yes. They even urged him to confirm. Unthinkable a few years ago. “A big drop”. The change in trend was confirmed on Tuesday by Claudia Freistühler, director of Kindergärten City. During an interview in Financial Times He speaks openly of the “enormous drop” in demand suffered by some nurseries, a drop that is mainly explained by the birth rate. His group manages 58 centers spread throughout Berlin, a broad network that usually serves more than 7,000 children. In 2025, Freistühler estimates that there will be no more than 6,000. Babies wanted. It is not the only alarm signal. In October a spokesperson for Fröbel, a group that runs some 250 daycare centers in Germany, recognized Le Monde that today’s priorities (and concerns) have little to do with those of 2024 or 2023. “Until last year our main concern was finding qualified personnel. We had difficulties hiring. What we invested in recruiting personnel we now dedicate more and more to attracting families.” The problem is not unique to Berlin. The change in balance between supply and demand extends to other cities in Germany, such as Frankfurt, Bremen or Münster, cities in which there are centers that have gone from rejecting admission applications and managing long waiting lists to having to refine their ingenuity to attract students and not start the course with vacancies. From deficit to excess. The situation has changed so much that in autumn half and The Local either Die Zeit They reported unusual news: the closure of two public daycare centers in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district of Berlin due to a lack of children. “Their numbers have dropped drastically and we have suffered losses,” explained the Government. Other Berlin centers face the same fate. Nothing that they haven’t been experiencing for years. in Japanwhere schools are already being converted in factories. Why is it so surprising? Germany is not the only country in which schools suffer from a drop in birth rates. Without going any further, in Spain the sector calculates that 25% of private nursery schools have closed in the last five years. If the German case has aroused so much expectation, it is because the situation there has changed radically in a very short time. not so long ago was calculated that in Germany there was a deficit of 300,000 places daycare (some raise the total to 430,000) and that some 125,000 professionals were needed in the sector. In December the German Economic Institute (IW) itself estimated that 7.3% of children under three years of age in East Germany who need a place are left without one, a percentage that rises to 15.6% in West Germany. In the case of Lower Saxony, it was estimated that about 33,700 were missing. That doesn’t mean that this is the “picture” of all of Germany. The IW itself recognize that the number of children in public daycares has decreased since 2023 and a quick search in the newspaper archive comes to find news about surplus of places in the capital. Sum of factors. The question is therefore obvious… What is the reason for this change of scenario, which is leaving vacancies in some areas of the country? To understand it you have to handle several keys. The main one, demographics. Like many other nations in Europe (and beyond), Germany has been seeing its birth rate plummet for several decades. Its index has had ups and downs, but in 2023 it stood at 1.4 children per womanfar from the 2.5 that it registered in the 60s. However, the birth rate is not the only cause of the situation experienced by daycare centers in some large cities in Germany. Another must be found in the real estate sector. If children are scarce in certain central districts it is because rising rents drive families to other areas. With that backdrop, Financial Times assuresciting sources from the local education department, which in Berlin have closed almost a hundred kindergartens in two years. Much more than daycare. Daycare centers are not only demographic indicators. In the case of Germany they also have an important drift in the economy. Although the nation has one of the highest rates of female participation in the European labor market (76%), part-time work is common among women with young children. In fact, it is estimated that in 2023 only 27% of mothers with children in their care were working full-time, far from the percentage recorded among men, of 91%. Daycares and the child care sector are crucial to changing that … Read more

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