Infants And Toddlers

Educators from developing countries around the world visited staff members at Woodside Elementary School yesterday to share ideas on how to include disabled children in regular classes and provide them with needed help."

A special advisory committee of the federal Food and Drug Administration meets today and tomorrow to discuss whether over-the-counter pediatric cough and cold medicines are safe and effective for young children. The FDA has already recommended that common cough and cold medicines should not be given to infants and toddlers and that children under age 6 should not be given antihistamines. Now the agency should go further, following the advice of a group of prominent Baltimore pediatricians, and insist that no cold medicines be given to any child under 6. Many manufacturers of cough and cold medicines include labels on their products warning parents not to give them to children under age 2 without consulting a doctor.

If you're looking for high-tech toys to make sure your baby gets off to a fast start in the digital age, here are some Web sites to browse: BabyToons.com: Download an evaluation version that teaches concepts such as cause and effect, big and little, up-and-down. The full version is $14.95. Geniusbabies.com: If it beeps or bonks, you'll probably find it here, along with a wide variety of more traditional baby toys. There's even a department called "embryonics," with prenatal entertainment for babies-in-waiting.

Shellene Cornish remembers the day she and her husband took their 8-month-old daughter Amber to the county's Infants and Toddlers Program.Amber had cerebral palsy, a reality her mother was having trouble accepting."

Nine months after her daughter was born with several handicaps, Donna Harrigan of Eldersburg found help from the Carroll public schools in developing her baby's impaired hearing and vision.But Harrigan said she could have used help with her daughter's medical needs, such as controlling her seizures, along with satisfying her educational requirements. Harrigan said she also needed aid from trained people who could care for her daughter when she had to leave their house on Balsam Lane."We just had several needs the school department wasn't able to address, that Social Services and the Health Department might have," Harrigan said.

Four Steps to the Fountain of YouthLiz Atwood's column, "Sobering Changes in the State Capital" (April 16), was exciting. But let's not wait for our legislators in Annapolis to create mandatory jogging lanes or outlaw steaks and butter.Instead, as responsible citizens, Republicans, Democrats, whatever, let us work as individuals to cut soaring medical costs. If we all do four simple things, we could cut medical costs by at least 50 percent in less than 50 years:* Don't smoke.* Drink sparingly or not at all.* Eat sparingly, but eat a balanced diet.

Past time to fix juvenile justice My memory is that Maryland has been "reforming" its juvenile justice system for the past 20 years - e.g., privatizing the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School and then bringing it back under state control, doing the same thing with the Victor Cullen Center, addressing the abuse at juvenile boot camps and closing the Bowling Brook Preparatory School. And now we see recurring issues at the Baltimore Juvenile Justice Center ("Violence at juvenile center up again," March 28)

Guidance offered for those 16, older People age 16 and older who want to learn about high school diploma options and other programs, and have their math and reading skills evaluated, can attend a free "First Steps" orientation. Introductory programs will be held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and 9 a.m. to noon Thursday and Friday at Business and Employment Resource Center, 224 N. Center St., Westminster. Information: 410-751-3680. School board to meet Wednesday The Carroll County Board of Education will hold an administrative meeting at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Room 007 of the board offices, 125 N. Court St., Westminster.

The state's population of disabled children is expected to reach 120,000 by 2000, and Maryland educators are pointing to Anne Arundel County's special education program as a model to be copied by other school districts.But there's dissent in the county about the program's track record and future.Even as some parents weep with joy at the progress their children have made, critics say the program has fallen short of its potential.Leola Forrester cries when she tells how the school system's Infants and Toddlers program helped her mildly retarded 11-year-old son."

Most parents of infants and preschoolers have no memory of summers when children were kept out of swimming pools for fear of catching polio.Indeed, a 1993 Gallup poll shows that nearly half of parents today are unaware that polio is a contagious disease. Nor do they know firsthand the terrors of breath-robbing whooping cough, the often fatal paralysis of tetanus or the sometimes fatal throat infection caused by diphtheria. Many do not know that measles can cause life-threatening encephalitis and mental retardation.