Younger Children

At 14 years old, Courtney Pee performs a role that many adults find too tough to fill. He's a role model.Despite his youth, the Park Heights boy has been a mentor for seven younger boys, leading them through reading activities and discussions about life and theater during sessions at the Pimlico Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library."

The Just Say No troupe from Liberty High School dramatizes the negative but stresses the positive in its skits for elementary schoolchildren.The 10-member group takes its message on the road to county schools and allows the members of its young audiences to rewrite the endings to its original dramas.During hour-long presentations at Freedom, Runnymede and Sandymount schools last week, the students acted out scenes dealing with peer pressure, substance abuse, cheating on tests, shoplifting, vandalism and other conflicts that the younger children might encounter in their growing years.

Clemens Crossing Elementary School first-grader Victoria Miceli looked upward and wrinkled her brow as she pondered the math problem: 15 + 8. She methodically bent her fingers to count and heaved a big sigh."

The fatal shooting of a 10-year-old boy has prompted a move in the Baltimore City Council to enact a stricter curfew aimed at keeping children safe from violence in the streets from dusk to dawn.Under far-reaching legislation to be introduced at this evening's council meeting, children ages 12 and younger would be required to stay indoors after dark.The murder victim, Tauris Johnson, was caught in the cross fire of a drive-by shooting the evening of Nov. 4 as he tossed a football to his best friend on East Oliver Street.

With parents pushing computers at their kids today as soon as they're old enough to click a mouse button, it's not surprising that some of the best educational software on the market is aimed at younger children.Because this "edutainment" software, as it's known, leans heavily on animation and sound, it requires a bit of an investment in hardware, usually an 80386 computer with a big hard disk, a sound card and speakers. But here are three recent titles that can make the investment worthwhile:* It's hard to find a preschooler who hasn't enjoyed Richard Scarry's delightfully busy books, and Busytown, from Paramount Interactive Software, is faithful to Scarry's spirit of energy and exploration.

While some 10-year-old boys last week were preparing for a carefree summer of fun, others -- like Steven Engelking -- were in Milwaukee preparing to do battle alongside other veteran anti-abortion protesters. Steven's goal? To do what he has to do to block the doors of Milwaukee clinics where abortions are performed. And he will do it even if it means being arrested for violating a court injunction, one that orders the protesters to stay 25 feet away from clinic grounds.It's risky business, this kind of activist protesting.

Despite volumes of evidence that doctors undervalue the pain that hospitalized children feel, a quiet transformation is taking place at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. There, doctors are starting to give some youngsters the power to control their pain.In the era of just-say-no, anesthesiologists are starting to take a different view toward narcotic drugs like morphine when it comes to eliminating the post-surgical pain that can turn a child's hospital stay into a nightmare.Quinton Carter, an 8-year-old boy who had a portion of his esophagus surgically removed last week, knows exactly what to do whenever pain starts to creep into his consciousness.

An estimated 20 million American men, women and children are exposed to dangerous levels of sound every day. Audiologists are now particularly concerned because hearing loss is increasing at an alarming rate among children.People once developed noise-induced hearing loss most often between the ages of 40 and 50, according to the current issue of American Health. Today, however, many doctors are attending to teen-agers with hearing problems.In a study which tested the hearing of 1,495 Fountain Valley, Calif.

Ethel says she's seen one shooting; her sister Ebony corrects her, no, we've seen three. Reggie and his cousin are going to different middle schools next year, and their disagreement is over who is more likely to get shot.Davon, Darnell and Xavier start listing what they've seen, and soon the details are tumbling over each other with numbing repetitiveness: My cousin got shot; my other cousin got shot; my uncle got shot; Tiffany, James, a teen-ager on the corner, some police officers -- they all got shot.

Ethel Adams of Calvert County, a foster parent for 27 years to more than 100 children, was among 24 of Maryland' Most Beautiful Parents honored yesterday at the state's first Kids' Convention.Held at at Towson State University's Towson Center, the convention featured arts and crafts, science and music, as well as information on a range of serious topics. It continues from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today.At a picnic reception outside the convention, Mrs. Adams recalled rearing two of her foster children from infancy to adulthood after they were abandoned by their parents, in addition to caring for nine of her own children in the large seven-bedroom home she and her husband built in 1951 in Owings, about four miles from the Chesapeake Bay.She has remained in close touch with almost all of her children, she said, except for two boys who went to Germany for adoption.