In this culture, with its emphasis on thinness and junk food consumption, 23% of girls and 6% of boys have eating disorders. Parents have a lot more power than they realize in this area, but it needs to start early. Intervening in adolescence, when kids need to assert their right to control their own bodies, is tricky and less effective. What can you do to prevent your kids from developing eating disorders?
1. Commit yourself to model good eating habits. Face it. Whatever you do, they’ll do. If you drink soda, they'll drink soda. If you snack on that ever-present bowl of carrots, so will they. This may seem like a life sentence to drudgery, but your increased health, vitality and good looks will reward you as much as your children asking for more carrots.
2. Learn the latest in nutrition. The percentage of overweight Americans has more than doubled over the past century and has continued to rise, accompanied by similar rises in incidence of heart disease. Contributors include our sedentary lifestyle, large food portions, and our evolutionary propensity to eat (and store) extra food in times of plenty just in case lean times are around the corner.
But nutritionists increasingly suspect that over-processed foods are the biggest culprit. Consumption of saturated fat has actually decreased during this period of extreme weight gain, while consumption of processed foods has increased dramatically. Designed to last during long periods of storage and shipping, and with taste rather than nutrition in mind, foods with hydrogenated oils, preservatives, corn syrup and carbohydrates stripped of their nutrients are simply bad for our bodies. They create chronic disease as we get older. But they start, even in childhood, by making us fat.
3. Don't talk about dieting. In fact, don't diet, just eat healthfully, and make exercise and automatic part of life for everyone in the family. Dieting, research tells us, doesn’t work; dieters regain the weight, and losing it the next time is even harder. Only long-term healthy eating helps people not only lose weight, but keep it off.
4. Don't make your child self-conscious by commenting on it if you notice that your she's becoming a bit pudgy.Instead, ratchet up the physical activity level and decrease the fat and sugar content of the family diet. If you decide that your child needs to lose some weight, put the whole family on a healthy eating program. Changing food habits is challenging to anyone, and to expect a child to give up treats that others in the house are eating is simply unreasonable.
5. Throw out the junk food and don't stock treats except for special occasions. It’s bad for everyone in the family. And if kids see others eating it, it’s too hard for them to resist. They’ll eat what’s around, and sneak it if they have to. Many teenage girls get started on a bulimic pattern by sneaking their parents’ ice cream and then vomiting.
6. Keep trying to get them to eat their veggies. No self respecting child tries a new food the first time she sees it. But eventually, she’s likely to. That’s why kids who are exposed to more foods are more sophisticated eaters. Studies show that the major predictor in children’s willingness to eat a food is familiarity.
7. Discuss with sitters what your child may eat. Being rigid will set up forbidden fruit, which will only sabotage your efforts, but an otherwise healthy diet can easily be overwhelmed by chips and soda every afternoon.
8. If you live in the city, make up for it by insisting on exercise every weekend. Kids who can’t go outside put on more weight.
9. Nurse your baby to reduce his chances of being overweight as an adult.
10. Reduce TV use. Children who watch two hours of television each day are much more likely to grow into overweight adults with high cholesterol. It may be that advertising has as much to do with this correlation as inactivity. US obesity specialist David Ludwig says recent research strengthens the case for a ban on food advertising aimed at children: "In an era when childhood obesity has reached crisis proportions, the commercial food industry has no business telling toddlers to consume fast food, soft drinks and high-calorie low-quality snacks -- all products linked to excessive weight gain." Did you know that in most countries, it's illegal to market to kids, including with TV ads?
Crushed Cheerios, crumbs, pacifiers, toys, socks…they're all things you commonly find in the cracks of your child's car seat. Add to that list lead, flame retardants, and toxic plastics. HealthyStuff.org, a project of the Michigan-based Ecology Center, has released the results of its 2011 car seat tests, and found that many of the seats contained varying levels of those unhealthy chemicals. On the up side, they found that many did not—and that no matter what car seats you have for your children, there are ways to protect them from toxic chemical exposure.
The details: The Ecology Center's scientists purchased 150 2011-model infant, convertible, and booster car seats from various retailers in Michigan, where the Center is located. The seats were tested for levels of lead, which is sometimes used as an additive in plastics; chlorine, which indicates the presence of PVC, or vinyl, (a toxic plastic that contains hormone-disrupting phthalates) and bromine, a sign that the car-seat companies are using neurotoxic brominated flame retardants. (Chlorine is also used in certain flame retardants whose safety is highly suspect.) The scientists also tested for a variety of metals that can trigger allergies or cause cancer and other health problems: antimony, arsenic, chromium, cobalt, copper, mercury, nickel, and tin.
The good news is that 40 percent of the products tested didn't contain any of the chemicals above, a marked improvement over the 2008 and 2009 tests, says Rebecca Meuninck, environmental health campaign director at The Ecology Center. And the levels of brominated flame retardants fell 18 percent from previous test levels. "But the fact that 60 percent of the car seats contained at least one of the chemicals we tested for is disconcerting," says Meuninck. Those flame retardants were the most commonly detected chemical, cropping up in 44 percent of the car seats.
More good news: Price didn't seem to be a determinant in the level of chemicals found. "In some cases, the lower-priced seats turned out to have low levels or no chemicals, whereas some of the higher priced seats had high levels," she says.
Overall, the seats with the lowest levels of chemicals were:
• Infant Seat: Chicco KeyFit 30 in Limonata, Graco Snugride 35 in Laguna Bay, and Combi Shuttle 33 in Cranberry Noche
• Convertible Carseat: Graco Comfort Sport in Caleo, Graco MyRide 65 in Chandler and Streamer, Safety 1st OnSide Air in Clearwater, and Graco Nautilus Elite 3-in-1 in Gabe
• Booster Seat: Graco Turbo Booster in Anders
The seats with the highest levels were:
• Infant Seat: Graco Snugride 35 in Edgemont Red/Black and Graco SnugRide 30 in Asprey
• Convertible Seat: Britax Marathon 70 in Jet Set and Britax Marathon in Platinum
• Booster Seat: Recaro Pro Booster in Blue Opal and Recaro ProSPORT Toddler in Mist
What it means: Meuninck stresses that these results don't in any way mean you shouldn't keep your baby in a car seat. But considering that babies can spend a lot of time in their car seats, they're potentially being exposed to a lot of chemicals that can interfere with their developing lungs, brains, and reproductive systems. As part of the report, the Ecology Center launched a petition asking Graco and Evenflo, the two largest car-seat manufacturers, to remove harmful brominated flame retardants from their car seats.
"For parents, this can be incredibly overwhelming, so one thing we want to tell folks is that there are some ways to reduce exposure," Meuninck says.
• Don't let your baby nap in the car seat. An hour or two napping in a car seat is an hour or two of exposure to chemical-laden dust, and it could pose a breathing risk for your baby, anyway. A small 2006 study in the British Medical Journal of nine babies found that the upright sleeping position that infant car seats impose puts them at risk for obstructed airways. Infants don't have good head control, and the doctors who authored the study noted that if their heads slump forward while napping, it could narrow their upper airways and cause breathing problems. If they're not actually being driven somewhere, take them out of the seat.
• Hold your baby! Along those same lines, it's not a good idea to use the car seat as an all-purpose carryall. And not just because of chemical exposure. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, there's been an increase in something called "positional skull deformities," or, simply put, flat spots on infants' skulls, which they attribute to babies' spending too much time in car seats, infant carriers, and other devices that put pressure on the back of a baby's skull. In most cases, these deformities disappear once a baby starts sitting upright, but the Academy still recommends that babies don't sleep or spend much time in car seats. Try a sling or a baby carrier instead, both of which can be found in flame-retardant-free organic cotton.
• Vacuum your car. "Under heat and UV light, the chemicals in car seats can break down and migrate out," says Meuninck. So treat your car the way you treat your house: Vacuum it frequently with a HEPA-filtered vacuum and damp-mop the hard surfaces to limit dust exposure, and do the same with the actual car seat. Doing so protects parents, too: Flame retardants, which are found in high levels of car dust, according to past HealthyStuff.org tests, can cause thyroid problems in adults.
• Find (or create) shade. To keep UV and heat from breaking the chemicals down even faster, park in the shade or under some form of cover as often as you can. And consider investing in some (legal) window films or shades that limit solar heat gain but don't impair a driver's visibility.
Teaching children good dental health habits early can be an important way to establish lifelong good dental health practices. Children who are taught in early childhood how to brush and maintain other good dental hygiene practices can significantly lower their risk for developing future dental health problems.
Many dental patients that have undergone extensive dental restoration will tell you that they regret neglecting their oral health even as far back as childhood.
When it comes to maintaining good dental health, the key is prevention. There are many steps that you can implement early on in childhood that can teach your child preventative dental health measures.
Talk to your child about the importance of brushing for at least 2 minutes. It helps if you buy a timer that you can show them how to set.
Tell them to make sure they brush every part of the teeth. Another helpful tip is that many dental products for children, such as washes and toothpastes, have colored particles in them that can show a child where bacteria could be lying in wait to destroy their teeth. Have your child brush their teeth until all the colored particles are washed away.
Allow your child to view the different types of toothbrushes available, but make sure you help teach them about the differences in the types of brushes. Many new toothbrushes including power brushes offer some great hand-grips and allow the child to pick a toothbrush that they will feel most comfortable with using.
If flossing is not an option for your child, an investment in an oral irrigator or dental water jet is a great way to make sure your child gets all the little areas that their toothbrush can't. Child-size floss is out there for children and adults that don't want to use the regular type of dental floss.
Dental water jets are also great in keeping children's attention while practicing good dental care or when wearing dental braces.
Make sure you teach your child that you can still have a bite of candy but it is always recommended to brush your teeth as soon as possible when eating anything, especially any type of sugars such as sweets.
Teach your child what kinds of candies to stay away from and how bad leaving food such as sugars are on your dental health if left on your teeth.
The majority of dental professionals advise people to brush after every meal, as well as the first thing in the morning and the last thing before bed.The majority of dental professionals also recommend that parents observe their child's dental practices until they are about 8 or 9 years old. Observing a child's oral health practices ensures that they are not only brushing well, but that they understand the importance of taking care of their teeth for many years to come.
Normally, when the children are in trouble, a parent always deals with it, because parents always love your child, want my childhood was peaceful as well as mental health.
But parents have forgotten what is important, if one does not know childhood difficulties and obstacles, it is hard for parents to see them as an ideal preparation (psychologically) so the children can later exist with the vast world environment complex and volatile … Excessive protection of parents will make many children lose the chance to learn how to deal with these problems and more serious obstacle is a child behavior dependence. Therefore, follow educational psychologists, the parents can help children to remove the problems positively by the following:
Be calm and balance in solving
This is a very important issue, especially when children proved to lose confidence in the ability to solve problems by themselves, parents must be very calm, strong, do not panic, beat, curse or to put to nonplus … Attitude of parents then have to realize that if you solve the problem, children will quickly recover. On the other hand, by solving the problem, children will mature and self-learned valuable lessons about overcoming challenges, risks of life. Many parents or indulge too deeply involved in solving the problems of children is so much distrust in our ability. When the minor child, of course, parents must be responsible, but when they move into adolescence, parents only as an observer, advice, suggestions and encourage them when necessary. Parents need to remember: not by the number or extent of the problem that troubles the child or the loss of self-harm to health, the spirit which is due to the method of solving it .
5 methods to help relieve problems with confidence:
a) Children must be revealed to parents: The first step is to counsel and encourage children to tell their parents or a relative of the fact that the problems they are experiencing. When expressed with the trust, is in the heart of children has decreased by half the trouble is weighed.
b) Encourage children to think: Encourage children to calm your mind back, reflect on all aspects of the problem before deciding what to do. Thereby, children will make a new resolution, reasonable… When children know themselves to think, that is helping them move from a status of “kids” to adult status, which makes them more confident in yourself and have more spirit strength.
c) Know action: To help children know the outlines plans to tackle problems that are practical, feasible and reasonable.
d) Always monitor and encourage the evolution of all things that young children act or think the appropriate ways suitable solve.
e) Reward: To encourage efforts though not much progress. Set the specific rewards to encourage young.
30 minutes each day helps children grow up
When you can not spend more time with children, you tend to feel guilty, want to offset by the gallantry (usually too far), as people same age rather than as parents. And it often will cause the opposite effect, causing the children see themselves as “victims.”
So what is quality time? “Some quality time” means that the communication is done in a positive and helpful. Parents are not always on the embankment embankments but should be present in the lives of children, to help create moments of happiness, fun, more special needs children there is just a hard time, take in a positive way to the “struggle” of children everyday.
The solution to this is simple: you only need to determine the extent important for family, once identified priority position, you will be very easy to clean off what does not important, arrange schedules to suit their own family instead of trying to cram in the opposite direction.
Spending time and attention your attention – honestly – maybe only 30 minutes per day only, but be careful, because children “refined” than you imagine it. Talk to your children is one of the most important thing you can do to create cohesion, help children mature and confident. Do not start with the story too seriously and ask questions to be answered more than just “yes” or “no.” With little children, you can ask about school, talk with your fellow or a certain story that you and your child read together. With bigger children, you can talk about what takes place outside the home, neighborhood, and a discussion of a movie or an ads … You can also mention the difficulties that you face yourself in the day and how to deal with them – the experience and problem solving skills can help children avoid becoming dependent on stimulants or alcohol when encountering difficulties later.
“Some quality time” can also be created by you to participate in the education of children. Later on it the more you exercise, but the anxiety and tension before the workload can be greatly reduced if children know will not be faced alone. You do not have to worry that “I don’t pedagogical skills - I can not remember it?” Help your child learn does not mean you have to know how to explain all of the exercises, which can be done by creating a learning space without distractions so you can focus, ask your child’s learning, help me to arrange a time, to plan …
In addition, please also recognized the efforts of children. Commend the praiseworthy things, such as when you up on time, helped mother clean rice or self-study, all praise when successful and less successful but when I was trying. Do not promise what you can not perform, it can make you vulnerable – especially if you time your proximity is limited. Try to understand is that you respect my feelings and is ready to support you when needed … All the work that shows your concern and help me a lot of confidence.
