Tag: Parenting

Posted in Parenting

Tips for Parents–Ideas to Help Children Maintain a Healthy Weight

Posted on by Tim Connolly

You’ve probably read about it in newspapers and seen it on the news: in the United States, the number of children with obesity has continued to rise over the past two decades. You may wonder: Why are doctors and scientists troubled by this trend? And as parents or other concerned adults, you may ask: What steps can we take to prevent obesity in our children? This page provides answers to some of the questions you may have, as well as resources to help you keep your family healthy.

Why Is Childhood Obesity Considered a Health Problem?

  • Children with obesity can be bullied and teased more than their normal weight peers. They are also more likely to suffer from social isolation, depression, and lower self-esteem. The effects of this can last into adulthood.
  • Children with obesity are at higher risk for having other chronic health conditions and diseases, such as asthma, sleep apnea, bone and joint problems, and type 2 diabetes.
  • Type 2 diabetes is increasingly being reported among children who are overweight. Onset of diabetes in children can lead to heart disease and kidney failure.

What Can I Do As a Parent or Guardian to Help Prevent Childhood Overweight and Obesity?

To help your child maintain a healthy weight, balance the calories your child consumes from foods and beverages with the calories your child uses through physical activity and normal growth.

Remember that the goal for children who are overweight is to reduce the rate of weight gain while allowing normal growth and development. Children should NOT be placed on a weight reduction diet without the consultation of a health care provider.

Balancing Calories: Help Kids Develop Healthy Eating Habits

One part of balancing calories is to eat foods that provide adequate nutrition and an appropriate number of calories. You can help children learn to be aware of what they eat by developing healthy eating habits, looking for ways to make favorite dishes healthier, and reducing calorie-rich temptations.

Encourage healthy eating habits.

There’s no great secret to healthy eating. To help your children and family develop healthy eating habits:

  • Provide plenty of vegetables, fruits, and whole-grain products.
  • Include low-fat or non-fat milk or dairy products.
  • Choose lean meats, poultry, fish, lentils, and beans for protein.
  • Serve reasonably-sized portions.
  • Encourage your family to drink lots of water.
  • Limit sugar-sweetened beverages.
  • Limit consumption of sugar and saturated fat.

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Posted in Parenting

Get Ready for Summer! Ideas for Teachers to Share with Families

Posted on by Tim Connolly

Ideas for active summer learning:

1.Offer recommendations for active learning experiences.

Check with your local department of parks and recreation about camps and other activities. Find out what exhibits, events, or concerts are happening in your town over the summer. Create a directory or calendar of local summer learning fun to share with your students and their families. (Be sure to note any costs involved.)

2.Encourage parents to build reading and writing into everyday activities.

Some ideas to pass along: (1) watching TV with the sound off and closed captioning on, (2) reading directions for how to play a new game, or (3) helping with meals by writing up a grocery list, finding things in the grocery store, and reading the recipe aloud for mom or dad during cooking time. 

3.Summer trading cards.

Kids can dive deeper into summer reading by exploring characters with the Trading Cards activity from Read-Write-Think, which provides students with the opportunity to expand their understanding of the reading by creating new story lines and characters. A nifty Trading Card interactive tool provides additional support.

4.Encourage writing.

Give each of your students a stamped, addressed postcard so they can write to you about their summer adventures. Or recycle school notebooks and paper into summer journals or scrapbooks. Another way to engage young writers is to encourage your students to spend some time researching and writing community stories — not only does it build research and writing skills, but helps kids develop a deeper sense of place. Find more good summer writing ideas from Start with a Book: keep a nature journal, create a poetry share a recipe, or keep a scrapbook of reviews of summer adventures.

5.Kids blog!

Arrange for a safe, closed community so that your students can blog over the summer. Edublogs and Kidblog offer teachers and students free blog space and appropriate security. Free, disposable e-mail accounts are available at Mailinator. Students can create an account there, use the address long enough to establish the blog and password, and then abandon it.

6.Be an active citizen.

Kids who participate in community service activities gain not only new skills but self-confidence and self-esteem. Help them zoom into action! This tool from Youth Service America can help you identify youth project ideas. Volunteer Match offers a searchable database of volunteer options for kids.

Citizen Kid is a collection of books that inform children about the world and inspire them to be better global citizens. The U.S. Department of Education published Helping Your Child Become a Responsible Citizen with activities for elementary school kids.

7.Read about your world. 

Newsela builds nonfiction literacy and awareness of world events by providing access to hundreds of fresh news articles (you can filter by grade). Other good sources of quality nonfiction include Time for Kids online and many children’s magazines offered by Cricket Media, National Geographic, and other publishers.

The bloggers on The Uncommon Corps are enthusiastic champions of nonfiction literature for kids and young adults, and offer many ideas for integrating nonfiction into your reading diet. For more book ideas to share with parents, check out the Orbis Pictus Award winners — outstanding nonfiction for children, presented by the National Council of Teachers of English. Share these tip sheets with parents (available in English and Spanish): Getting the Most Out of Nonfiction Reading Time and How to Read Nonfiction Text. And don’t forget to check out our Nonfiction for Kids section.

8.Active bodies.-Active minds.

From the American Library Association, I love libraries has suggestions for staying fit and having fun that start at your local library.

9.Get into geocaching.

Everyone loves a scavenger hunt! Get in on the latest outdoor craze with geocaching, where families search for hidden “caches” or containers using handheld GPS tools (or a GPS app on your smart phone). Try a variation on geocaching called earth caching where you seek out and learn about unique geologic features. Find more details about geocaching plus links to geocaching websites in this article from the School Family website, Geocaching 101: Family Fun for All, in Every Season. Or follow one young family on their geocaching adventure: Beginner’s Guide to Geocaching with Kids.

10.Watch a garden grow

Children are encouraged to write questions and observations in a summer garden journal. Or check out the Kids Gardening website for lots of great ideas and resources for family (and school) gardening. You can also browse the hands-on activities on our summer site, Start with a Book, in the section Nature: Our Green World.

11.Make cool things.

Find loads of hands-on activities at Start with a Book. Just choose from one of 24 topics (art, music, dinosaurs, bugs, detectives, flight, sports, stars, planets and the night sky … and more) and start exploring.

12.Help parents plan ahead for fall.

Work with the teachers a grade level above to develop a short list of what their new students have to look forward to when they return to school. For example, if rising third graders will be studying ancient cultures, suggest that parents check out educational TV, movies, or local museums that can provide valuable background information on that topic.

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Posted in Kids

12 ways to help kids cope with school anxiety

Posted on by Tim Connolly

• Make transitions early. 

“Expose kids early to changes so they can adapt better during transitions,” says Rosenberg. “It’s much easier for children who have been making gradual changes at young ages to go to school. Preschool is a good way to initiate change and gets children used to school. If they are going directly to kindergarten, parents can frequently talk about school and have the kids meet the teacher prior to the first day.”

• Have a discussion. 

“Parents often try to reassure their children, but sometimes these reassurances sound empty,” says Block. “Saying ‘it’s going to be fine’ isn’t going to help a nervous child. When they begin to worry, use it as an opportunity to have more dialogue and find out what is making them anxious. The more information you have the better job you can do to make a child more comfortable with school.”

• Involve children in activities.

 Langford says parents can help reduce school stress by getting their children involved with activities or events prior to school. These activities, such as sports, music lessons or clubs, will help them build confidence and make friends. “It’s much easier to walk into school on the first day with someone by your side then walking in alone,” she says. “It takes some of the pressure off.”

• Stay positive. 

“Parents need to be positive,” says Rosenberg. “Emphasize the positives of school. Let kids know how much fun school will be and all the new friends they will meet. If a child has an older sibling in school, have the sibling talk to the child about recess and all the fun that is had during the school day. If parents express fear or anxiety their children will pick up on this and become afraid and nervous.”

• Get enough sleep. 

Block says parents can help calm their children by encouraging kids to get plenty of sleep and getting them back on a school schedule well before the start of school. “Going back to school is a transition time, and transitions are when we see anxiety in children,” she says. “They are going from unstructured summer time to a very structured school time. Starting to get kids back in the school routine early helps reduce anxiety.”

• Visit the school. 

“Take the kids to visit the school in the summer,” says Langford. “Drive around the parking lot, walk through the halls, test out the lockers. This trip will remove many of the ‘I don’t know what to expect’ fears a student may have.”

• Limit video games. 

Rosenberg says video games should be a reward, not a regular part of life. “If children just sit around and play video games the first five years of life, why would they want to go to school?” he says. “Video games impacts children’s ability to communicate because they are not outside riding bikes with their friends and socializing. Video games also desensitize kids to violence and have a profound impact on school refusal and increased fear.”

• Pack mementos. 

“Put a picture of Mom and Dad in a child’s notebook or pack your kids a note in their lunch boxes,” says Block. “These things help children feel more comfortable at school. Especially for those coping with separation anxiety.”

• Talk to the school guidance counselor.

 Meet with the school guidance counselor, says Langford. This visit will make parents and kids more relaxed about school. “Keep the child’s anxiety in the open with the school guidance counselor,” she says. “It makes the situation easier for the child and the counselor will know to check in on the student more often.”

• Make them go to school. 

If a child does start crying and refusing school, it is important to insist he or she still go, says Rosenberg. “Don’t give in and keep kids home because it is encouraging them to skip school. Remind them they need to go to school so they can make a life for themselves when they are older. Tell kids you love them and want them to be happy adults.”

• Share the game plan. 

Block says it is vital for parents to discuss the daily plans with their children so everyone is informed and knows what to expect. “Let them be aware of everything, including who will be at the bus stop or who will be picking them up at school,” she says. “This is especially important for parents who carpool.”

• Seek help.

If a child’s anxiety is continuing to grow or parents feel they can not help their child resolve fears it is time to meet with the pediatrician, says Rosenberg. A pediatrician can consult with the family and decide if a therapist can help further help the child.

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Posted in Kids

The Crucial Role of Recess in School

Posted on by Tim Connolly

Recess is at the heart of a vigorous debate over the role of schools in promoting the optimal development of the whole child. A growing trend toward reallocating time in school to accentuate the more academic subjects has put this important facet of a child’s school day at risk. Recess serves as a necessary break from the rigors of concentrated, academic challenges in the classroom. But equally important is the fact that safe and well-supervised recess offers cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits that may not be fully appreciated when a decision is made to diminish it. Recess is unique from, and a complement to, physical education—not a substitute for it. The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child’s development and, as such, it should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons.

The Benefits of Recess for the Whole Child

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines recess as “regularly scheduled periods within the elementary school day for unstructured physical activity and play.”The literature examining the global benefits of recess for a child’s cognitive, emotional, physical, and social well-being has recently been reviewed. Yet, recent surveys and studies have indicated a trend toward reducing recess to accommodate additional time for academic subjects in addition to its withdrawal for punitive or behavioral reasons. Furthermore, the period allotted to recess decreases as the child ages and is less abundant among children of lower socioeconomic status and in the urban setting.

Just as physical education and physical fitness have well-recognized benefits for personal and academic performance, recess offers its own, unique benefits. Recess represents an essential, planned respite from rigorous cognitive tasks. It affords a time to rest, play, imagine, think, move, and socialize. After recess, for children or after a corresponding break time for adolescents, students are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively. In addition, recess helps young children to develop social skills that are otherwise not acquired in the more structured classroom environment.

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