Summer is coming to an end and it is time to start getting your children ready for the new school year. Going from summer break with all the fun, games, and playtime to the daily school routine can be a difficult transition for kids. While you may be getting the back-to-school shopping list ready for supplies, clothes, etc., you should also be taking a few other steps to prepare your child for the new school year. Whether your child is starting at a new school or even just going into a new grade, it can be stressful and a bit overwhelming, especially for certain children. Follow these back-to-school tips that can help you in preparing your child for the new school year. Get back on a schedule While summer days, usually mean late nights and lazy mornings, the difference in schedule is usually the first and most difficult adjustment for your child when the new school year starts. Avoid the rough mornings and bed-time debates at night by starting your child back on a schedule about one to two weeks before school starts. It doesn’t need to be a cold-turkey transition, but try starting by first implementing a bedtime and…
It is often difficult for us to see ourselves from an outside perspective. It is for this reason that sometimes we don’t realize how experiences from our childhood are affecting our adult relationships, and more often than not, affecting them negatively. The most common ways that childhood impacts our adult relationships is via the relationship that we had with our parents growing up. Whether it is trauma that we experience as a child or how our parents showed affection or didn’t, there is no denying that the correlation exists in regards to our adult relationships. To be more specific, how our caregivers act towards us as children carries over into the attachment style that we display in our adult relationships. Generally, people who have grown up in stable homes with happy and healthy childhood relationships with their caregivers develop secure-attachment styles. If your caregivers were emotionally available to you and responsive to your needs as a child then you will likely carry these healthy traits onwards into your adult relationships. Your attachment style will likely be balanced and you will not display clingy tendencies nor push others away. However, not everyone grows up in a healthy and happy home. So,…
Over the past ten years or so, there has been a significant increase in children and young teens having suicidal thoughts. Doctors are seeing more and more of these children and young teenagers in emergency rooms showing up for anxiety attacks, depressive episodes, and suicidal thoughts, feelings, and attempts. This is even more common during the school year as the kids are feeling the pressure of school as well as suffering from issues related to social anxiety, bullying, peer pressure, and more. There was a study recently published by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that from 2008 to 2015 children ages 5 years old to 17 years old are being admitted to children’s hospitals for reasons relating to suicide, either suicidal thoughts, feelings, or attempts. It was found by researchers at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt that girls are more often attempting suicide than boys are. It was also found that the suicide numbers were higher during the school year and lower during the summer months. Depression in children should never be taken lightly or dismissed One of the issues that kids face is that many parents don’t take depression and anxiety in their children seriously. They…
One of the aspects of children’s health has been overlooked for quite some time. For many years, pediatricians didn’t consider the significant importance of a child’s mental health. Maybe simply because of a lack of understanding, or perhaps a lack of motivation in that it was necessary, regardless of the reason there was a time that a large majority of pediatricians did not place as much of an emphasis on a child’s mental health as they did their physical health. In the past, very often children who suffered from mental issues such as anxiety, depression, or a mood disorder, were simply dismissed. These problems weren’t considered valid or legit in that the child would simply “grow out of them.” Occasionally a parent would send a child to a child psychologist, but these problems were not taken as seriously in children as they were adults. How serious is a child’s mental health? As reported by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 5 children in the United States from the ages of 3 to 17, have a mental, emotional, or behavior disorder that is diagnosable; those numbers are contributable to about 15 million children. An astonishing 80 percent…
Social media has become a staple in our lives – whether you are young or old. While there are many benefits to this level of connectivity, it has also created more issues than we could have ever imagined. Take Instagram, for example. Today’s youth are faced with images of stereotypical beautiful and alluring women with slender waists, long legs, and the ‘perfect’ figure. So how do young girls compete? The answer is that, as parents and role models, we must learn how to instill confidence and empower these young women to love and value themselves. Raising a confident girl in this Instagram culture isn’t easy and will undoubtedly come with hurdles, but it can be done. You may be asking yourself, “how can I encourage my daughter to be confident in who she is when she is confronted on a daily basis with an unrealistic standard of beauty and perfection?” While we’ve come a long way since the gender-prescribing attitude of the 1950s, there is still work to be done. Movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp have helped change the way we view women – and ourselves – as we work hard to create a more inclusive, positive culture of…
Learning to problem solve is often difficult even for some adults, but it is one of the most important skills we learn and need in life. So why not start teaching our children to solve problems at an early age. Im not talking about the “how can you get the triangle into the box kind of problem.” Im referring to the “what if she would have pushed you back,” kind of problems.
My favorite thing (or least favorite), is when I have a family come in and mom and/or dad is complaining about the child’s behavior, and all the mean time the parent has cussed, hit, or discussed an adult matter right in front of the child. My response is “Monkey See Monkey Do….sometimes.”
