With the best of intentions parents may be creating a generation of stressed-out, over-stimulated and exhausted kids. With school, homework, sports and other extra-curricular activities there’s no room for any free unstructured downtime in a typical child’s life.
The idea of course is that parents want to maximize their children’s experiences, give them every advantage possible in the belief that this will give them an edge when they become adults.
What is often forgotten is that during the unscheduled, just hanging around times, children are still developing, learning and discovering on their own. More importantly, it gives them an opportunity to recharge so they are better equipped to handle, appreciate and benefit from their next activity.
If you fear you may be falling into the overscheduling trap, take a look at this article entitled 12 warning signs that your child is overscheduled.
You can also look at The Joy of Doing Nothing for some helpful tips and A guide to choosing extra-curricular activities a grade by grade guideline for selecting appropriate activities.
Kids love winter. Whether it’s skiing, skating, sledding or just having fun in the snow, they embrace winter wholeheartedly. In fact, they are often having so much fun they fail to recognize some of the dangers of winter.
Frostbite and Hypothermia
Frostbite most frequently ocurs on fingers, toes, ears, noses and cheeks. The affected area is very cold, tingle or numb and the skin is white or yellowish grey. The condition is usually made worse if the skin is wet. To learn more about frostbite, how to treat it and how best to prevent it take a look at this article on Frostbite.
Hypothermia is a condition where your entire body temperature reaches a dangerously low level. This can occur when you spend a long period of time in cold weather especially if your clothing is wet or you are not well dressed. You can find out more about hypothermia and get some excellent prevention tips by reading this article on Understanding the symptoms, treatment and prevention of Hypothermia.
The Center for Disease Control has also put together a Guide to Dealing With Extreme Cold which covers planning for winter, outdoor winter safety and dealing with cold weather health emergencies.
Winter Sunscreen
One final point to remember is the need for sunscreen when playing outside in winter. It may seem counter-intuitive to be concerned about sunburns but the danger from UV exposure is still an issue. Snow can reflect over 80 percent of the suns UV rays. On sunny days remember to apply sunscreen on your child’s face if they will be playing outside.
Enjoying Winter
By taking a few of these simple steps you can make sure that your children have a safe and enjoyable time playing outside this winter.
You want your children to be safe. That’s a given. But is there such a thing as too safe?
Helicopter Parenting
Are you a helicopter parent? If you are not familiar with the term, it refers to parents who are constantly hovering over their children, obsessively worried that they may hurt themselves or otherwise get into trouble.
There are people who argue that part of being a child is getting your knees scraped or bumping your head and learning from these methods. Kids need these experiences to help them deal with problems and setbacks they will face later in life.
For an interesting take on the whole children’s safety issue and protective parenting trend take a look at this video promoting Five dangerous things you should let your kids do.
Do you worry that your children are eating too many fast food meals? Concerned that they aren’t getting all the vitamins and minerals they need? You are not alone. Obesity has quickly become an epidemic among teenagers and children. Diabetes is turning up more often among younger adults. Fitness levels are low. One of the most frightening results may be that this generation will have an average life-span that is lower than that of their parents.
Even though most fast food restaurants make it difficult to find out what is actually in their meals you can get this information online. One site that has an extensive online database of nutritional content for a variety of foods, not just fast foods, is HealthAssist.net.
The site has a database with over 400 fast food meals listed and provides the calorie count and a detailed breakdown of what nutrients are in the food. There’s also a fun low calorie food chart, lists of food categorized by nutrient and numerous health tips and facts.
To get a good idea of what your last fast food meal consisted of start by going to the Common Fast Food Calorie Content Database then explore other areas of the site based on your specific interests.
