healthy kids
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Back-to-School Wellness Tips to Keep Kids Healthy by Ronica O’Hara
everyone feels about going back to school and intentionally tell your student that throughout the year if they are needing support or are feeling overwhelmed or concerned, they can always talk to you to work through the issue together,” she says.
Reset bedtime creep
Hold a family sit-down
Buoy them with breakfast
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fter a year dealing with the ups and downs of pandemic-era schooling, many parents are anticipating their children’s return to school with mixed emotions. “Families indeed have had a rough time in the pandemic, resulting in increased food insecurity, weakened social skills, splintered attention spans due to constant multitasking and arguments over screen time, yet many families also feel that they grew closer together as they coped with the adversity,” says Jenifer Joy Madden, author of How To Be a Durable Human. As we wave our children off to classes, we can draw on those hard-won, deeper ties by taking steps to ensure our children’s health and well-being. Here are some suggested strategies:
“During the summer, bedtime tends to creep later and later. Two weeks before school starts, begin to reset bedtime by reversing the creep by 15 minutes every few nights,” suggests Amber Trueblood, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Culver City, California, and author of Stretch Marks. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children 6 to 12 years of age sleep nine to 12 hours a night and teenagers 13 to 18 sleep eight to 10 hours. Getting enough sleep, it advises, leads to “improved attention, behavior, learning, memory, emotional regulation, quality of life, and mental and physical health.” Sleep experts recommend not allowing kids to be on device screens beginning an hour before bedtime, and perhaps storing devices in another room.
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Meet as a group to talk about schedules and logistics to make sure everyone’s commitments will work together, recommends Erika Beckles Camez, Ph.D., a licensed family therapist in Temecula, California. “Talk as a family about how 30
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According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, children that eat a complete breakfast have been shown to work
