Halloween Safety!

Anytime a child has an accident, it's tragic. The last thing that you want to happen is for your child to be hurt on a holiday, it would forever live in the minds of the child and the family.

There are many ways to keep your child safe at Halloween, when they are more prone to accidents and injuries. The excitement of children and adults at this time of year sometimes makes them forget to be careful. Simple common sense can do a lot to stop any tragedies from happening.

1. If you set jack-o-lanterns on your porch with candles in them, make sure that they are far enough out of the way so that kids costumes won't accidentally be set on fire.
2. Make sure that if your child is carrying a prop, such as a scythe, butcher knife or a pitchfork, that the tips are smooth and flexible enough to not cause injury if fallen on.
3. Kids always want to help with the pumpkin carving. Small children shouldn't be allowed to use a sharp knife to cut the top or the face. There are many kits available that come with tiny saws that work better then knives and are safer, although you can be cut by them as well. It's best to let the kids clean out the pumpkin and draw a face on it, which you can carve for them.
4. Treating your kids to a spooky Halloween dinner will make them less likely to eat the candy they collect before you have a chance to check it for them.
5. Teaching your kids basic everyday safety such as not getting into cars or talking to strangers, watching both ways before crossing streets and crossing when the lights tell you to, will help make them safer when they are out Trick or Treating.

	Swords, knives, and similar costume accessories should be short, soft, and flexible.
	Avoid trick-or-treating alone. Walk in groups or with a trusted adult.
	Fasten reflective tape to costumes and bags to help drivers see you.
	Examine all treats for choking hazards and tampering before eating them. Limit the amount of treats you eat.
	Hold a flashlight while trick-or-treating to help you see and others see you.
	Always test make-up in a small area first. Remove it before bedtime to prevent skin and eye irritation.
	Look both ways before crossing the street. Use established crosswalks wherever possible.
	Lower your risk for serious eye injury by not wearing decorative contact lenses.
	Only walk on sidewalks or on the far edge of the road facing traffic to stay safe.
	Wear well-fitting masks, costumes, and shoes to avoid blocked vision, trips, and falls.
	Eat only factory-wrapped treats. Avoid eating homemade treats unless you know the cook well.
	Enter homes only if you're with a trusted adult. Otherwise, stay outside.
	Never walk near lit candles or luminaries. Be sure to wear flame-resistant costumes.

Kids and Food: 10 Tips for Parents

It's no surprise that parents might need some help understanding what it means to eat healthy. From the Food Guide Pyramid to the latest food fad, it can be awfully confusing.

The good news is that you don't need a degree in nutrition to raise healthy kids. Following some basic guidelines can help you encourage your kids to eat right and maintain a healthy weight.

Here are 10 key rules to live by:

1. Parents control the supply lines. You decide which foods to buy and when to serve them. Though kids will pester their parents for less nutritious foods, adults should be in charge when deciding which foods are regularly stocked in the house. Kids won't go hungry. They'll eat what's available in the cupboard and fridge at home. If their favorite snack isn't all that nutritious, you can still buy it once in a while so they don't feel deprived.
2. From the foods you offer, kids get to choose what they will eat or whether to eat at all. Kids need to have some say in the matter. From the selections you offer, let them choose what to eat and how much of it they want. This may seem like a little too much freedom. But if you follow step 1, your kids will be choosing only from the foods you buy and serve.
3. Quit the "clean-plate club." Let kids stop eating when they feel they've had enough. Lots of parents grew up under the clean-plate rule, but that approach doesn't help kids listen to their own bodies when they feel full. When kids notice and respond to feelings of fullness, they're less likely to overeat.
4. Start them young. Food preferences are developed early in life, so offer variety. Likes and dislikes begin forming even when kids are babies. You may need to serve a new food on several different occasions for a child to accept it. Don't force a child to eat, but offer a few bites. With older kids, ask them to try one bite.
5. Rewrite the kids' menu. Who says kids only want to eat hot dogs, pizza, burgers, and macaroni and cheese? When eating out, let your kids try new foods and they might surprise you with their willingness to experiment. You can start by letting them try a little of whatever you ordered or ordering an appetizer for them to try.
6. Drink calories count. Soda and other sweetened drinks add extra calories and get in the way of good nutrition. Water and milk are the best drinks for kids. Juice is fine when it's 100%, but kids don't need much of it — 4 to 6 ounces a day is enough for preschoolers.
7. Put sweets in their place. Occasional sweets are fine, but don't turn dessert into the main reason for eating dinner. When dessert is the prize for eating dinner, kids naturally place more value on the cupcake than the broccoli. Try to stay neutral about foods.
8. Food is not love. Find better ways to say "I love you." When foods are used to reward kids and show affection, they may start using food to cope with stress or other emotions. Offer hugs, praise, and attention instead of food treats.
9. Kids do as you do. Be a role model and eat healthy yourself. When trying to teach good eating habits, try to set the best example possible. Choose nutritious snacks, eat at the table, and don't skip meals.
10. Limit TV and computer time. When you do, you'll avoid mindless snacking and encourage activity. Research has shown that kids who cut down on TV-watching also reduced their percentage of body fat. When TV and computer time are limited, they'll find more active things to do. And limiting "screen time" means you'll have more time to be active together.

Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD
Date reviewed: February 2009

Kids and Breakfast

Do your kids eat breakfast?
By many reports, 40% of kids don't.

But everyone knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right?

Here is some proof:

The State of Minnesota Breakfast Study showed that 'students who ate breakfasts before starting school had a general increase in math grades and reading scores, increased student attention, reduced nurse visits, and improved student behaviors'

Children who eat a healthy breakfast 'meet their daily nutritional needs, keep their weight under control, have lower blood cholesterol levels, attend school more frequently, and make fewer trips to the school nurses office complaining of tummy aches.'*

Kids 'who eat breakfast are more likely than children who skip breakfast to consume foods with adequate levels of minerals, such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and vitamins, such as riboflavin, vitamins A, C, and B12, and folate.'*

Kids 'who skip breakfast do not make up for the missed calories at other meals.'*
So why aren't your kids eating breakfast each day?

Most likely it is because your family is already rushed in the morning and you don't feel like you have time to provide a nutritious breakfast. But remember that breakfast doesn't have to mean home-made waffles or french toast every day. There are many quick and easy breakfasts that you can give your kids that are also nutritious.

According to the American Dietetic Association, these can include:

ready-to-eat cereal with fruit and milk
toasted bagel with cheese
fruit-filled breakfast bar and yogurt
toasted waffle topped with fruit and yogurt
fruit smoothie (fruit and milk whirled in a blender)
peanut butter on whole-wheat toast
If you can't provide a healthy breakfast for your child at home, you might also look at breakfasts offered at your child's school or daycare.

**Source : http://www.keepkidshealthy.com/nutrition/breakfast.html

Family Exercise

Family Fitness

Fit families are healthy families who have an active lifestyle. Frequently, they enjoy the things they do together, and the things they do together foster better communication and closer relationships than watching TV does.

Family fitness takes some parental commitment, leadership, and imagination, and you may have to listen to a lot of grousing and whining to start with, but the entire family will benefit as a result. Five factors that affect your family fitness plan are cost, convenience, family-friendly environment, fun, and success.

Cost

Family fitness doesn’t have to be expensive. Sure, you can drop a couple of hundred dollars or more taking the family skiing. But you can find a slope and sled down it on plastic trash bags for free. Most communities have free or low-cost family activities at community centers or parks. Check your local newspaper or parks and recreation department, and use your imagination to come up with activities your family can do together that don’t break the bank.

Convenience

Families are busy, and convenience is essential to a family fitness plan. If you have to go through a lot of hassle or travel a long way on a regular basis, you won’t follow through. Plan activities that you can do in your own backyard or neighborhood, like play Frisbee. You can also stay home to rake up leaves and jump in them, or make snow angels in the winter months. If you join a club or team, make it one that’s convenient to get to, and one the entire family can be a part of. Joining a bowling league is a great way to keep the family involved.

Family-Friendly Environment

When you join a club or plan an activity, make sure your whole family is welcome. It’s not much fun to look forward to an outing, and then discover that your kids are the only ones there. You want an appropriate environment for young children, too, where they will be safe and not exposed to “adult” language or behavior.

Fun

Fun is the key to successful family fitness. If everybody has fun, you’ll all want to do it again. Ask the kids what kind of activities they enjoy. You could even let them choose some family activities and help with the planning. Have a family meeting, and come up with a list of activities your family wants to try.

In addition to making sure your family fitness activities are fun, you can make sure your family fun activities center around fitness. Take everybody miniature golfing for a birthday instead of having a cake-and-ice-cream party. Celebrate Independence Day by going on a 10K walk together (which you’ll have to train for together). Walk around your neighborhood at Christmas and enjoy the lights, or sing carols. Bring fun and activity together as often as you can, and you and your kids will begin to associate an active lifestyle with having fun.

Success

Every member of your family needs to feel successful at whatever activities your family chooses. They don’t all have to be good at the activity as long as they enjoy it and feel good about themselves doing it. Family fitness can become an unhealthy competition that leaves less athletic family members feeling like failures, and that can defeat the purpose. Choose activities that everybody can participate in and enjoy at least moderate success at.

When our families pursue fitness together, we benefit in other ways, too. Your kids will remember and treasure family camping trips, going swimming together, and having family snowball fights. You’re building good health habits and good childhood memories at the same time, and the whole family is having fun doing it.

About the Author:
Denise Nero invites you to visit http://www.fitnessandkids.com for more great fitness articles, sign up for a free newsletter and receive a free recipe e-book.


Copyright © 2008 by Fitness and Kids. All content of this article is owned by Fitness and Kids. You must obtain permission to reproduce the article in whole or in part. To request permission, contact www.fitnessandkids.com

Children and Exercise!

In today’s world, it would seem that more and more people tend to put exercise on the backburner in favor of more fast paced results to our desires. In recent years, there have been a significant number of diet pills claiming the “true” scientific way to lose weight and gain muscle definition. Unfortunately, it would seem that this kind of mentality has been passed on to our kids, and that they are finding less motivation to exercise.

Exercise programs for kids are hugely important. America holds the not so illustrious title of the fattest nation in the world and this moment, our kids are poised to inherit that title. That is something that all parents would not find as a particularly comforting thought.

For those of you not yet convinced that an exercise program for your kids isn’t a priority: The American Obesity Association states the single largest factor in childhood obesity is lack of physical activity and excessive sedentary behavior—that is to say, watching too much TV and playing too many video games.

Why Start My Kid on an Exercise Program?

Outside of the social pariah status of the obese in our society, there are significant, easily avoidable health risks involved with obesity. The AOA lists common health conditions associated with children who are obese because of lack of regular exercise. These conditions include asthma, Type 2 Diabetes, hypertension, orthopedic problems, and most frightening, sleep apnea—a condition in which breathing ceases during sleeping. Obviously not permanently, but the effects are loss of focus and a significant increase in the loss of logical thought.




An exercise program for your children is so important because of the large amount of health problems associated with those are inactive—namely obesity. Since 1974, the number of children classified as obese under the age of 11 has increased more than four times; from roughly 4 per cent to over 16 per cent in 2000 with the single largest cause of obesity is lack of exercise.

To help your child avoid these health risks, not to mention the psychological risks of being outcast because of weight, you need to set them up on a regular exercise program. Children’s exercise programs are not hard to do—just get them outside or keep them inside, but focus on them getting active.

It’s important to realize than a children’s exercise program does not necessarily mean pumping iron—rather it has more to do with cardiovascular activities that burn lots of energy. Examples of great cardiovascular activities are running, swimming, rowing, canoeing, rock climbing—the list goes on. It also doesn’t need to be simply running—it can be a game of tag, catch, playing soccer outdoors; anything that gets your kids heart beating and gets them sweating a bit.

Research has also shown that obese children tend to be more depressed than other children who are fit. In addition, physical activities, especially cardiovascular activities can actually make you feel great. The so called “runner’s high” is caused when someone who is engaged a high amount of cardiovascular activity gets a massive dump of dopamine into the brain—a chemical that instills a euphoric state in the person doing the activity, a natural high.

It would seem logical that getting your child on an exercise program should be a paramount as a parent to ensure the health and happiness of your child. But along with the exercise goes a good diet, healthy relationships, staying active, and of course, laughing a lot. All of these things contribute to your child’s life, and an exercise program for your child is, in reality, just a piece of the puzzle.

Visit: http://www.fitnessandkids.com/kids-stuff-equipment.html for commercial weight training equipment for kids.

copyright www.fitnessandkids.com

A fun way for kids to exercise!

Are you concerned about your kids sitting around the house too much? Do they spend their day watching TV, playing video games or surfing the net? Are they turning into couch potatoes? As a parent you know how hard it is to get your child to do something good for their health. Heck, you probably haven’t been able to get them to eat carrots since they were toddlers, how are you supposed to convince them to go to the gym, or for a run. The key is finding an exercise that they enjoy, so they will continue to exercise and make it a lifetime habit. This is where the mini trampoline comes in.

Do you remember how much fun you had jumping on the bed as a kid? The Mini Trampoline, or Urban Rebounder lets your kids have the same fun experience without ruining your mattress or getting hurt from a fall off the bed.

The mini trampoline is one of the most versatile pieces of exercise equipment. You kids can jump on it in front of the television, or outside, and when it’s not in use, it easily fits in a closet or even under the bed.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of working out on the Mini Trampoline

It’s a low impact form of exercise
Burns more calories than jogging
Improves circulation
Gives you a great cardio workout
Strengthens your legs and thighs
Improves balance and coordination
Its very portable
Above all, it is A LOT OF FUN!!!!.

Don’t think rebounding is just for kids. You’ll get a great workout out of this as well. The mini trampoline is perfect for your entire family and a great investment in your health and fitness as well. It helps you burn fat and calories fast, but also works great when it comes to strength training. Your biggest problem will be to get a turn to work out. (We suggest you wait until the kids are in school).

When you are shopping for a mini trampoline look for a model with six legs. It will be a lot more stable than some of the cheaper four legged models. If you’re just starting out and also as an extra safety precaution, look for a model with a stabilizer bar.

We suggest the Urban Rebounder at http://www.fitnessandkids.com/urban-rebounder.html. You’ll receive the complete kit including the stabilizer bar, carrying case and workout videos. Everything you need to get you started.

Get bouncing today!

About the Author:
Denise Nero invites you to visit http://www.fitnessandkids.com for more great fitness articles, sign up for a free newsletter and receive a free recipe e-book.

Nutrition for a healthy child!

12 Steps to Having Fit and Healthy Kids

By Steve Edwards

Kids today are the first in history who will live less time than their parents. The primary reason for this is obesity, which is linked to an assortment of ailments. Childhood and teenage obesity rates have been skyrocketing over the past three decades, and the fatter you are, the sicker you are likely to become. According to a study conducted by Weight Watchers International, Inc. and the American Health Foundation, 25 percent of American children are now officially overweight. This is more than double what it was 30 years ago and the numbers have risen with each successive study.

Fast food takes a lot of the blame, but according to Ken Reed, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Physical Education, lack of exercise is the main offender. "Over the last 25 years, caloric intake in toddlers and young kids has gone up three or four percent, but the level of physical activity has dropped nearly 20 percent to 25 percent." Certainly we need to eat better but, more importantly, we need to find a way to get our kids exercising.

The government tells us that kids should exercise 60 minutes a day, but a study published in The Lancet in 2006 suggests that number is too low for optimal heart health. The study states that kids need about 90 minutes of daily exercise to avoid most heart disease risk factors. Given that kids should sleep about 10 hours a night, spend most of their day in school, and, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, spend an average of five and one half hours a day in front of a TV, game, or computer, we don't need a study to show us that we face the challenge of fitting more activity into a day.

Nutrition, of course, is important too. With a Stop and Stuff on just about every corner, the opportunities to consume the wrong types of calories are abundant. Coupled with the fact that most schools offer low-grade foods to their students, we're starting with an uphill battle in this arena as well.

It's not as gloomy as it sounds. Many of these trends can be easily reversed. In fact, with knowledge on what to avoid and by focusing a bit more on your child's physical fitness, you can pretty much assure that your child grows up strong and healthy. Here are 12 steps to ensure that you have healthy kids.

• No bottles before bed. In fact, no bottle at all seems like a better bet as kids that are breastfed are less likely to be obese. A bevy of recent studies, which show infant obesity rates as high as 44 percent in some demographics, have linked a large part of the problem to sending infants to bed with a bottle. Not only is the child getting more calories, it's creating a learned response to eat before bed that is hard to reverse as the child gets older. Infants should have some body fat, but an obese infant is more than twice as likely to grow into an obese adolescent, who is more than twice as likely to become an obese adult.
  
• Make your toddler toddle. The 90-minute guideline for exercise is for school-age kids, but it's recommended that younger children get even more. Infants should be encouraged to move as much as possible because it develops motor skills that will help them throughout their life. Toddlers should have at least 30 minutes of planned activity per day and 60 minutes of free play, where they're allowed to move and roam as they like. Preschool-age kids should get at least 60 minutes of planned activity and 60 minutes of free play. With life more hectic than ever, and both parents often working, this may take some planning and creativity but, hey, think of all the time and money you'll save when your kid never has to go to the doctor.
  
• Walk to school (or at least some of the way). This alone could make one of the biggest differences in activity levels. A generation ago, most self-respecting parents would laugh at their child's suggestion to drive them to school. Nowadays, lines of SUVs stretch out for blocks around campuses filled with kids burning nary a calorie whilst waiting to be dropped on the front step of the school. In some neighborhoods, this lost time is enough to fill most of the child's exercise requirement.
  
  Lack of busing can shoulder some of the blame but the primary reason is fear. The world has gotten scary, or so we think, and parents drive their kids to keep them safe. In reality, the damage done from lack of activity is putting them at far more risk. According to former Department of Justice statistician Callie Rennison, our fears are mainly based on sensationalism in the media, which seem to promote every child abduction to the top of the headlines. "99.9 percent of child abduction cases are family related," she states. "Statistically, our kids are much safer in public than they've ever been."
  
  Numbers aside, most parents will likely balk at the idea of making their kids the lab rats in some "walking to school" experiment. But, at least, you can drop them off close to school. The last part of the commute, the part while you're waiting in line, is a place where your kids could be moving in what is probably one of the safest situations imaginable - a line of cars filled with highly-protective parents.
  
• Fight for recess. As schools' budgets dwindle because "results" are based on test scores, "optional" classes like recess are being cut. But it can be argued that recess is one of the most important classes your child has. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), it's not just how much children exercise that counts but how long they exercise for that's important. Kids should not exercise for prolonged periods of time. They benefit far more from short bursts of exercise throughout the day. This is the reason that recess periods have been included throughout a typical day of school—those that are now being threatened if they aren't already gone.
  
  But don't stop at the inclusion of recess either. One study on third graders showed that their recess only included 25 minutes of vigorous activity per week. This, as they might say on ESPN, isn't going to get it done. Inquire about recess as though it were any other course important for your child's scholastic development and demand that it be effective.
  
• Juice: it's not for breakfast anymore. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that many children get most of their calories from beverages, when they'd be better off getting them from fresh fruit and other healthful solid foods. Most of these calories come from soda (more on this below), but juice can fly under the radar, masquerading as a health food. Take a look at the orange juice label. This former icon of a nutritious breakfast, which is still praised in some less-enlightened cultures, is mainly sugar. The refining process has leeched most of its useful ingredients and all of the fiber, turning a perfectly healthful food, an orange, into little more than a morning sugar rush.
  
• The cafeteria: just say no. Brown bagging is back. Having your child bring their lunch from home can ensure they're eating well. School cafeterias have been getting progressively worse. Despite the huge successes enjoyed by some that have switched to healthier menus—for example, check out what happened at this school - most feel too restricted by budgets and bottom lines not to farm out their concessions to the lowest bidder.
  
  Of course, as a parent, you have some say in this. Whether you child goes to public or private school, all are accountable to their community base. Parents have banded together in many communities to change their school's nutritional structure. You can too.
  
• Enforce TV and game limits. You got the part about five and a half hours a day, right? That was an average. We could probably surmise that this time increases in relation to body mass index (BMI). That's a lot of hours of not moving.
  
  You can make arguments that games, TV, and computers are educational. But even if you monitor your child's content so that it's 100 percent educational (if this is possible), it's important that you enforce time limits for sitting still. Sitting for extended periods is not only bad for you but it instills a habit for, you guessed it, sitting for a long time. These devices are addictive, the same as any food or drug can be. Without foresight and a plan, it's possible for even the best intentioned of us to find ourselves constantly craving our fix in front of a monitor.
  
• Make exercise a habit. While we're discussing habitual behavior, exercise is one habit you want to develop in your children. While you're structuring their day add an exercise period. You needn't get scientific and write a periodizational exercise program. In fact, you shouldn't. But by scheduling exercise at a young age they'll get used to the feeling that it's something they should be doing daily.
  
  Keep in mind that some exercise is inappropriate for a growing body. Weight training is warned against and rightly so in some cases. This doesn't mean that resistance training should be avoided, which can include weights. What you don't want growing bodies to do is a lot of maximal lifting with heavy weights. Exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, and a lot of gymnastic-type movements are great. Most home exercise videos are perfectly fine for kids. For young kids, things like Tony & the Kids! or Shaun T's Fit Kid Club may be more fun, but your child is pretty much ready for Turbo Jam® or Power 90® as soon as they feel like trying it.\
  
• Assign chores. Just because we find child labor in the developing world appalling doesn't mean that we're bad parents if we have our kid mow the lawn. Children should learn to do the same work around the house that you have to do for them. Weeding, sweeping, raking leaves, and doing laundry are all calorie-burning activities that add up little by little. Sure, they'll complain, but that's a lot easier to deal with than a case of type II diabetes. Just tell 'em to be happy they don't have to put in a 12-hour shift in a Honduran factory like some kids do.
  
• Stop drinking soda. Perhaps you haven't heard this enough but soda accounts for more calories consumed than any other food. Teenagers in America get an estimated 13 percent of their calories from soda, making it nearly impossible to eat a balanced diet. Diet sodas are terrible, too. Want more convincing, start here.
  
• Try some sports. Not all kids are good at sports but almost everyone has an aptitude at some physical activity. Start your child young by allowing them to experiment with different sports. The more sports they try, the easier it will be for you to see which ones they excel at and which they don't. A more benign approach to the old East German method of finding athletes at a young age, it's a great parenting tool because it helps you guide them into things they'll do well at. They get exposed to different things, get some exercise, and, in the end, you'll probably find something they'll be good at—or at least decent—which will help their self-esteem as they develop. It's hard for kids to understand why they're bad at something. This tactic can help them, and perhaps you, too, see how the human body is designed and why it's normal to be different. We can't all be the star quarterback but we can all be the star something, which will be a lot easier to achieve if you're aiming for something you have an aptitude for.
  
  Keep in mind that sports don't just mean team or traditional sports. Martial arts, snowboarding, swimming, dance, and rock climbing are all just as effective as football and soccer for building healthy bodies.
  
• Get outside. When we grow up some of us will be inside people and some will be outside people. As kids, however, we should all get some exposure to the great outdoors. There are an endless number of outdoor activities you can choose from, but the simplest, hiking, is one of the best activities you can do with your kids. It's great exercise, especially if you live around hills or mountains, which will ensure that the intensity will be high. It builds motor skills because you walk on rocks and trees, etc. And it's a learning tool because you'll encounter the natural world and, most likely, develop an interest in the way it works. You don't need to have Yosemite in your back yard to enjoy hiking. Any city park will do, especially for kids who still find wonder in the most basic natural acts.