Appletree Day Care, Inc

Parenting

Keep Children Healthy during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Teach and reinforce everyday preventive actions

Wash hands

Wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds, and encourage your child to do the same. Read more and watch a video on how to wash hands correctly.

If soap and water are not available, use hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Teach your child to cover all surfaces of their hands with hand sanitizer and rub their hands together until they feel dry. If your child is under 6 years of age, supervise them when they use hand sanitizer.

Wear a mask

Make sure everyone in your household wears a mask (if 2 years of age or older) when in public and when around people who don’t live in your household. Ensure your child wears their masks correctly and safely.

Some children may find it challenging to wear a mask. If your child finds it challenging, you can consider alternatives.

Avoid close contact

Make sure your child and everyone else in your household keep at least 6 feet away from other people who don’t live with them and people who are sick (such as coughing and sneezing).

Cover coughs and sneezes

When coughing or sneezing, cover your mouth and nose with a tissue, throw your tissue in closest garbage can, and wash your hands. Encourage your child and all household members to do the same.

Bring your child for their healthcare visits

Routine well-child visits and vaccine visits are essential, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prepare for your child’s healthcare visits

  • Call your child’s healthcare provider to ask about any upcoming appointments or to ask when your child’s vaccinations are due.
  • Ask your child’s healthcare provider what steps they are taking to separate healthy patients from those who may be sick. Some healthcare providers may choose to delay in-person visits, which will be based on the situation in your community and your child’s individual care plan.
  • Notify your child’s healthcare provider before your visit if you or your child have any symptoms of COVID-19.

Bring your child for well-child visits and vaccine visits

Your child’s healthcare provider will check your child’s growth and development at well-child visits. You can also track your child’s developmental milestones with CDC’s free Milestone Tracker app.

Vaccines are an important part of keeping your child healthy by protecting them against vaccine-preventable diseases. There are effective vaccines for illnesses such as measles, flu (influenza), whooping cough (pertussis), and other diseases that can spread from person to person. Although there is not yet a vaccine to help protect against COVID-19, your child should receive all of their recommended vaccines.

Get a flu vaccine by the end of October

A flu vaccine is the single best way to prevent flu.

CDC recommends that everyone 6 months of age and older get a flu vaccine each year by the end of October (with rare exceptions). You and your child can get a flu vaccine during healthcare visits, or you can find additional locations at vaccinefinder.orgexternal icon.

Getting a flu vaccine can reduce the likelihood of your child getting sick, being hospitalized, or dying from flu. You and your family getting a flu vaccine will also help protect others around you who may be more vulnerable to severe illness from flu, like babies and young children, older adults, pregnant people, and those with certain medical conditions.

It is especially important for this upcoming flu season to help prevent over-burdening the healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 and flu are both infectious illnesses that can affect breathing and have similar symptoms, but they are caused by different viruses. Learn more about similarities and differences between flu and COVID-19.

More about flu:

Help your child stay active

Regular physical activity can improve your child’s physical and mental health.

Help your child stay socially connected

Help your child cope with stress

The COVID-19 pandemic can be stressful for both adults and children. Learn more about signs of stress in children, ways to support your child, and how to take care of your own mental health.

CDC has also developed several tools to help you care for your child’s mental health and well-being. COVID-19 Parental Resource Kit offers tools to help you understand your child’s social, emotional, and mental health challenges according to their age group and promote their well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Essentials for Parenting Toddlers and preschoolers page provides guidance on how to address common parenting challenges, like tantrums and whining, and information on things you can do to build a positive, healthy relationship with your young children.

Ask about school meal services

Check with your child’s school on plans to continue meal services if school is closed to in-person learning for some or all students. Many schools may continue to provide meals in different ways, such as allowing families to pick up meals at the school or providing grab-and-go meals at other locations.

Consider taking extra precautions

In addition to following the recommendations above, consider taking extra precautions if your child has a disability or a developmental or behavioral disorder.

The Journey of Your Child’s Vaccine

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This video describes the journey of a vaccine for children from development through post-licensure monitoring. Learn about the three phases of clinical trials, vaccine licensing and manufacturing, how a vaccine is added to the U.S. Recommended Immunization

Child-Well Visits Are Essential

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In recent months, families have been doing their part by staying at home as much as possible to help stop the spread of COVID-19. As communities open up, it’s important your child goes in for their well-child visit. These well-child visits are essential for many reasons, including:

  • Tracking growth and development including milestones, social behaviors, and learning
  • Discussing any concerns about your child’s health
  • Getting scheduled vaccinations to prevent illnesses like measles and whooping cough (pertussis) and 12 other serious diseases

Did you know that there were several outbreaks of measles and whooping cough in recent years? These diseases are extremely contagious and can be very serious, especially for babies and young children. As schools and daycares also begin to reopen, protecting children against these and other diseases makes these vaccinations particularly important.

Not sure what vaccines are needed when? Check out this easy to read schedule. Concerned about keeping your child safe? Call your doctor’s office to see what special measures they might have in place. Many offices and clinics are taking extra steps to see children safely during this time, like:

  • Scheduling sick visits and well-child visits during different times of the day
  • Asking patients to remain outside until they are called into the facility to reduce crowding in waiting rooms
  • Offering sick visits and well-child visits in different locations

If you need help paying for vaccines, ask your child’s doctor or nurse about the Vaccines for Children program. This program provides free vaccines to children who are Medicaid-eligible, uninsured, underinsured, or American Indian/Alaska Native.

These are challenging times, but you have the power to help keep your child healthy. Making sure that your child sees their doctor for well-child visits and vaccines is one of the best things you can do to protect your child and community.

Five Steps To Raising Optimistic Children

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Why should you want your child to be an optimist? Because, as Dr. Martin Seligman explains: “Pessimism (the opposite of optimism) is an entrenched habit of mind that has sweeping and disastrous consequences: depressed mood, resignation, underachievement and even unexpectedly poor physical health.”

Children with optimistic thinking skills are better able to interpret failure, have a stronger sense of personal mastery, and are better able to bounce back when things go wrong in their lives.

Because parents are a major contributor to the thinking styles of their children’s developing minds, it is important to adhere to the following five steps to ensure healthy mental habits in your children.

How Parents Can Help

Step 1: Learn to think optimistically yourself. What children see and hear indirectly from you as you lead your life and interact with others influences them much more than what you try to ‘teach’ them.

You can model optimism for your child by incorporating optimistic mental skills into your own way of thinking. This is not easy and does not occur over night. But with practice, almost everyone can learn to think differently about life’s events – even parents!

Step 2: Teach your child that there is a connection between how they think and how they feel. You can do this most easily by saying aloud how your own thoughts about adversity create negative feelings in you.

For example, if you are driving your child to school and a driver cuts you off, verbalize the link between your thoughts and feelings by saying something like “I wonder why I’m feeling so angry; I guess I was saying to myself: ‘Now I’m going to be late because the guy in front of me is going so darn slow. If he is going to drive like that he shouldn’t drive during rush hour. How rude.’”

Step 3: Create a game called ‘thought catching.’ This helps your child learn to identify the thoughts that flit across his or her mind at the times they feel worst. These thoughts, although barely noticeable, greatly affect mood and behavior.

For instance, if your child received a poor grade, ask: “When you got your grade, what did you say to yourself?”

Step 4: Teach your child how to evaluate automatic thoughts. This means acknowledging that the things you say to yourself are not necessarily accurate.

For instance, after receiving the poor grade your child may be telling himself he is a failure, he is not as smart as other kids; he will never be able to succeed in school, etc. Many of these self-statements may not be accurate, but they are ‘automatic’ in that situation.

Step 5: Instruct your child on how to generate more accurate explanations (to themselves) when bad things happen and use them to challenge your child’s automatic but inaccurate thoughts. Part of this process involves looking for evidence to the contrary (good grades in the past, success in other life areas, etc).

Another skill to teach your child to help him or her think optimistically is to help your child see that the bad event may not be as bad or will not have the adverse consequences imagined. Few things in life are as devastating as we fear, yet we blow them up in our minds.

Parents can influence the thinking styles of their children by modeling the principals of optimistic thinking.