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Parenting

September – National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month

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One in 5 children in the United States are obese. Childhood obesity puts kids at risk for health problems that were once seen only in adults, like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

The good news? Childhood obesity can be prevented. Communities, health professionals, and families can work together to create opportunities for kids to eat healthier and get more active.

Make a difference for kids: spread the word about strategies for preventing childhood obesity and encourage communities, organizations, families, and individuals to get involved.

How can National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month make a difference?

We can all use this month to raise awareness about the obesity epidemic and show people how they can help work towards a solution.

Here are just a few ideas:

  • Encourage families to make small changes, like keeping fresh fruit within reach or going on a family walk after dinner.
  • Motivate teachers and administrators to make schools healthier. Help them provide healthy food options and daily physical activities for students.
  • Ask doctors and nurses to be leaders in their communities by supporting programs to prevent childhood obesity.

How can I help spread the word?

We’ve made it easier for you to make a difference. This toolkit is full of ideas to help you take action today. For example:

 

American College of Sports Medicine

Health Topics

Healthy People Topic Areas

Personal Health Tools

Other Resources

 

Find More Information

About Breastfeeding

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Breastfeeding is the best source of nutrition for most infants. It can also reduce the risk for some short- and long-term health conditions for both infants and mothers.

Most mothers want to breastfeed but stop early due to a lack of ongoing support. Certain factors make the difference in whether and how long infants are breastfed. For more information on why breastfeeding matters, what CDC is doing to increase breastfeeding rates, and how we are making a difference, explore the options below.

 

For More Information Please Visit

For more information, please visit www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding

Why It Matters

Only 1 in 4 infants is exclusively breastfed as recommended by the time they are 6 months old.

 

Low rates of breastfeeding add more than $3 billion a year to medical costs for the mother and child in the United States.

 

Black infants are 21% less likely to have ever been breastfed than white infants.

 

 

Breastfeeding is an Investment in Health, Not Just a Lifestyle Decision

 

Benefits for Infants

Infants who are breastfed have reduced
risks of:

 

 

 

 

Benefits for Mothers

Breastfeeding can help lower a mother’s risk of:

  • High blood pressure
  • Type 2 diabetes
  • Ovarian cancer
  • Breast cancer

“Breastfeeding provides unmatched health benefits for babies and mothers. It is the clinical gold standard for infant feeding and nutrition, with breast milk uniquely tailored to meet the health needs of a growing baby. We must do more to create supportive and safe environments for mothers who choose to breastfeed.”

Dr. Ruth Petersen, Director of CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity

What CDC is Doing

CDC’s Work to Support and Promote Breastfeeding

We collect data to learn how best to improve breastfeeding rates in the United States by:

  • Tracking how long infants are breastfed.
  • Creating reports that show how well states and hospitals support breastfeeding mothers.

 

 

 

 

We promote best practices in health care settings by:

 

 

 

We support mothers at work and in their communities by:

Making A Difference

In the United States, the percentage of babies who start out breastfeeding increased from 73% in 2004 to 83% in 2015.

In the United States, the percentage of births in hospitals with recommended maternity care practices that support breastfeeding increased from 1.9% in 2008 to 26.1% in 2018.

 

“Given the importance of breastfeeding on the health of mothers and children, it is critical that we take action to support breastfeeding. Only through the support of family, communities, clinicians, healthcare systems, and employers will we be able to make breastfeeding the easy choice.”

Dr. Jerome M. Adams, U.S. Surgeon General

For More Information Please Visit

For more information, please visit www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding

Extreme Heat

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Heat and Infants and Children

Infants and young children rely on others to keep them cool and hydrated when it’s hot outside. In this article, we provide tips for protecting your children and other family members from extreme heat.

 

Keep kids cool and hydrated

  • Never leave infants or children in a parked car, even if the windows are open.
  • Dress infants and children in loose, lightweight, light-colored clothing.
  • Make sure they’re drinking plenty of fluids. Stay away from really cold drinks or drinks with too much sugar.
  • Follow additional tips on how to prevent heat-related illness.

Never leave kids in a parked car

  • Even when it feels cool outside, cars can heat up to dangerous temperatures very quickly.
  • Leaving a window open is not enough- temperatures inside the car can rise almost 20 degrees Fahrenheit within the first 10 minutes, even with a window cracked open.
  • Children who are left unattended in parked cars are at greatest risk for heat stroke, and possibly death.

Tips for traveling with children

    • Never leave infants or children in a parked car, even if the windows are cracked open.
    • To remind yourself that a child is in the car, keep a stuffed animal in the car seat. When the child is buckled in, place the stuffed animal in the front with the driver.
    • When leaving your car, check to be sure everyone is out of the car. Do not overlook any children who have fallen asleep in the car.

Learn how to spot heat-related illness

Seek medical care immediately if your child has symptoms of heat-related illness.

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Does Birth Order Matter?

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There is a great deal of real but not particularly scientific evidence that birth order has a great influence on who we turn out to be as adults. If you understand how birth order affects a child, you will be better able to understand and effectively parent your children. You might even understand yourself a bit better.

Now, it’s important to note that people don’t just neatly fit into categories of any kind, and they don’t all fit neatly into birth order categories. The following observations are generalities and not specifics, but still, they might be helpful.

First Children:

Typical first children in a family assume responsibility. They are rule-keepers/enforcers, and they are organized, as well as driven, bossy, approval-seeking, self-critical high-achievers. There’s a mixture of good and bad if I ever saw one!

Way back in 1874, Francis Galton studied and published a report about the lives of 180 eminent scientists of the day. He discovered that 48% of them were first children. During the 20th century, more first-born children were Nobel Prize winners, composers, presidents of countries, astronauts, and prominent personalities. First-born children usually score higher on standardized IQ tests than middle children or youngest children in the birth order.

Middle Children:

My mother said that middle children had “middle child-itis.”  She was a middle child, and she always said her mother said, “You two older kids do this and you two younger kids do that,” and she was caught both ways. Middle kids are usually adaptable. They make great friends and spouses.

Youngest Children:

The “baby-of-the-family” is inventive and often more aggressive. Children who are the last born in a family are very often irresponsible and rebellious. They more often feel “picked on” and inadequate. However, last-borns are also more creative. They are risk-takers. They usually have a great sense of humor and have outgoing personalities.

A Key Piece of the Puzzle: Vaccinations

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As a parent, you work hard to keep your baby healthy, by giving lots of
love… providing healthy foods.

Keeping little hands, feet, and faces clean. Getting plenty of physical activity, and
vaccination. Nothing protects babies better from 14 serious diseases by age two.

That’s why doctors recommend and parents choose the safe, proven protection of
vaccination. Vaccination, a key piece of the puzzle.

For more reasons to vaccinate, talk to your child’s doctor, or go to www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents.

Actively Listening to your Child

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Communicating with our children can be a difficult task at times.  We feel like they’re not listening to us; they feel like we’re not listening to them.  Good listening and communications skills are essential to successful parenting.  Your child’s feelings, views, and opinions have worth, and you should make sure you take the time to sit down and listen openly and discuss them honestly.

It seems to be a natural tendency to react rather than to respond.  We pass judgment based on our own feelings and experiences.  However, responding means being receptive to our child’s feelings and emotions and allowing them to express themselves openly and honestly without fear of repercussion from us.  By reacting, we send our child the message that their feelings and opinions are invalid.  However, by responding and asking questions about why the child feels that way, it opens a dialog that allows them to discuss their feelings further and allows you a better understanding of where they’re coming from.  Responding also gives you an opportunity to work out a solution or a plan of action with your child that perhaps they would not have come up with on their own.  Your child will also appreciate the fact that maybe you do indeed understand how they feel. 

It’s crucial in these situations to give your child your full and undivided attention.  Put down your phone, stop doing dishes, or turn off the television so you can hear the full situation and make eye contact with your child.   Keep calm, be inquisitive, and afterward offer potential solutions to the problem. 

Don’t discourage your child from feeling upset, angry, or frustrated.  Our initial instinct may be to say or do something to steer our child away from it, but this can be a detrimental tactic.  Again, listen to your child, ask questions to find out why they are feeling that way, and then offer potential solutions to alleviate the bad feeling.

Just as we do, our children have feelings and experience difficult situations.  By actively listening and participating with our child as they talk about it, it demonstrates to them that we do care, we want to help, and we have similar experiences of our own that they can learn from and provide as a reference.  Remember, respond – don’t react. 

Copyright ChildCareOwner

Positive Parenting

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Let’s face it…parenting is not always easy.  Sometimes it seems a next to impossible task to consistently get your child to be nice to others, share, follow a consistent schedule and adhere to simple requests and instructions.  Losing your temper, resorting to yelling and controlling behaviors can become the all too common norm and fall back parenting behaviors.

There is a better approach.  Positive Parenting (also referred to as positive discipline) means gently, positively guiding your children to help them develop better behaviors.  Positive Parenting is a better approach than the “because I told you to do it” authoritarian approach to parenting.

Positive parenting helps develop positive behaviors, better communication between parent and child, closer relationships, mental health and overall happiness.

Amy McCready, a parenting educator, and positive parenting expert shares many positive parenting solutions parents can use when facing common parenting situations – getting your child to sleep, eliminating swearing, sibling bullying, controlling chaos and many other topics.  Amy McCready shares some great solutions in these videos.

You may also want to visit Amy’s website and YouTube channel for additional tips and resources.

Homepage

https://www.youtube.com/user/AmyMcCready/videos