KIDS AND TEEN LIFE

Seven tips to Beautiful Skin "magic"

Here are a few things you can do to care for the skin that you were born with.

Avoid stress as much as you are can.
Stay out of the sun (or protect your skin with UV blockers).
Don't smoke. This does nasty things to your skin.
Drink lots of water.
Get plenty of sleep.
Be sure to clean your skin properly.
Eat lots of fruit and vegetables.

Smoking and Your Child

Your eighth grader, who made anti-smoking posters in fifth grade, comes home smelling like stale smoke. You know her friends are smoking and you think she might try it, if she hasn't already. In addition to peer pressure, she's exposed to ads urging her to light up. Teen idols like Leonardo Di Caprio are puffing their way through movies. Every time you bring it up, she rolls her eyes and slams the door.

Given the known links between cigarettes and fatal and debilitating diseases like emphysema and cancer of the throat, mouth, lips, esophagus and lungs, the statistics on teenage smoking are frightening. Nine percent of eighth graders smoke cigarettes daily. Thirty-six percent of teens in high school are daily smokers. It's heartbreaking. Addiction to cigarettes is known to be one of the most difficult habits to break.

Despite the fact that the teen birth rate is climbing after slowly falling for years, there are still an estimated one million teen pregnancies in the United States alone. About 85% of these pregnancies are unplanned, which in any population can increase the risk for problems. The biggest risk for teen mothers is delaying prenatal care or worse, 7.2% received no care at all.

The reason for lack of prenatal care is usually delayed pregnancy testing, denial or even fear of telling others about the pregnancy. Most states have a health department or university clinic where prenatal care is free or low cost and patient confidentiality is very important, meaning no one can tell the teen mother's family.

Because the body of a teen is still growing she will need more nutritional support to meet both her needs and that of her baby. Nutritional counseling can be a large portion of prenatal care, usually done by a doctor or a midwife, sometimes a nutritionist. This counseling will usually include information about prenatal vitamins, folic acid, and the dos and don'ts of eating and drinking. Lack of proper nutrition can lead to problems like anemia (low iron), low weight gain, etc.

Acne is an unfortunate rite of passage for many teenagers. Here’s what you need to know about teen skin care and acne prevention and treatment.

Most teenagers have one or a combination of three kinds of pimples—red, inflamed lumps; whiteheads; and blackheads. Some pimples usually go with the turf of adolescence, but acne doesn’t have to go hand in hand with puberty.

Healthy food for fussy eaters

How do working parents feed kids quick, healthy food on school nights and squeeze homework, bedtime stories, cleaning up and maybe some downtime into the remains of the day?

It's easy to fall for convenience, kidding ourselves that peeling packages and microwaving their contents counts as cooking. But somewhere between frozen chicken nuggets and the time-consuming roasts our grandmothers made, there's another way. Its acquiring a repertoire of easy, healthy dishes that are quick to cook (or cook themselves while you do something else) and flexible, meaning they can be simmered, easily reheated or eaten cold an important consideration given that many families eat in shifts.

Having a plan

The biggest obstacle to preparing healthy meals in a hurry is the absence of healthy ingredients in the pantry or fridge. Its surprising how many parents aren't conscious of this, says Jacqui Deighan from the Parents Jury, an online network of parents working to improve children's food.

"It's this lack of awareness and often a belief that healthy food is difficult to cook that keeps people reaching for packets of frozen chips. We're all busy but we all have to shop for food and it's just as easy to buy fresh food as it is to buy processed food," points out Deighan, a former chef who works with schools in Victoria, developing healthy canteen menus and educating students and parents about food.

Her advice: plan and shop for the weeks meals in advance and always have healthy staples on hand. Different grains like rice and couscous, a variety of pastas, some canned legumes as well as fresh fruit and vegetables.

Knowing how to speed up midweek dinners

Advance preparation at the weekends takes the pressure off the week. Cooking extra basmati or brown rice to make the base for a one-pot meal of fried rice, making extra curry or pasta sauce to freeze for later and making home-made pesto, for instance, gets three week-night dinners under control.

Involving the kids in making food

Helping to choose vegetables and wash them, for example, making simple salads or lunch box sandwiches teaches them useful skills and encourages them to eat fresh food they're more likely to eat it if they've helped make it. Making healthy muffins and slices together at weekends is a way to spend time with the kids and produce snacks and lunch box foods for the week ahead.

More vegetables, anyone?

The recipes on these pages include plenty of vegetables and if you think getting kids to eat them is an insurmountable barrier, maybe its one we've created for ourselves, suggests Deighan.

"I think as parents we often perpetuate the idea that children won't eat vegetables. I also believe we've given kids too much power over food. The biggest fear parents have is that their kids will starve but the parent who goes and makes something else because their child won't eat vegetables, is just giving credence to this," she says. "Sure, there are valid dislikes but if a child won't eat green beans they might like something else, like snow peas."

Kids not keen on green? Try:

* Catching them when they're ravenous. Give them a plate of raw vegetables and dip before dinner when they're starving. Some children prefer vegetables raw (including raw, grated) because they're sweeter that way.

*Serving different vegetables in different ways. Praise your kids if they eat them, ignore it if they don't. Be persistent - just because children refuse a vegetable the first time, doesn't mean they'll refuse it forever. It can take around 10 exposures to a particular food before a child decides whether they like something or not.

Reminding older children that eating more fresh and less processed food is kinder to the planet. Processed foods use up more energy to make, store and transport.

Give children choices between one vegetable and another. Would they prefer peas or corn, tomatoes or carrots? Cook dishes that can easily include chopped vegetables you can adapt to suit the vegetables your kids like. Many recipes on these pages are designed for this.

A few words about breakfast

A starving brain can't concentrate well - breakfast is brain food and a way to deliver important nutrients like calcium, iron, fibre, as well as some fruit. There's nothing wrong with a good breakfast cereal if you can find one (Weetbix Kids gets the thumbs up from Choice magazine because it's low in sodium, fat and sugar and high in fibre) But there's an alternative - making your own.

Home-made muesli is a no-brainer it's easy to custom-make your own mix of rolled oats, sunflower seeds, pepitas, ground hazelnuts or almonds and dried fruit, choosing ingredients the family likes and storing in a container. Or make a batch of granola (see our recipe). If there's time for a cooked breakfast, porridge with traditional rolled oats is quick and sustaining. Or make French toast with cut-up fruit on the side. No time for breakfast, or your child baulks at breakfast? Have something portable ready home-made fruit or vegetable muffins, yoghurt with fruit or a banana, or a slice of wholegrain bread or a roll.

Packed lunches

The day that Fairfax spoke to Jacqui Deighan, her 12-year-old daughter had left for school with a cheese and salad roll, a container of chopped rockmelon and an apple. Sometimes there are home-made muffins or chopped vegetables with a yoghurt based dip. What belongs in a lunch box is fruit, a protein food cheese, yoghurt, eggs, fish, beans, lean meat or hummus, something starchy like wholegrain bread or pasta. Try wraps, pita breads or rolls if kids get bored with sandwiches. Processed meats like ham and salami are popular but in terms of health they're on the nose besides being high in salt, frequent consumption is linked to bowel cancer. Avoid or limit them, warns the Cancer Council NSW.

Will a chicken or egg sandwich packed at 8am be a bug-fest by lunchtime? Not if the food has been handled and stored correctly in the first place and you use an insulated lunch box with a freezer brick, says Juliana Madden of the Food Safety Council freezer bricks stay colder for a much longer time than frozen drinks. Be sure the bricks are the kind you can't open and be sure to wash them thoroughly before refreezing.

Child water safety at home

Children drown silently, in mere minutes. Despite the best efforts of parents and caregivers to keep their children safe, drowning remains one of major causes of child death in Australia.

Almost all parents have experienced losing sight of their child in a supermarket, in a park, at a backyard party, or even at home for a couple of minutes. If there is a source of open water nearby, this amount of time is all it takes for a child to wander or fall into the water and drown.

Water features and ornamental ponds

These can be beautiful features in a backyard. Small children also find them very attractive, and sadly, children have drowned in these. Even if you don't have children, water features pose a danger to young children coming to your home. If a water feature or pond holds a few centimetres of water or more, cover it with a strong wire mesh.

Water tanks and water-conservation buckets

Water tanks are large, deep sources of water. They should have properly fitting, approved covers.

With the push to conserve water in recent years, many Australian now save their shower water or grey water. Ensure that any open buckets of grey water are emptied straight away and not left around. After heavy rain, check that there are no sources of open water around the yard - even a ditch.

Some households are using wheelie bins to collect rainwater. The lid of a wheelie bin can easily be opened by a child, and a child can fall head first into a body of water where they cannot even turn their bodies around. Wheelie bins are not safe to use for water collection.

In the bathroom

The number of children drowning in the bath is rising. Babies, toddlers and older children can quickly drown in the bath. Children must be supervised during bath time, and never leave older children to watch younger ones.

Empty baths after use and keep bathroom doors closed at all times. Small children have also drowned in toilets.

Nappy buckets

In years past where cloth nappies were universally used, there were cases of babies drowning in nappy buckets used to soak the nappies. These days, after an era of disposables, environmentally-friendly cloth nappies are back on the scene. Many cloth-nappy advocates use the dry-pail method, where nappies do not need to be soaked in water.

Blow-up pools, spas and paddle pools

Check pool-fencing regulations before you purchase a blow-up pool. An above-ground blow-up pool poses the same dangers as any backyard pool and need to be secured from children.

A spa is a like small pool - it needs to have a secure cover when there are not adults in supervision.

Toddler paddle pools are great fun for babies and toddlers to splash in. These pools seem like they hold just a tiny amount of water, but toddlers can and do drown in mere centimetres of water. Paddle pools should be emptied after each use.

Swimming pools

Swimming pools should have proper fencing and a freely swinging gate that returns itself to a securely locked position.

But even with the best fence and gate, young children can still gain access to the pool by pushing chairs, boxes, small tables, play equipment and other materials over to the fence or gate. It would shock many parents to witness the speed at which their small child can push over an object to the pool fence and climb over. Take special care not to place pot plants, chairs, tables or any other objects beside the pool fence. More information on pool fencing can be found at royallifesaving.com.au

Supervision around water at home

Even with the best intentions, no home is completely child-proof 100% of the time. Supervision is the key. Supervision means an adult having a child within their sight.

Learn First Aid and CPR

Even with the best child-proofing and supervision a parent can manage, life sometimes brings tragedies that could not have been foreseen. If you have a pool, you should know CPR. CPR cannot save a child's life in all circumstances, but in the case that CPR would be the difference between losing your child and your child living, wouldn't you want to have learned it? Read our article about first aid.

Hannah's Foundation

Hannah's Foundation provides support for families and friends of drowning victims. It is the only registered charitable institution in Australia for drowning prevention, awareness and family support. The foundation was set up by the parents of two-year-old Hannah Plint, who tragically drowned in her backyard pool on 4 October 2007. Read the story of Hannah and Hannah's Foundation

Anni Taylor

October 27, 2011

http://www.essentialkids.com.au/preschoolers/preschooler-development/child-water-safety-at-home-20081009-4x95.html

Healthy Food Choices for Kids

Left to their own devices, kids will likely eat what's easy. So, in order to help them to consume a healthy, balanced diet, try to stock a variety of good-for-them snacks and pack lunches that include kid-friendly, but healthy items.

Snack Time

Children need to snack. Their little tummies can only hold so much at a time, so snacking, when chosen well, can go a long way to boost their consumption of healthy foods. In general, try to encourage whole foods, such as fresh fruits, vegetables, and other simple, wholesome selections. Whole grain toast or waffles, nut butters, and nutritious smoothies all appeal to kids, while providing their bodies with good fuel for growth and development.

Healthy Choices

Food Labels offer a wealth of information to help you make good choices for your kids (and for yourself!). The sugar and processed flour contained in many products that are marketed to children offer nothing to benefit their nutritional status, and may, in fact, be detrimental to their health. Whole grains are far better than processed grains, and while sweets are fine for occasional treats, they should not be components of a child's daily diet.

Children need a bit of fat in their diet, but it is important to choose healthy fats, such as olive or canola oil. Avoid products that list hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, and if the label mentions trans fats, put it right back on the shelf.

Exercise caution when shopping and learn to choose wisely by reading food labels. It is not enough to look at a product's name to determine its quality. For example, crackers or bread may say that they contain wheat, but until you read the food label, you cannot be sure whether or not you are considering a whole grain product.

Eating Well Away from Home

While you may find it manageable to encourage your kids to eat well when they are at home, you cannot be with them every waking moment. Packing healthy lunches can help, and gives more opportunities to provide nourishing foods. Since your child's lunchbox can hold a limited amount of food, strive for nutrient rich choices that they'll find appealing. Nutritional guidelines for school aged children, set by the British Nutrition Foundation, recommend the following:

Strive for five a day. Be sure to pack those fruits and veggies!
Shoot for 2–3 servings of dairy foods every day.
One third of the daily diet should come from cereal, bread, and potatoes – emphasize whole grains.
Include sensible protein foods, including 2 servings of fish weekly.
Drink a minimum of six glasses of water daily – more for active kids.
Limit sweets and fatty foods to one serving or less per day. Ideally, such foods should be reserved for special occasions.

For advice on healthy eating when you are eating in a pub or restaurant, read our article on Choosing Healthy Foods for Kids When Eating Out on our Kids & Nutrition site.

In their Bellies, Not in the Bin

Remember, no matter how healthy the contents of your children's lunchboxes are, it won't do them any good if they throw the food away rather than eating it. Ask your kids for suggestions, and try to give them a variety of good choices. Stock up on their favourite fruits, veggies, and other healthy foods.

Also, make an effort to keep their lunches interesting. No matter how much your child loves strawberry yoghurt, if you pack it every single day, it will quickly lose its appeal.

Quick Snacks and Lunchbox Treats

Today's busy parents have less time than ever to see that their children eat a well-balanced diet, but there are some convenient foods that are healthy choices. Single serving packages of applesauce (unsweetened, of course), yoghurt, string cheese, whole grain crackers, cut up veggies, and fresh fruit are all easy to prepare and pack. In reality, the healthiest foods are often the simplest. An apple requires nothing more than a washing to make it ready to eat!