Is Thirteen Too Old for a Pediatrician?

A board-certified, properly trained pediatrician offers the best medical care for all teens. Unlike other primary care providers, a pediatrician spends three to four years or more of intense study and preparation to take care of all kids — including adolescents. None of the other primary care doctors has this level of education and training in dealing with the unique problems of teenagers. The massive physical and emotional changes brought on by puberty aren’t seen in any other age group. Teens, despite their protestations, are not young adults — and there’s no benefit to switching from a pediatrician to an adult’s physician until they are!

Protect Your Family From Fire

It’s November. The leaves are changing, temperatures are falling and that means 3 things:

1. That it’s time to change your clocks back an hour,
2. That it’s time to change the batteries in your smoke detectors in your home and
3. It’s time to make an evacuation plan.

Ask yourself when was the last time you checked and changed the batteries in your smoke detectors? If you can’t remember then it has been too long. It is estimated that every year in the United States, about 3,000 people lose their lives in residential fires from inhalation of smoke and toxic gases so having a properly working smoke detector is one of the best and least expensive ways to alert everyone in the home of a potentially deadly fire. Most people who lose their lives to smoke and gas inhalation do so in their sleep. Children and the elderly are especially known to sleep through smoke and other alarms and are at greater risk, so proper placement of your smoke alarms is very important. Protect your family! Smoke alarms should be placed on every level of your home and in and around all bedrooms to best alert sleeping occupants that there is smoke and smoke detector batteries should be checked monthly and changed every 6 months.

Having talked about placing smoke detectors where they need to go, what happens when there is an emergency and the detectors start sounding? Every home should have an evacuation plan known by everyone in the home. We all remember in school having the fire drill where we walked outside to a place and waited to be called back into class, well that is the same thing that should be done in your home. Everyone in the home should have a clear understanding of where to meet and how to get there in case of a fire. The location can be anywhere far enough away from the home to be easy to get to and be safely away from danger like a tree or a mailbox for example. If you have younger children this is a great exercise to do with them as they can map out and color a plan to keep and learn. Some houses will require extra planning and preparation because of things like multiple stories and occupants who may require assistance. Items such as fire escape ladders and window indicator stickers can help occupants evacuate from upper floors safely and help fire crews locate individuals and pets that need help evacuating the home.

With over 75% of all fire fatalities occurring in home fires, the need for proper protection and planning cannot be overstated. The winter months are fast approaching and the risk for home fires increases as the temperatures decrease so please remember to unplug heating devices, not to overload outlets and keep fireplaces and chimney’s clean.

There is a saying that says” chance favors the prepared”. The time it takes to prepare is minimal and working together as a family can be fun and educational…so have fun and be prepared.

One Million Safer Kids…begins with ONE

What if any of us saw a child about to be harmed? We’d want to do something to help that child! None of us has the power to make others stop doing dangerous things, but we each have the power to take action today that will make kids safer.

Kidpower, a global leader in personal safety education, including bullying prevention, child abuse prevention, and stranger awareness, is inviting all caring adults to join our “One Million Safer Kids” campaign. Our goal is simple: to make one million young people safer in five years or less as a result of greater awareness, knowledge, and skills.

After providing twenty-two years of safety education through Kidpower to over two million people around the world, we’ve seen again and again how a few simple actions can protect young people from most attempts of bullying, violence, and abuse. No matter how long I do this work, my heart still breaks each time I hear of a child who has experienced misery and trauma that was preventable!

The One Million Safer Kids Campaign is happening in classrooms, parks, playgrounds, and living rooms around the world. Our Kidpower staff, board members, and volunteers are coming together with parents, educators, and community leaders to take simple steps to create access to age-appropriate personal safety skills and information that can help prevent children and teens from being abducted, abused, threatened, attacked, or bullied.

A world with One Million Safer Kids is a better world for all of us. It is a world with more joyful playgrounds, classrooms, and neighborhoods. It is a world with more relationships strengthened by strong boundary setting skills. It’s a world with less trauma and injury. It is a world where children feel safer because they are empowered. The potential ripple effect of One Million Safer Kids is both staggering and achievable.

By teaching one child one skill, sharing one article with one parent, arranging one workshop for one scout troop, or giving one donation to bring skills to a child in need, one adult makes a lifetime of difference to the young people made safer as a result.

What Can YOU Do to Help Create a World with One Million Safer Kids?

• Teach a child a safety skill. It only takes a few minutes and knowing what to do could spare a child misery or even save a child’s life!
• Share information with someone who can use it to keep a child safer. The Kidpower Safety Tips can be posted on school and youth group websites The Kidpower Virtual Library has 100+ free articles. Share them with a parent, a teacher, an educator, a coach, etc. These are easy to access from: http://www.kidpower.org/millionsafer/resources
• Learn more, then show others what you learned. Subscribe to the Kidpower e-newsletter, read an article or one of Kidpower’s books, or take a personal safety workshop for yourself. Through all our efforts, we will educate One Million Safer Kids.
• Like our “One Million Safer Kids” with Kidpower page on Facebook.

To join the One Million Safer Kids campaign, visit http://www.kidpower.org/millionsafer/and sign up in the “Count me in” box. When you sign on to Kidpower’s One Million Safer Kids campaign, you will receive a Tools to Live By mini-poster featuring Kidpower core principles, available for immediate download. And, you will receive ideas about ways to teach safety skills, success stories, and new resources.

11 “Action Signs” Help You Identify if Your Child Needs Help

Cancer has early warning signs. In fact many childhood illnesses have signs that can be detected early, provided that you know what to look for. But what about mental health??

…How do you know if your child is in trouble?

Last Friday, the Mayo Clinic published a tool kit designed to help parents, teachers and the medical professionals identify early on when a child needs professional help. The 11 “action signs” are written in plain English and were created with the input of over 6,000 US children and parents to make sure they were simple and easy to understand.

According to the U.S. Surgeon General, “confusion by parents and doctors is one reason why more than half of children with serious mental disorders go untreated, and also why healthy children are misdiagnosed with disorders they don’t have”. The problem most parents face is simple: If I don’t know what I’m looking for, how do I know when I’ve found it?

“We needed to do something to help flesh out people’s understanding about what it meant when a child really did have a problem,” said Gary Blau, a clinical psychologist with the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Put simply, as a parent you need to be able to tell the difference between normal childhood moodiness and situations that are require immediate attention. Unfortunately it’s not always easy to interpret what your child is trying to tell you. Hopefully, these guidelines will help:

When children need help

The tool kit indicates children are at risk when they:

• Feel very sad or withdrawn for more than two weeks.
• Seriously try to harm or kill themselves, or make plans to do so.
• Experience sudden overwhelming fear for no reason, sometimes with a racing heart or fast breathing.
• Are involved in many fights, use a weapon, or want to badly hurt others.
• Display severe out-of-control behavior that can hurt themselves or others.
• Are not eating, shows signs of throwing up, or using laxatives to make themselves lose weight.
• Have intense worries or fears that get in the way of daily activities.
• Demonstrate extreme difficulty in concentrating or staying still that puts you in physical danger or causes school failure.
• Repeatedly use drugs or alcohol.
• Show severe mood swings that cause problems in relationships.
• Display drastic changes in behavior or personality.

The new guidelines are endorsed by the U.S. Surgeon General, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Although Mayo researchers say that their toolkit won’t be able to identify every child with a mental health problem, they estimate that it will identify at least half of the children who have undiagnosed conditions.

And that would be a very good start.

****************************************************************************************************************************

Reference:

• Mayo guide helps parents spot teens’ disorders – Lorna Benson, October 31, 2011
  
• Mayo Clinic list helps spot mental illnesses in kids – Jeremy Olson, October 28, 2011
• The “Action Signs” Project – Mayo Clinic Research Institute October 28, 2011
  

November 5th Sensory Friendly Film: Puss in Boots

For those of you not familiar with ”Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings“, AMC Entertainment (AMC) and the Autism Society have teamed up to bring families affected by autism and other disabilities a special opportunity to enjoy their favorite “family-friendly” films in a safe and accepting environment.

The movie auditoriums will have their lights turned up and the sound turned down. Families will be able to bring in snacks to match their child’s dietary needs (i.e. gluten-free, casein-free, etc.), there are no advertisements or previews before the movie and it’s totally acceptable to get up and dance, walk, shout, talk to each other…and even sing – in other words, AMC’s “Silence is Golden®” policy will not be enforced during movie screenings unless the safety of the audience is questioned.

To quote our Special Needs Parenting Expert Rosie Reeves: “It can be challenging enough to bring a child to a movie theater – they are dark, the sound is very loud, there are tempting stairs and rails and they are expected to sit still and stay quiet. When a child has special needs all these elements and many others can prove too daunting to even attempt such an outing. And yet getting out, being with the community and sharing in an experience with an audience can be invaluable for just such children – and their caregivers, too”.

On November 5th at 10am local time, “Puss in Boots” will be screened as part of the “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” program. Tickets are $4 to $6 depending on the location. To find a theatre near you, here is a list of AMC theatres nationwide participating in this fabulous program.

Coming December 3rd: The Muppets

***********************************************************************************************************************

Editor’s note: Puss in Boots is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America. Please check the IMDB Parent’s Guide for a more detailed description of Puss in Boots to determine if it is right for you and your child.