How to Keep Your Child Healthy Valley Stream NY

Steps

1. Make sure your child gets enough sleep. Children need about 10 hours of sleep per night. Very young children also benefit from naps during the day. Make bedtime special with a routine that includes bathing, teeth brushing, getting ready for bed, and reading a story in bed. Choose relaxing or happy stories... stay away from scary stories just before bed.
2. Make sure your child eats plenty of healthy food and drinks water every day. You can help your child develop good eating habits by modeling good eating yourself. Also, have your help with meal preparation as much as possible. It is quality time together and your child is learning.
3. Keep junk foods to a minimum. Birthday cake at a party is fine, but cake and ice cream every day is not. Empty calories in soft drinks and fatty foods promotes obesity, which causes all kinds of health problems.
4. Kids should play outside every day, if possible.
5. Make sure kids get plenty of exercise. Enrolling in team sports, karate, gymnastics, or swim team ensure regular exercise.
6. Keep kids away from smokers. Second-hand smoke can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory problems.
7. Promote good personal habits. Make sure children always wash hands after using the restroom, before eating, before helping with food, and after wiping their nose. Teach them how to blow their nose into a tissue. Teach them to cough into the crook of their elbow instead of out into the open air. These measures may do more to protect those around them than protect themselves...but maybe their good habits will spread to their peers.
8. Properly clean and bandage cuts and scrapes when they occur to prevent infection.
9. Take them to see a physician for annual checkups and get recommended immunizations.
10. If they are sick, do not send them to school. You may wish to limit their exposure to friends who are sick with communicable illness.
11. Keep unnecessary stress to a minimum. Take time to talk with your child every day so that they feel comfortable letting you know what's on their mind.
12. Protect your child from hazards inside the home, such as unsafe cleaning products, medicines, swimming pools, sharp tools, and unsafe furnishings.
13. Teach your child to behave safely in the world. For example, they should learn how to cross the street properly.

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