Monthly Archives: November 2017

Keeping Your Child Healthy During the Winter

 

Whilst it is never possible to completely prevent your child from getting sick during the winter months, there are a number of things that you can do that will certainly help to prevent it. Most winter viruses are considered to be airborne, and so any close contact with somebody that is already sick could be enough to make your child sick this winter. There are a number of steps that you can take to help your child fight against illness this winter, keeping them as healthy as can be.

Preventing Child Sickness

It is almost certain that the majority of children will at least suffer from a slight cold this winter, but there are a number of things that you can do to help them in the best way possible:

Encourage your child not to touch their face

When a child touches their face, they could potentially be directing germs on their hands through the eyes or nose to their mucous membranes. To ensure that germs do not get absorbed into the bloodstream of your child, you could teach them to use a tissue or their sleeve when making contact with their face. It is also important that they use a tissue when sneezing or coughing, catching any germs and keeping themselves clean.

Keep your child’s hands clean

Washing their hands on a regular basis is a very effective way of reducing colds and the flu. By ensuring that your child regularly washes their hands with soap at the right times, such as after the toilet, before and after eating and even as soon as they return home, they will be preventing sickness. Any teachers or child minders should also be informed of this technique so that they can ensure it is followed through by your child.

Natural boosts to your child’s immune system

By giving your child natural foods and encouraging them to eat healthily, they will be getting the nutrients that they need, boosting their immune system. Along with healthy eating, a good amount of sleep is also the key to boosting the immune system, so plenty of sleep is also needed to prevent sickness in your child this winter.

What You should do if your Child Becomes Ill

It is inevitable that your child will attract a cold this winter, despite all of your efforts to prevent it from happening. Therefore, it is very important to know what to do when they do become ill, so that you can make them feel better and actually help them to become better as soon as possible.

Keeping clean

Ensuring that your child washes their hands and blows their nose is important at all stages of the process. By keeping clean, not only is the spreading of germs minimised, but the ill feeling and any additional mucous produced by your child can also be reduced.

Ensure that your child gets some rest

Although it is typically a tough task to get your child to stay still, getting some rest really is exactly what they need. The more rest and sleep that your child gets, the sooner they will begin to feel better. If sleep and lying in bed becomes too difficult, they can also sit quietly on the sofa or at the table with a colouring book, a puzzle or just simply watching a film.

Give your child the right things to eat and drink

When a child is sick, they lose a significant amount of bodily fluids, particularly if they have a fever or diarrhoea. If this is the case, water, milk or juice can help to replenish their fluid levels. If they are not open to the idea of drinking a high amount of fluid, you could give them juicy fruits or ice pops to eat.

Despite there being no evidence that vitamin C can be used to prevent colds, there is proof that it can help to reduce the severity of the symptoms, helping to shorten the length of your child’s cold. Children should have no more than 500mg of vitamin C a day.

Make use of a humidifier

A humidifier can really help your child at night or during naps due to the moist air from the humidifier helping to thin your child’s mucous secretions, which will calm their cough and relieve congestion. By using a humidifier, their breathing can become easier which will help to make them feel much more comfortable and allowing them to get some rest.

Take good care of your child

When your child is ill, it is important to know exactly when to call the doctor, especially as some cases can lead to problems that require more complex treatment. If your child has ear or face pain, trouble breathing, a sore throat and fever combination, symptoms of dehydration or an extremely high body temperature, you should consider calling the doctor.

One thing that will certainly help your child to feel better is to take extra care and go the extra mile for them. By ensuring that they have everything that they need and taking the time to snuggle up together, you will be making your child feel much better.

Author Bio

Babaloo are baby and children’s clothes retailer, with a wide range of clothing and accessories for children including boys and girls clothes, baby buggies, feeding accessories, bedding and much more. 

Are Fantasy Hair Colors Safe for My Child?

No matter where you live, you will see girls (and some boys!) of all ages walking around with hair colored in some of the most unusual tones. From bright neon colors to pale pastels, these are referred to as fantasy colors and are currently gaining in popularity. This is one trend which has been around for quite a while and it doesn’t look like it will be going anywhere anytime soon. If your teenager, or pre-teen, comes home insisting on a fantasy color, you should probably understand a little bit about what they are so that you can make the determination as to whether or not they are safe for your child.

How Old Is Your Child?

The first thing to consider is the age of your child. As your child grows, their hair texture and color will see significant changes. This is due to natural biological changes within the human body and obviously nothing to be concerned with. In fact, many parents love looking back at the different stages of their children’s development to see just how their kids have changed over the years. Hair is one of the changes most notable.

However, this leads to some concern when it comes to chemicals. Most cosmetologists will not use strong chemicals on pre-teens or younger for a number of reasons. In days gone by, perms were highly fashionable and many women attempted to give perms to little girls but with devastating effects. Hair would split and break and some kids looked more like a walk-on for a fright flick than a stylish little girl with curly hair. Remember, young hair is virgin hair and it may be very fragile. If you are going to let a pre-teen child use color, always opt for temporary products that will easily wash out within a few shampoos.

Short Hair Lends Itself Better to Temporary Color

Since you are advised not to bleach a child’s hair, short hair holds color better than long hair. It is easier to apply as well. You will also want to be aware of the natural color of your child’s hair. Light hair is easier to color than dark hair if you won’t be using peroxide to lift it. Today’s fashions seen on popular online magazines and blogs like My New Hair Styles show an increasing number of girls wearing styles like stacked bobs which can be colored around the contour or in layers in keeping with the stack. In either case, short to medium length hair is the ideal length for experimenting with fantasy colors.

Fantasy colors also tend to be safer for kids because of the danger chemicals pose to sensitive skin on the face and in the eyes, should the product drip down below the hairline. While it is never good to get any foreign substance in your eyes, fantasy colors are formulated with chemicals that aren’t overly harsh. This means they will pose less danger for a child than peroxide activated permanent or semi-permanent colors. Is it safe to use fantasy colors on your child? If you know what you are doing and the child is old enough, there should be no problems at all.

Reading the Label Will Save Your Life

Do You Know What You are Putting into Your Body?

Food manufacturers and packers have obligations to provide certain information on their labels. But it is up to us to read it.

We’ve all been there. You get back from work with a thumping headache and a million things to do around the house. Open the kitchen cupboard, grab a couple of pain killers, slosh them down with a glass of water and wait for them to kick in so that you can do what you need to do.

So what was that you just ingested? The astonishing answer is that only three in ten of us have the vaguest idea about what we are putting into our bodies in these kinds of circumstances, even though the information is there for everyone to see on the printed labels. You don’t even need to delve into that little information sheet that everyone throws straight into the recycling.

The survey

A survey of 45 subjects was carried out by NPR, an American broadcaster that is well aware of the old adage that if you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer. A few months ago, they brought us the news that seven percent of adult Americans genuinely believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

On this occasion, though, it is really no laughing matter. Tylenol is far and away the most popular painkiller in the USA. About 50 million Americans use it every week. Yet the majority have no idea what is in it.

A mere 31 percent knew that the active ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen. The majority of those surveyed thought it contained either ibuprofen or aspirin.

A similar study was carried out as part of a community survey by a pharmacist in Pennsylvania. This elicited identical findings, along with the even more alarming fact that less than 50 percent were able to identify the correct maximum daily dose of 4,000 mg.

Does it matter?

If consumers neither know nor care about what they are taking and the potential consequences, the results can prove deadly. Sadly, this is demonstrated in the Tylenol example, where almost half of all liver failures in the US are related to acetaminophen overdose.

Always read the label

The phrase itself sounds like something so obvious you should be telling it to your five year old, yet while it is easy to bash our friends from across the pond, intuitively, we know that if 70 percent of Americans know next to nothing about what they are putting into their bodies, the statistics for the UK are going to be there or thereabouts.

The food safety and labeling industries are putting more and more effort into providing meaningful and useful information, not just on over the counter drugs, but also on everything from chocolate bars to breakfast cereals and from smoothies to bottles of beer.

One thing they can’t do, however, is stand over us and make us read what is there. It behooves us all to be better informed about exactly what we are putting into ourselves and our children.

A Great Time Together: Ways to Plan a Successful Family Vacation

 

A family trip is a perfect opportunity to spend some quality time together and enjoy each other’s company, but there are a few things you might need to do when planning your vacation so that the time away is a great success.

Here are some tips to help you improve your chances of enjoying an amazing vacation that everyone will remember for all the right reasons, including why it helps to talk about your plans, a good mix and match strategy, plus a sensible idea to give everyone some space.

Get the kids involved

Unless you have very young children it is always a good idea to involve your children in the planning of your family trip. Depending on the age of your child you could take many different trips. Younger children might want a more relaxing time, a safer time for them, while older children might want to take a more exciting trip. Considering trips like white water rafting in Colorado or zip-lining would bring the whole family a lot closer from the experience.

There are various good reasons why that is a sensible strategy. When kids feel included in the planning stage of the trip they will have a much better understanding and appreciation of what’s involved and they get a chance to say what they would like to do while you are away.

The sense of anticipation and the chance to talk together about your plans can be the start of the bonding process that will continue into the holiday itself and by getting everyone involved you can quickly identify any potential issues before you finalize your plans.

Balancing everyone’s needs

A family trip has to be just that, a vacation that doesn’t just suit the interests and needs of one person but an adventure that manages to find a suitable balance between what everyone might want individually.

If you line up a holiday that doesn’t offer much for the kids in terms of entertainment and facilities that would not be a smart move, but equally, arranging a vacation that is solely focused on keeping the kids entertained is going to leave you as the parents feeling underwhelmed by the experience and wanting more.

Talk about all aspects of the trip as a family and if you are booking accommodation, like the Fairfield Inn and Suites Marriott, for example, and making plans for sightseeing trips while you are in the area, share the excitement and the anticipation with each other.

Leave some time in the day

Despite the fact that you are all going on a family trip you don’t have to spend every minute of the day with each other, especially if you have some different things you would like to do for part of the day.

If mom likes the idea of a relaxing morning spent at the hotel without rushing out of the door then there is no reason why you couldn’t schedule an adventure with dad taking the kids somewhere for the part of the day and then meeting up later.

As well as giving everyone a chance to get a bit of a mini-break you don’t have to feel that every part of the day has to be planned, or you could end up returning from the trip feeling like you haven’t rested at all.