Time to Evaluate

Now is a great time to evaluate your children’s school year. Did they meet the goals you hoped for? If not, don’t panic – there’s plenty of time to prepare for the coming school year. Your job is to provide coaching, encouragement, and some discipline.

Schoolwork can easily seem like meaningless drudgery when it’s not connected to real-world outcomes. What does your child most enjoy? Try to tune in to your child’s emotional triggers and find areas of interest that you can use to make learning more enjoyable.

This term’s grades are a done deal. Overcome discouraging grades and get on with developing better study habits over the Summer. Set a few short-term goals that your child can easily reach. Like reading one book each week. Offer rewards for each goal and up the ante if they exceed their goals!

Demonstrate the usefulness of schoolwork by showing how skills learned in school apply to your child’s hobbies or career interests, and help your child to recognize opportunity within adversity.

Build good work habits by scheduling study time in brief, 10 or 20 minute blocks. Staying on top of daily or weekly goals will help your child avoid stress. Encourage them to read or learn about things they are interested in. It won’t seem like schoolwork if they’re learning about stuff they like! Make sure your child has a designated work area away from any distractions like video games, the television, and cell phones.

Work with your child’s teachers and see what areas need improvement. If materials have a way of getting lost, spend an evening creating an efficient and organized place to study. The way to better grades comes much easier with an organized approach!

Help them develop a lifelong love for reading. Let your child see you reading. If they are still young enough – read with them as frequently as you can. You’ll both cherish the time together! Lead by example – your actions speak far more effectively than any words. Learning to read will benefit them for a lifetime!

Step in if your child is spending too much time playing video games or hanging out on Facebook. Encourage balance. Make it easy for them to develop and strengthen their growing bodies! Take them outside and play with them! Your Child's health plays a big role in their success in school and life!

Leading by Example

Do you ever regret buying that big flat-screen - or any television for that matter? TV's are great babysitters. While we adults get stuff done - our children are entertained by their favorite TV shows. And, unfortunately, the incessant ads touting the latest cool things for children.

Too often, children's perceptions of their bodies are partly shaped by unrealistic media images that create false connections between a lean body type or “washboard abs” and subsequent success, sex appeal and self-mastery. The obsession with thinness can also be fed by coaches who stress weight loss, or the age old desire to be attractive and accepted by one’s peers.

How do you teach your children to love themselves and treat their bodies like the perfect little temples they are? How do we teach our beloved youth to enjoy a healthy balance of physical and mental exercise? Hopefully the time they spend in school each week is a good start.

In the end though, it is our responsibility as parents to encourage and somehow sow the seeds. We can show our children the benefits of a healthy lifestyle naturally - by making healthy choices ourselves! If they grow up eating healthy foods instead of the fat food diet we can pick up so easily at the drive-thru window. If they see us and join us in enjoying the time preparing and cooking healthy meals.

We can encourage their interests in sports or any outdoor fun. We can lead by example - showing them how we have fun playing our favorite sports. Or even just taking a walk together or riding bikes. Now that Spring is bringing warmer temperatures to much of North America - we can spend more time enjoying the great outdoors.

Maybe we can teach our children the lifelong habit of healthy living!

Saving Your Family Money on Health Care

The whole Family benefits from healthy habits. Make fitness a family affair! Most health and education experts would agree that healthy habits are best learned at an early age. Encourage your children or favorite young ones to join in the fun of sports and better fitness. Teach your children at an early age the life long value of sports!

Give them a healthy head start. Children should be encouraged to get involved in sports and physical activity early in their precious young years. Show them. Get out there and play with them. Childhood goes by way too fast as it is. Enjoy their early years with them in healthy pursuits.

Good Health and Fitness will reduce the likelihood of developing a number of health-related conditions. In addition, sports help build important social skills such as determination, cooperation and problem solving.

Leading a healthy lifestyle helps boost self-esteem. Exercise and sports participation offers all kids positive feelings about body image, improved self-esteem, experiences of competency and success and increased self-confidence.

A Healthy body makes it easier for children to enjoy a better balanced mind and body. Exercise and sports participation can enhance the physical and mental health of adolescent girls and boys.

Sports relieves stress and the blues. Physical activity can help reduce symptoms of stress and depression among all children. Lets give our children the greatest blessings possible - lots of love, and fun! Fun in the form of play and sports.

Sports are educational assets. Many high school athletes report higher grades and standardized test scores and lower dropout rates, and are more likely to go on to college than their non-athletic peers.

Athletes tend to live longer and healthier lives. Regular physical activity in adolescence can reduce a child's risk of obesity, which can lower adult onset of heart disease, osteoporosis and certain cancers. Research proves physical activity does improve quality of life.

Lets give our kids the best quality of life we can. And it doesn't have to cost a small fortune. Running, jumping rope, riding bikes and countless other fun activities are inexpensive and good for the whole family!

Get healthy and start saving your money! Make the most of your precious family time. Spring will soon be here. What a perfect time to have more fun with your children or little loved ones. So turn off that TV, get outside and do something healthy and fun! Teach your children healthy habits!