6 Bike Safety Lessons to Get You Ready to Roll

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As parents, we are all concerned about keeping our kids safe: safe from strangers, safe from cuts and bruises, safe from the monsters they think hide under their beds. While we should be careful not to overwhelm our little ones with our anxieties, it is important to teach our children about playing safely outside.

When it comes to bike riding, safety is especially important. Did you know that only about 45% of children under the age of 14 wear a helmet while riding? Dr. Deb Lonzer recommends putting a helmet on your children the first time they climb on a tricycle. It’ll become second nature and will save you a lot of hassle down the road. It’s a simple rule really: no helmet, no wheels.

Football, concussions, and the growing brain

If you were told someone was going to punch your son in the head as hard as they could twice a month for a year, would you let them do it? What if they got a cool jacket in return? What if it would make them more popular? Would you realize that a punch done right can fly at 25mph? Would you sign a medical waiver so the puncher would not be responsible?

If you let your kids play football you may be doing something very similar.

How to survive spring-time with allergy-prone kids

Most parents can’t wait for the temperatures to reach 55. They spend the winter daydreaming of warmer temperatures, of sending their kids outdoors to play for hours at a time. When the snow becomes rain and one can make out the faint outlines of buds beginning to form on tree branches, many can’t wait for the greening that’s about to occur. Unless of course, you or your child has spring-time allergies.

The Effects of Multi-tasking on Family Life

Put down that smartphone (after you read this!)

Over time, multi-tasking has become the norm for most of us in our daily lives. Whether in work, school, or even at home, we’ve become so busy that we rarely devote our full attention to one task. We work out while we catch up on our favorite television shows; we supervise our playing kids while checking our email; we cook dinner while helping our kids with their homework; we take business calls from the hockey rink on Saturday mornings, etc. Multi-tasking, a skill intended to make people’s lives more efficient does seem to have its advantages. Dr. Deb Lonzer notes that multi-tasking helps us to maintains connections and allows us to collate more and more information; but she also notes that studies looking at the effectiveness of multi-tasking shows that it doesn’t improve long-term productivity…and all of the unnecessary information it allows us to cram into our brains may take up space we could better utilize for important memories.

Teething symptoms: Dr. Lonzer sorts fact and fiction

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Perhaps no milestone is as anticipated as the day your child’s first tooth breaks through. Chances are, your baby has been a drooly, cranky mess for months before the first specks of white appear on that gum line. Parents often wonder if their baby is sick when they are teething, and, whether it’s your first baby or your fifth, some of the symptoms can be confusing.

Dr. Lonzer chimes in on toddler nutrition

The toddler years are a time of transition, and according to Dr. Deb Lonzer, a time when kids need to learn to meet their nutritional needs by self-feeding on a wide variety of foods. Gone are the days when you could simply give your infant breast or bottle and be confident that she’d be getting enough of the nutrients she needs to sustain healthy growth and development. Now, you’re watching your child throw food from her highchair, put her bowl of spaghetti atop her head while singing her favorite song, and wondering how she’ll possibly get enough food INSIDE her mouth to keep growing.

The importance of bedtime routines: Are later high school start times really the answer to sleepy teens?

A New York Times article documenting the benefits of later high school start times is circulating in social media. While I spend my mornings (especially on the weekends) wishing my young children would start sleeping past 6:00am, as  a pediatrician, I know that as soon as they do, our weekday mornings will become a whole different kind of crazy.

When peer pressure goes viral

Peer pressure 2.0

Peer pressure has been around as long as there have been teenagers. For centuries, parents have been concerned about who their kids’ friends are, where they spend their time, and what they are willing to do to fit in. Now, nearly every teen has access to social media in some way, whether it’s at school, at the library, on a home computer, on a laptop in their bedrooms, or on their smartphones 24/7.

7 Ways to Help Your Child Learn to Read for Read Across America Day

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It’s Read Across America day, and Dr. Deb Lonzer is chiming to promote cuddling up to read a good book with your children every day.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), “a family routine of daily reading with young children contributes significantly to their later literacy skills and success in school. In addition, reading books with children is an interactive activity that promotes their social and emotional development”.

According to Dr. Lonzer, one of the most important ways to promote your child’s literacy is to have books in the house, whether this means many trips to the library, developing your own collection of children’s books, or perhaps both.

7 ways to help your child learn to read:

1. Run your finger under the words as you read to show your child that the print carries the story.
2. Use funny voices and animal noises. Do not be afraid to ham it up! This will help your child get excited about the story.
3. Stop to look at the pictures; ask your child to name things she sees in the pictures. Talk about how the pictures relate to the story.
4. Invite your child to join in whenever there is a repeated phrase in the text.
5. Show your child how events in the book are similar to events in your child’s life.
6. If your child asks a question, stop and answer it. The book may help your child express her thoughts and solve her own problems.
7. Keep reading to your child even after she learns to read. A child can listen and understand more difficult stories than she can read on her own. (Thanks healthychildren.org!)

Looking for a good book for your toddler or preschooler? Have you checked out Dr. Lonzer’s book, The Flushville Four? Your kids will love the characters; the illustrations will win you over; and your kid just might start to show an interest in using that potty!

Children Develop Eating Disorders Earlier than You Might Think

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“Last week,” Cleveland Clinic pediatrician Dr. Deb Lonzer shares, “my kindergartener came home from school saying that one of his classmates ‘stuck her finger down her throat and made herself puke’.” Eating disorders begin much earlier than we think. Obesity has become much more prevalent in children and adolescents over the last decade. As a result, parents, educators, and the media discuss exercise and weight loss more than ever before. Unfortunately, all this talk doesn’t necessarily lead to healthier kids. We don’t know exactly what causes eating disorders; they appear to be caused by the perfect storm of physical, developmental, and emotional factors. Does this little girl have an eating disorder? Dr. Lonzer says, “It’s a possibility; but, it’s more likely that she’s copying the behavior of an older sibling or parent in her house.”

While most people generally assume that eating disorders primarily affect adolescent girls and young women, boys and young men are increasingly afflicted as well.

Are you concerned that your child may have or develop an eating disorder? Dr. Lonzer recommends watching for some of the following behaviors and symptoms of eating disorders:

• Eating tiny portions or refusing to eat
• Intense fear of being fat
• Distorted body image
• Strenuous exercising (for more than an hour)
• Hoarding and hiding food
• Eating in secret
• Disappearing after eating—often to the bathroom
• Large changes in weight, both up and down
• Social withdrawal
• Depression
• Irritability
• Hiding weight loss by wearing bulky clothes
• Little concern over extreme weight loss
• Stomach cramps
• Menstrual irregularities—missing periods
• Dizziness
• Feeling cold all the time
• Sleep problems
• Cuts and calluses across the top of finger joints (from sticking finger down throat to cause vomiting)
• Dry skin
• Puffy face
• Fine hair on body
• Thinning of hair on head, dry and brittle hair
• Cavities, or discoloration of teeth, from vomiting
• Muscle weakness
• Yellow skin
• Cold, mottled hands and feet or swelling of feet

If you suspect that your child might have an eating disorder, you should contact your pediatrician right away.

If you are concerned that your child might be overweight, provide healthier snacks and increase their activity levels. Parents should never, ever talk to their children about their weight, or discuss it with other adults when the children are around. Even when kids don’t appear to be listening, they are. If you are on a diet, that’s your business. You can explain that you didn’t buy Oreos this week because they don’t make you feel as good as an apple, but keep the diet and weight-loss talk between grown-ups.