Happy New Year 2019! Read our top three posts of 2018

celebrate our top 3 posts

photo from pixabay

Happy 2019! As 2018 comes to a close, we invite you to read our most popular three posts of the year.

Here they are, in order of number of hits:

#1: It’s a gas! your young infant’s burps and farts

#2: It’s no laughing matter: another tween game in town

#3: Kids with “pink eye” CAN attend daycare, and other updated school exclusion recommendations

We wish all of our Two Peds readers and all of your children a Happy, Healthy, and Peaceful 2019.

Sincerely,

Julie Kardos, MD and Naline Lai, MD

©2019 Two Peds in a Pod®

 

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January 1, 2019 by

Help prevent your teen from playing risky games

Prevent your teen from taking unnecessary risks

Some games are riskier than others and it’s hard for teens to tell the difference.

Remember playing “Truth or Dare” as a kid? Some of the dares were silly, some potentially embarrassing, but some were downright risky. Now our children are playing potentially dangerous games. How can you prevent your teen from taking unnecessary risks?

To understand why kids would play risky games such as the Cinnamon Challenge or the Laughing Game, let’s step into the mindset of a teenager. Don’t let their adult-like appearances deceive you. Based on what we know about teenage brain development, teens are more likely to misinterpret or mislead social cues and emotions and to engage in risky behavior. Even though your teens may be taller than you, their deductive reasoning skills are not fully developed until around 25 years old. They have difficulty thinking through long term plans.

Take a simple example of studying. If they stay up very late studying, they do not consider that this will cause impairment in cognition the next day and consequently they are forced to stay up Continue Reading

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November 30, 2018 by

Coughing out germs? Natural remedies for kids

It would be nice to have some natural remedies for kids when they "cough out germs."

“coughing out germs”

Recently a 6-year-old patient handed me this drawing of “a person coughing out germs.”

The artwork reminds us that a cough can be a good thing. A cough dislodges mucus from the airway and can help prevent pneumonia.

However, coughs can spread germs and make kids feel plenty uncomfortable.  And, frustrating for parents, many over-the-counter medicines are not recommended for kids.

Looking for natural remedies for kids? Look no further than your kitchen.

Julie Kardos, MD and Naline Lai, MD

©2018 Two Peds in a Pod®

 

 

 

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November 27, 2018 by

Non-screen based holiday gift ideas for children of all ages

non-screen based holiday gift ideas

Holiday gift ideas!

From toddlers to teens, use of tablets, smart phones, and game systems abound. With Black Friday fast approaching, it’s easy to run out of non-screen based holiday gift ideas.

In our gift ideas post, we suggest presents for children of all ages, from newborn to teen. You’ll find non-screen based fun gifts to encourage your children’s motor, intellectual, and emotional growth.

If you really run out of ideas even after reading the post, you can just wrap random objects in layers of wrapping paper and have your children unwrap them. Maybe it’ll be as intriguing to your kids in real life as on YouTube.

Happy shopping!

Julie Kardos, MD and Naline Lai, MD

©2018 Two Peds in a Pod®

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November 15, 2018 by

Can’t fall asleep? Relaxation techniques to quell anxiety

relaxation techniques

I love kids who worry. If they didn’t worry, they wouldn’t care, and if they didn’t care, nothing would ever get done. But sometimes, those worries grow bigger than your child and threaten to engulf them. Like any skill, you can teach your child to calm their mind and settle their emotions. Helping them with relaxation techniques as they fall asleep will translate into the ability for your child to calm themselves during the day.

When your child was a baby you would rock them, sing to them, and maybe give a pacifier. But now that they are older, other calming modalities are available. Continue Reading

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October 28, 2018 by

How to get rid of Halloween Candy

How to get rid of Halloween Candy

After the fun

You poured out all of your two liter soda bottles, replaced all of the potato chip snacks with fruit, and signed up all of your children for winter sports.  Just when you thought your family’s exercise level and food choices were perfect, along comes Halloween, that fabulous candy-filled holiday, to thwart your efforts. Here are some ways to keep the Halloween candy deluge down to a trickle:

-Buy back the candy with toys or money. The Halloween Buy Back Program was started by dentist Chris Cammer in 2005. Traditionally, dentists buy back candy from kids and usually send the candy to United States troops. Find local participating dentists and learn more about the program here.

-Have the Sweet-Tooth Fairy or Switch Witch™ come overnight, pick up the candy, and leave a present behind.

-Let your children know Halloween (and most holidays) lasts only one day. Live it up on Halloween, then dump the extra sweets into the trashcan the next day. If you hear whining, remind them that until summer, holidays come at a pace of about once a month. Additionally, they may attend an awful lot of birthday parties in between. A parental saying you can recite is, “It’s not a treat if you have something all the time.”

-If you decide to keep a small bag of candy around, watch out, your children will want to eat some daily. Candy becomes an ongoing “must have.” Instead, designate a day of the week that you will let them have some candy such as Candy Friday or Sweet Saturday. If the kids whine for candy on any other day of the week, you can say, ”Sorry, it’s not Sweet Saturday.”

-One parent told me she discourages her kids from eating too much Halloween candy by making their dental appointments on November 1—the day after Halloween.

As final justification for getting rid of the abundance of candy after Halloween, Dr. Kardos and I have heard more than a few parents say, “If I don’t get the candy out of my house, I’ll be the one who ends up eating it all.”

Now, that’s a scary Halloween thought.

Naline Lai, MD and Kardos, MD
© 2018 Two Peds in a Pod®

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October 14, 2018 by

Oh no, it’s the back to school cold!

back to school cold

Mr. Germ was excited to join the class this year as mystery reader until he saw the hand sanitizer on the back to school supply list.

Your child went back to school a couple of weeks ago, you’ve been to back to school night, and now, right on time, many of your children have… THE BACK TO SCHOOL COLD. What to do with this cold?

Whether caught from the toddler room or from the middle school hallway, most back to school colds look the same. Your child will start with a day of extra grumpiness or vague complaints about feeling tired or having a sore throat, followed by a runny nose Continue Reading

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September 24, 2018 by