Caring for children starts in the womb. During prenatal visits the doctor will recommend to the pregnant woman that she needs to take multivitamins including folic acid and calcium to get a baby with no neural tube deficit and with healthy teeth. Some women need to take bioidentical progesterone in the late pregnancy to help with brain development of the child and prevent premature labor. Babies and young children need their staggered vaccinations in order to prevent the major childhood infections.
Sadly there have been diphtheria, measles and polio cases because of inadequate vaccination programs. Having said that, ask the health care provider to use an individual dose injection (not from a multi-use vial), because the single dose injection is without thimerosal as a preservative, while the multi-use vial contains the mercury preservative that has been discussed for years. Children are extremely sensitive to toxins including mercury from vaccinations, and the most vulnerable ones may come down with autism. This disorder has been on the rise dramatically in the last few decades, and even without exposure to thimerosal a higher proportion of boys than girls may show signs of autism. It is important for parents to be vigilant and seek treatment for those children by a DAN Physician as early as possible. DAN stands for “Defeat Autism Now.”
Children need to grow up in a protected environment. Their TV time should be limited and monitored in terms of content by the parents. Children need play time and time for interaction with adults as well as other children. Many studies have shown that children become blunted from watching more than 1 hour of TV per day and they learn better when they stay away form TV, play, are involved in sports and start reading early. Even children’s TV needs to be limited to just the right dosage.
When a parent wants to decide between engaging their child in physical activity and letting them watch TV, the better choice is physical activity. Monitor for childhood obesity. This is a real threat to the child’s health and future well being as it tends to become a life-long habit. The more children are exposed to watching television, the more they get exposed to food commercials. What flickers across the screen are not commercials for healthy foods, but mostly processed, useless and even unhealthy foods.
Needless to say that processed food is bad not only for kids, but teenagers and parents alike.
More information about children’s health and medical conditions common in childhood can be found here.