All Search Results
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How do you choose which hospital is best equipped to care for your family?
All it takes is a drive down Interstate 4 to get a glimpse of the healthcare landscape in Central Florida. You’ll see a variety of billboards that boast the expertise of different hospitals, urgent care facilities and medical practices. Sometimes it feels like everywhere you look somebody is trying to sell you some kind of health-related product or service.
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Should I let my teen use creatine?
If your teenager is involved in youth sports, you’ll likely hear about the nutritional supplement creatine. This product, available in powder or capsule form, is very popular among high school athletes. Studies have demonstrated that approximately 35 percent of middle and high school boys use creatine to improve their athletic performance.
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Performing Surgery in the Womb
A recent article in The New York Times brought awareness to the burgeoning field of surgery being performed on patients still inside the womb. The article chronicles the path of Joshuwa and Lexi Royer, a young couple from Texas who found out at their 13-week ultrasound that their son had spina bifida. As it turned out, the defect was severe, so the Royer’s traveled to Houston to hear more about the option of surgery. -
The Lost Art of Play
As a parent, you want the best for your child, but sometimes it is hard to know what is best when it comes to balancing scheduled activities and play time. While activities such as little league and music groups can provide children with structure, discipline, and increasing independence, over-scheduling can leave kids feeling anxious and pressured to constantly perform. Free play is not only a time when children can relax and have fun but it is vital to a child’s growth and development. In the hustle and bustle of life for today’s children, the art of play is seemingly lost.
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Learning disabilities: what are they and what can we do about them?
The term “learning disability” is thrown around pretty loosely these days, yet it’s hard for most of us to come up with an accurate definition of what is actually meant by those words. It’s important for parents to have some idea, though, of what learning disabilities are and what can be done about them. This knowledge will equip you to recognize a problem and get the appropriate help in a timely manner if your child does suffer from a learning disability.
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Should your teen watch 13 Reasons Why?
If you have a teen or pre-teen in your house, you may have heard about the popular Netflix series generating a lot of buzz lately called 13 Reasons Why. It’s a show for and about teens adapted from a popular young adult novel of the same name, but it’s the controversial subject matter that has everyone from psychiatrists to school administrators ringing alarm bells.
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On Mother's Day, what to say to parents who've lost a child
There are certain holidays that can feel like tiptoeing over landmines, and Mother’s and Father’s Day can be that way for some of us. For a perfectly intact family it may be nothing but joyful, but for those of us who have endured loss and heartache, that happiness is often tempered by a sense of sadness and grief. I lost my father as a teenager, and even now nearly twenty years later the day set aside to celebrate fathers is always bittersweet for me. I rejoice in the celebration of my husband with my children, but underneath I always feel the loss of my own father. My loss feels even heavier as I scroll through Facebook and see smiling photo after smiling photo posted of other people with their fathers. I’ll never have a picture of my Dad walking me down the aisle to get married; he wasn’t there. I’ll never have a photo of him with his grandchildren; he didn’t live to meet them. The knowledge of these things is a dull ache that has gotten better with time, but never really goes away.
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How to recognize and prevent dehydration in kids
Before you know it the school year will be over and summer break will be upon us. As our kids buzz with excitement at the thought of their summer adventures, and we parents get a little stressed wondering how to keep kids busy for the next few months, there’s something else to consider. As the weather heats up each day, it becomes more and more critical to be sure your kids aren’t getting dehydrated in the summer heat.
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5 easy things you can do to give your kids healthy teeth
So it’s happening. Your six-month-old baby is crying nonstop, and you finally found the reason: they have their first tooth! But what now? Everyone knows we’re supposed to brush our teeth. But when do you start teaching your child to brush? How often should your kids brush? What happens when they don’t take care of their teeth?
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Ringworm: a common skin condition you can treat at home
A few weeks ago, I noticed a round, reddened area on my son’s leg. When I asked him what caused it, he told me he got it from falling off his bed. I found it difficult to believe he had fallen on something so perfectly round that it made a complete circle on his leg, and he couldn’t pinpoint anything in his room that caused the mark. (Three-year-olds aren’t the best source of medical information, as you might imagine). I accepted his explanation for a day or two, but when I gave it second look I realized that it wasn’t an injury at all but a ringworm infection.
