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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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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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"13 Reasons Why" suicide isn't the answer: what every teenager needs to know
I’m sure by now, you have either heard of or watched the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. It first aired on March 31, 2017 and it has become one of the most talked about topics of the last few weeks. The premise of the series is simple- a teen commits suicide and leaves 13 tapes explaining the reasons why she did it and who, in her view, is responsible for her making this choice.
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8 reasons you may be planning to skip your child’s flu vaccine this year (and why you probably shouldn’t)
Only about half of the U.S. population will get a flu shot during the upcoming flu season despite overwhelming agreement among medical experts that every person over the age of six months should receive the vaccine every year.
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Child Life Offers Play, Preparation and Education
Child life at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies is made up of a team of professionally Certified Child Life Specialists and child life assistants who strive to mitigate the fear and mystery of a healthcare experience for children, teens, and families. They focus on building therapeutic relationships and providing supportive interactions for the purpose of helping these young patients and their siblings understand and cope with hospitalization and medical treatment.
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What to tell your kids about vaping
One of the most challenging aspects of raising a teen or pre-teen is this: the environment in which they are growing up looks dramatically different than it did when we, their parents, were young.
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The many ways teens act out to harm themselves - and what you can do about it. (Part 1 of 3)
Finding out that your child is harming themselves can be shocking, confusing and concerning. Often, parents react in a way that make things worse for the child and the family in general. Given the complexity and importance of this topic, we’ll talk about it in three separate blog posts. In this first post, we’ll discuss ways in which teens may self-harm. Second, we’ll look at contributing factors and reasons why they do it. Lastly, we’ll talk about common red flags and practical exercises to help teens who are struggling. Understanding the contributing factors will help you make adjustments to the “big picture” instead of assuming that all the responsibility lies with the child. The practical exercises are based on the reasons why they do it because teens self-harm for different reasons. Therefore, you have to make sure you match the exercise appropriately.
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Does My Child Need a Support Group?
At The Hewell Kids’ Kidney Center at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, patients who have been diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease often have difficulty coping and adjusting to a lifelong chronic illness.
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How (and why) to prevent mosquito bites
Summertime in Florida inevitably means mosquitos and lots of them. More than a mere nuisance, though, mosquitoes carry a variety of different illnesses that can be spread to people, so it’s important to avoid mosquito bites as much as possible.
