Y3K Tutor In Your Home | Brookline, Dover, Natick, Needham, Newton, Sudbury, Wayland, Wellesley, Weston areas

It is estimated that only 5 – 10% of kids legitimately hate school.  They may not always like the work they must do, but they usually find something about school they enjoy.  Usually students enjoy the social camaraderie with their peers.  Think back to your school days and usually your best memories are the social interactions you had.  It is usually a sign of a much larger problem when a child absolutely hates everything about school. If your child really hates school over a long period of time, it could be because of one of the following reasons to be addressed here over the next 5 Y3K Tutor In Your Home Blog posts.

In response to a traumatic news event (such as a school shooting tragedy), many children may have questions and concerns. Y3K Tutor In Your Home offers the following suggestions to help guide parents and caring adults to best support children who may be grieving, concerned, or troubled by a terrible event:

Be Supportive

• Children will benefit greatly from support and caring expressed by the adults in their lives. Create an environment in your home that encourages respect for each other’s feelings and fears, and allows for a supportive, healing environment.

Be Available

• Let children know that you are available to talk with them.

• Let children ask questions.

• It is ok if you do not have answers to all the questions. It is ok to let your child know that you do not have the answer but that you will try and find out.

Be Caring

• Let children know about the support being provided to students, friends, and families of the victims.

• Be aware of children who may have experienced a previous trauma and may be more vulnerable to experiencing prolonged or intense reactions and will need extra support.

Be Reassuring

• Acknowledge the frightening parts of the event.

• Explain what happened in words that children understand. Explanations should be appropriate to the child’s age, developmental stage, and language skills.

• Reassure children that they are loved and will be taken care of.

• Children who have concerns about siblings who are living on a college campus or have concerns about safety at their own school should be reassured and their concerns validated.

Be Thoughtful

• Be aware of how you talk about the event and cope with the tragedy.

• Children learn about how to react to traumatic situations by watching and listening to parents, peers, and the media.

• Reduce or eliminate your child’s exposure to television images and news coverage of the shooting. The frightening images and repetition of the scenes can be disturbing for children. If they do see coverage, be sure to talk with them about what they saw and what they understood about the coverage. Make sure to correct any misunderstanding or misinterpretations.

• Maintain your child’s routines as best as possible.

Be Creative

• For children who are too young to talk or do not feel comfortable talking about their feelings, expressive techniques such as play, art and music can provide additional ways for children to express their feelings and let you know what may be troubling them.

• Many behaviors and symptoms of stress are normal for children who have just experienced a trauma. However, if you find that your child is preoccupied with the event, has ongoing sleep or eating disturbances, is experiencing intrusive thoughts or worries, is focused on fears about death, or is having difficulty going to school and leaving parents, your child should be evaluated by a mental health professional. Contact your pediatrician or school counselor if you feel that the symptoms are persisting and are interfering with your child’s daily routines.

Some doctors will turn away patients that refuse to be vaccinated to protect their other patients.  The biggest concern doctors have with people not being vaccinated is that an unvaccinated child could expose other patients, especially newborns and children too young to be vaccinated yet, to potentially deadly diseases. 

 

By now you have probably heard the rumor that childhood vaccines can cause autism.  Lets take a closer look at how this idea came about.  In 1998 a British gastroenterologist published a paper in a medical journal theorizing a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism.  His research was based on interviews with parents based on TWELVE children!!  The press ran away with the story that vaccines cause autism.

Since this global panic, a mercury-based preservative thimerosal has been removed from all vaccines.  This was to just to be safe just in case the observed autism was in fact mercury poisoning.  Throughout the past decade there have been dozens of studies that have collectively drawn on data from millions of children.  These studies have consistently found no connection between vaccines and autism.  In 2010 the original British medical journal retracted their original 1998 paper and the UK’s General Medical Council revoked the British gastroenterologist’s medical license.

Although we recommend all children get vaccines as scheduled there are still a few parents that swear that it was in fact vaccines that caused their child’s autism.  What do you think?  Please share your experiences and thoughts with us.

There are 2 steps for treating lice. Chemical treatment with the use of a medicated shampoo is the first step. When using this special chemical laden shampoo, do not apply it in bathtub or shower. Apply over sink to minimize the exposure of the chemical to the rest of the body.

The second step for treating lice is manual removal. For this you will need a fine tooth metal comb specially designed for lice removal.  Comb out hair removing all tangles and debris. Work on one section of the hair at a time and comb each section away from scalp. Clean off the comb after each stroke to remove any caught lice or eggs.  Repeat this technique throughout the head carefully inspecting the hair.  Remove nits with fingernails or safety scissors if nits remain after several attempts with the comb.

Head lice can be a common problem in children. Lice can be transmitted to others easily so proper treatment is essential. We all want to avoid getting lice.  However what do you do if your child’s head starts to feel itchy?  Any student suspected of having head lice should go to the nurse’s office for a hair inspection at school or to a doctor’s office immediately.

The goal is to identify and eliminate head lice and nits as quickly as possible to minimize interruption of classroom time.  Any student found to have evidence of head lice must be excluded from school until proper treatment for lice has been completed. This is for the safety of the rest of the school.

If your student has head lice the following steps need to be taken:

1.  Siblings and parents must be head checked to see if they have lice also.

2.  Tell the school so a notice can be sent out to the affected classrooms as soon as possible. This will allow for proper cleaning and the head checks of classmates if the school deems it appropriate.

This summer keep the following in mind.   You are forever entitled to walk in the rain, jump in mud puddles, stare at rainbows, smell flowers, blow bubbles, stop along the way, build sand castles, watch the moon and stars, read children’s books, act silly, fly kites, wander around without knowing where you are going, give up worry/guilt and shame, stay innocent, ask lots of questions, ride bicycles, draw and paint, see things differently, fall down and get up again, talk and play with animals, look in the sky, stay up late, climb trees, play with toys, have pillow fights, take naps, do nothing, daydream, learn new things, get excited about new things, listen to music, find out how things work, tell stories, save the world, and make friends.

 

You can always frequent amusement parks, go to beaches, meadows, mountaintops, swimming pools, forests, playgrounds, picnic areas, summer camps, birthday parties, theaters, museums, planetariums, toy stores, festivals, and fireworks.

 

It is never too late to have a happy childhood.

Children only get one childhood. Allow them to play and be a kid. Too many kids are raised to be little adults.

Kids spend more time in cars going from one indoor activity to another than being outside in nature. Children should still enjoy the woods, playing outside w/friends, or climbing a tree.