Tara

Does the idea of preparing a balanced meal for your family nightly seem overwhelming? Have you gotten into the habit of getting take out or going through the drive through on most nights because it is easier or quicker? Maybe you feel that you don’t even know what is healthy anymore since there are so many different diet trends and you are on nutrition information overload: low fat, low-carb, gluten free, vegan, paleo. The best advice is moderation: eat a balanced diet, cut down on salty and sugary foods, and don’t overeat.

Parents and caregivers play a key role in not only making healthy choices for children, but also in teaching children to make healthy choices for themselves. But in today’s busy world, this isn’t always easy.

A healthy diet includes a variety of whole foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes (dried beans and peas), nuts and seeds. For additional protein, you can add in moderate amounts of fish, poultry, lean meats, and low-fat and fat-free dairy products. The food that you stock your house with directly influences your family’s food choices. Surrounding your family with healthier options will leave them no choice but to eat better food.

Here are five key areas to make small changes that can make a huge difference and add up to changes in your family’s eating habits:

1. Incorporate fruits & vegetables into your child’s meal. Kids should eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. You can serve fresh, frozen, and canned fruits and vegetables. Offer your child 100% juice, with no added sugar. Try mixing vegetables into dishes, such as adding peas to rice, or cucumbers to a sandwich.

Make it fun for kids to try new fruits and vegetables. Let them pick out a new fruit or vegetable in the grocery store each week, and figure out together how to cook or prepare it in a healthy way.

2. Reduce Your Family’s Fat and Sugar Intake. You can do this by switching to low or non-fat milk, yogurt and cheese, choosing lean cuts of meat like skinless chicken or extra lean ground beef, and bake or grill instead of fry. Also, when cooking substitute olive or vegetable oil for butter. Have your child drink water or low-fat milk for sodas or sweetened beverages. Switch to lower sugar breakfast cereals, and switch desserts like ice cream and cake for fruit based desserts.

Drink sparkling water, unsweetened tea or sugar-free beverages instead of sugar sweetened soda or tea. Add lemon, lime or berries to beverages for extra flavor.

3. Reduce the number of snacks served each day. Leave a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table. Incorporate fruits and vegetables into every snack, such as fruit or carrot and celery sticks with hummus. Differentiate between snacks that require permission (cookies), versus snacks that kids can take freely (fresh or dried fruit). Save “treats”, such as cakes and cookies, for special occasions like birthdays and holidays.

Package your own healthy snacks. Put cut-up veggies and fruits in portion-sized containers for easy, healthy snacking on the go, without the added sugars and sodium.

4. Reduce portion sizes. Children are smaller than adults and should therefore eat smaller portions. Use smaller plates when serving dinner to your children. Don’t force your children to clean their plates if they are full. Remember, you child’s portions should be about the size of the back of their fist. Begin dinner with a small portion, your child can have seconds if they are still hungry.

When you cook at home you have more control over ingredients and portion sizes, so aim to cook at home more often than eating out. Try making a pot of soup, stew or a casserole on the weekend that you can re-heat later in the week. Double the recipe and freeze meal sized portions for times when you’re just too busy to cook.

5. Eat together as a family. Family meals should focus on eating and enjoying food and quality time together. Eating together as a family a chance for you to model good behavior. Lastly, regular scheduling meal and snack times will help kids learn structure for eating and mealtime.

Get your kids in the kitchen! They’ll be more excited about eating healthy foods when they’ve been involved. Give them age-appropriate tasks and keep a step-stool handy.

No one plans to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol yet 11,000 people die in the United States each year due to impaired driving. That’s almost 30 deaths per day. December is National Impaired Driving Prevention Month and safe celebration at the holidays are an important opportunity to reduce the number of mothers, fathers, siblings, sons and daughters who are lost to their loved ones and friends. It’s also a time for parents to model for the their children how to stay safe and have a great time. If we’re going to reduce these tragic deaths, every one of us needs to hit the re-set button on our behavior and actions when we’re drinking.

If you are going to be drinking, don’t plan on driving. Coffee isn’t going to sober you up. Give your keys to someone else. Travel with a designated driver who will not be drinking at that party. Arrange a taxi or Uber car in advance, and have the numbers programmed in your cell phone. New Jersey participates in the National Directory of Designated Driver Services (http://www.drinkinganddriving.org/designated-driver-services/default.aspx) and there are several options in Essex County. You can even arrange for a car to pick you up and a second driver will drive your car home for you.

If you’re a parent of a teen, make sure that your child understands that the consequences of driving with someone who has been drinking are far more serious than calling home and asking to be picked up. Teens need to know that asking for help isn’t going to get them into trouble. Have a conversation about what they should do if they feel that someone shouldn’t be driving or if they are at a party and they aren’t comfortable with what is happening there.

As the host of a party there are some simple steps you can take to make sure that everyone both has a great time and gets home safely.

• Serve drinks and cocktails that don’t use carbonated mixers, as alcohol in carbonated drinks is absorbed faster into the blood stream.
• Provide enough for people to eat so no one is drinking on an empty stomach; good food makes for a great party.
• Don’t serve too many salty snacks, which may lead people to drink more.
• Offer non-alcoholic alternatives. Consider mixing a batch of a celebratory “mocktail” so that guests who are not drinking don’t feel left out of the celebration.
• Pay attention to your guests. Encourage someone who has clearly had one drink too many to switch to something less alcoholic. Make sure that no one drives away under the influence.
• Make a plan to ensure your guests safety. Collect car keys at the beginning of the party. Try to know in advance how your guests will get home. Have phone numbers handy for taxis.

If any of these steps make you uncomfortable, or feel like people will be critical of you for being too conservative, just think about waking up the morning after a party to discover that someone you celebrated with was involved in a fatal car crash on the way home.

It has never been easy to talk to teens about the dangers of smoking marijuana, but it has become increasing challenging in light of legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, as well as the pervasive legalization of medical marijuana. Teens often hear what they want to hear, but like everything it is important to make sure that they understand the risks of the smoking marijuana.

In addition to having an ongoing dialogue about the pressures and stress that your teen may be feeling, how they may be feeling peer pressure to smoke pot, or how smoking pot makes them feel, parents need to share the real scientific data about how THC (the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) affects adolescents’ developing brains. THC moves through the bloodstream quickly, from the lungs to the brain, causing an immediate “high,” but it is a neurotoxin that can permanently alter the brain’s structure and function. Daily marijuana smoking affects the brain’s working memory, which is critical to learning and recall.

Smoking marijuana can be addictive, and the damage to lungs by the deep inhalation of the smoke is greater than that of cigarette smoke.

Taking a step back, the human brain continues to develop well into the 20s. Because of this, teens’ brains are especially vulnerable to the effects of THC, which can disrupt the development of neural pathways, especially in teens who are chronic marijuana users. While there is conflicting evidence regarding the long-term neurocognitive effects of smoking marijuana, there is no question that the teen years are a very vulnerable time to terms of brain development.

There is also research which links early marijuana use with the development of serious mental health disorders, including addiction, serious depression and anxiety and other disorders. It can lead to a syndrome that gets in the way of learning and schoolwork. Teens need to understand how smoking marijuana will reduce their options in life, may lead to addiction and is likely to contribute to lower achievement than they would achieve otherwise.

So what can parents do? They need to present the facts about smoking marijuana. At the same time, parents need to be able to take their teen’s pulse and carry on a dialogue that isn’t primarily about the dangers of smoking marijuana, but is about the pressures and concerns that your teen is feeling. This conversation is about trying to understand each other, so that all members of the family can be supportive of each other. Talking about serious issues like the risks of marijuana use and drug addiction is one facet of how a parent expresses concern, support and love. While your teen may not thank you for this, it will help create a space for him/her where s/he can mature and grow and learn how to make wise choices.

For our kids in middle and high school, summer is all about having fun. As parents, we’re all for that, but we want our kids to be safe. It isn’t always easy to communicate with them so that they will hear us, let alone heed us, and at the same time, teach them about making good choices along the way.

Being safe means at a minimum “not having to call 911;” it also involves understanding what risks there are in a behavior or action, and being able to make choices that reduce those risks. Families need to define being safe for themselves, in their own way. That’s the first step in making sure that summertime is both fun and safe.

Teenagers are confronted with situations where making a safe and healthy choice isn’t always the easiest, or the most obvious, one to make. Once kids enter middle school, your role as a parent role shifts through the teen years from setting limits and being in control to offering guidance and teaching young people to make good choices.There is no clear rulebook for this process.

Parents need to:

• Provide emotional safety,
• Give kids confidence both to act and to say no
• Coach them in advocating for themselves,
• Help them learn how to assess the relative safety of a situation
• Encourage them to recognize when they need to reach out for help.

Teens and even pre-teens face a lot of pressure about fitting in with their peers. Often, that peer pressure involves unsafe behavior, like drinking. Beyond the obvious that underage drinking is illegal, there are others reasons why it is important for pre-teens and teenagers not to drink. Alcohol use and substance abuse can disrupt brain development at a critical stage of development. The pre-frontal cortex, which manages executive functioning, continues to develop through the mid-20s. Studies have shown that kids who begin drinking at younger ages have more problems with heavy drinking by the time they are seniors in college. There can be real consequences for engaging in risky behaviors that in turn can limit a teen’s options in the future.

What can you do? Teens need support and guidance at the same time as they are asserting their independence; this often challenges their parents’ beliefs and values. Rather than seeing these challenge behaviors as oppositional or defiant, parents can see these as opportunities to give their child’s pre-frontal cortex a little workout. You are engaging in a spirited discussion or exploration of thoughts and feelings rather than a power struggle when you use phrases like these to engage your teen:

• Describe what happened?
• Why do you think this happened?
• Why did you react the way you did?
• How do you feel about it?
• What do you think could have helped?
• What support do you need from me?

Listen to your teens; allow them to describe what is happening in their own words. Ask questions that help you understand, not judge the situation. Coming from a place of curiosity rather than authority can feel unnerving and disruptive to a traditional parent-child dynamic. But consider this: what kind of boss gets better results from his employees, a tyrant or a leader? Schools focus on critical thinking via subject areas. Parents have the chance to work these same critical thinking skills in the social-emotional realm, helping kids to develop the people skills that are so essential in today’s workplace.

This engagement lays the foundation for trust and for talking about choices. It’s important to help teens understand the options and consequences of their actions. Letting a teenager make a decision and supporting them on carrying it out reinforces the message of personal responsibility. Later, follow up with a conversation about how things worked out. Family meetings are a great way to reinforce family norms. Over time, this modeling will help your teen make good choices independently as well as creating a space for communication and understanding in the family.

Remember, too, that we don’t live in a vacuum. It’s important to connect with the parents of your children’s friends so that you are comfortable picking up the phone to make sure that a parent will be present at any gathering or party. In fact parents are liable under New Jersey state law: “…anyone who purposely or knowingly offers, serves or makes alcohol available to an underage person or entices or encourages that person to drink alcohol is a disorderly person. It is a violation of the law for a host to make their property available (including leaving the property in care of another person) for the consumption of alcohol by an underage person. There is an exception in the law for parents or guardians who provide alcohol to their child.“ (http://socialhost.drugfree.org/state/new-jersey)

By giving your teens the tools to make good choices you enable them to grow and mature while feeling confident about their decisions. And that sounds like a great summer for everyone involved!