Healthy Teens, Body and Souls

FIVE KEYS TO RAISING TEENS
1-Love and Connect. Key message: "Most things about their world is changing. Don't let your love be one of them."
2-Monitor and Observe. Key message: "Monitor your teen's activities. You still can, and it still counts."

3-Guide and Limit. Key message: "Loosen up, but don't let go."
4-Model and Consult. Key message: "The teen years: Parents still matter; teens still care."
5-Provide and Advocate. Key message: "You can't control their world, but you can add to and subtract from it."

Urgent Symptoms
See a doctor as soon as possible if you experience one or more of these sumptoms:
-Unusual or ongoing fatigue. excessive sleeping. or insomnia
-Unexplained weight gain or loss. or loss of appetite
-Chronic feeling of depression or desire to harm oneself
-persistent pain in the bones
-Pallor or unexplained brusing
-high fever or persistent low-grade fever
-Unusually severe or persistent headaches
-A sore or other injury that does not heal
-Change in a wart or mole; apparence of new skin growth or lesion
-Unexplained thickening or lump in a breast,testicle, or elsewhere
-Coughing that does not go away
-persistent indigestion, heartburn,reflux, or vomiting
-Change in bowel habits, such as persistent constipation or diarrhea
-Intense or persistent pain or discomfort in lower abdomen, testicle, or elsewhere
-Pain during urination or sexual intercourse
-Any unusual vaginal, urethral, or anal bleeding or discharge

Calories per Day:Girls ages 11 to 18 need about 2,000 calories per day, and boys need about 2,500 to 3,000. Very active adolescents might need 600 to 1,000 additional calories, and sedentary teens somewhat fewer.

Tips For Breakfast Haters
-Build in time for breakfast. Get up earlier and make breakfast a special time. Talk with your family. savor the paper, read the comics, watch the sunrise.
-Toast and cheese. a swig of juice. Breakfast can be simple and quick. A minute or two is all you need to break the fast of night and give your day a good start.
-Eat leftover supper. A casserole or peace of chicken, tasty for dinner.
-Save time. Make a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on sunday night.
-Stock "grab-able" breakfast items. Keep the folowing foods on hand: fresh fruit. hard-boiled eggs. whole-grain bread and muffins. containers of yogurt, ceria bars, plastic bags of cheese cubes or dried fruit and nuts.

Barriers and Brainstorms
Let your kids know that you are sympathetic to the fact changing poor health habits can be hard. Collaborate with them in brainstorming some creative new strategies. Here are some examples of the barriers some teens have had and a number of approaches that can help.

Barrier: When everyone else is ordering burgers and fries. I feel conspicuou with a salad. Even though it's healthier. I don't like to feel different.
Brainstorm:
Order a burger with salad instead of fries, or just a burger and have salad at home.
Share a burger and salad with a friend.
Order a salad and see how people react. They might be impressed.
Barrier: I don't have time for breakfast. I'm just not hungry.
Brainstorm:
Get stuff organized and night before.
Build up to the breakfast habit. Week 1: eat one preace of fruit. Week 2: Toast a frozen waffle, too. Week 3: Add milk!
Cook something that smells realy good, like a baked apple spiced with cinnamon.
See "Tips for Breakfast Haters."
Barrier: It's not "cool" to eat the school cafeteria food. so i skip lunch or buya candy bar in the vending machine.
Brainstorm:
Join the school nutrition committee as student representative and have a say in improving school meals(and vending machine fare).
Take lunch to school. Keep your sandwich cool with a juice box you take out of the freezer in the morning.
Ask a friend to eat the school lunch with you. Of you say it's cool, it is.

Creating a low- stress Home
Having family dinners
-Encourage the whole family to take care of the three basics described: Eating well, leeping enough, and exercising.
-Make laughter a priority. Watch funny TV shows and movies together.
-When conflict or bad moods seem to get out of hand, call for a time out.
Create quiet times.
Practice Yoga.
-Touch, Hug, kiss good- night, or at least "high-5" your adolescent.
pitch in.
-Celebrate. Not just bithdays, but accomplishments.
Welcome friends.
Inspire.
-Affirm that some stress can be healthy and yield rewards.
The future starts today and tommorow too.

It Starts and starts untill it is through.
In a way, all of life is an in between, but never more in between than age nineteen

By Andrea Marks, M.D. and Betty Rothbart, M.S.W.
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