Health Archives - Daniel Wong

7 Ways to Support Your Child’s Mental Health

February 22, 2021 By Daniel Wong 2 Comments

Note from Daniel: This is a guest post by John Lim.

When I was 2, my sister was born.

I reacted to her birth by hiding in my toy car the whole night and refusing to come out.

Why?

Because I was jealous of all the attention that my sister was getting. I felt sad that no one seemed to care about me.

It doesn’t matter if your child is 2 or 22 – it can sometimes be hard for him to express how he feels.

As a parent, this can be challenging and frustrating for you.

After all, how can you support your child’s mental health if he doesn’t talk about how he feels?

Mental health isn’t just about psychological and emotional problems. It’s also about psychological and emotional well-being.

So in this article, we’ll focus on the positive aspects of your child’s mental health – resilience, optimism, and well-being.

Here are 7 tips that I trust you’ll find useful.

1. Understand the signs that your child is struggling.

Train yourself to be attuned to your child’s emotional needs.

Every child exhibits different signs when they’re struggling. For example, when I struggled emotionally as a child, I became quiet. I wouldn’t say a word to anyone about my problems.

Over time, my parents noticed that whenever I was quiet, something was probably wrong.

They would then give me the space I needed to work through the problem.

Knowing what signs your child exhibits when she’s going through a hard time is a good way to understand her better.

Here are some of the common signs:

Your child isn’t as talkative as she used to be.
Your child is more withdrawn.
Your child doesn’t want to spend time with her friends.
Your child isn’t excited by the things that used to bring her joy, e.g. games, sports, music, art, reading, family outings.
Your child’s mood fluctuates. One moment, she might be angry or explosive, then a short while later she might be sad or distressed.

To understand your child better, ask yourself these questions:

When was the last time she struggled psychologically and emotionally?
How did she behave during that period of time?
What did I do that helped the situation?
How did she respond to my help?

[Read more…]

10 Ways That Parents Can Help Teens Get Enough Sleep

Updated on February 22, 2021 By Daniel Wong 4 Comments

Note from Daniel: This is a guest post by Sarah Cummings.

Does your teen get enough sleep?

Probably not.

Scientists recommend that teens get more sleep per night than adults, but many of them get less.

In fact, around 85% of teens are sleep deprived.

As parents, we should take this fact seriously, because sleep is important for physical health, brain function and learning.

So here are 10 tips for parents to help teens get a better night’s sleep…

1. Respect your teens’ different rhythms

Teens experience a shift in their circadian rhythms, because of a delayed release of melatonin compared to adults.

Because of this shift, they may not get sleepy until later than you do.

Based on their natural circadian rhythm, they might not go to bed until midnight. If they get the full dose of their recommended hours in, this will cause them to sleep in until 9 am or 10 am.

Of course, this sleep schedule doesn’t work during school days. So they’ll need to shift their sleep schedule gradually – which is what we’ll talk about next.

2. Establish a routine

Talk to your teens and create a routine that you’re both agreeable to.

If your teens are sleeping too late on school nights, the changes need to be made little by little.

If they’re used to going to bed at 1 am, they won’t suddenly be able to fall asleep at 9:30 pm.

As such, you can try to shift their bedtime forward gradually, e.g. 10 minutes earlier each day.

Once your teens are going to bed at the ideal time, try to ensure that they stick to this bedtime during the week and on weekends, too (or as close to it as possible).

This way, their sleeping patterns won’t be affected too much.

If your teens don’t sleep enough on weekdays, they’ll accumulate “sleep debt”. This will make them more likely to break out in pimples, since insufficient sleep is linked to acne and other forms of skin irritation.

Furthermore, the more sleep debt they accumulate, the more likely they are to fall victim to a long list of health problems. [Read more…]

10 Simple Tips to Get Your Kids to Eat Healthy (Without You Nagging!)

Updated on December 17, 2020 By Daniel Wong 6 Comments

Note from Daniel: This is a guest post by Glanies Takahata.

You love your children and want them to be happy.

So you buy them their favourite snacks, and you make sure they always have enough to eat.

But you’re also concerned about their health.

You don’t want them to eat too much sugar, or too much food in general.

Whether your kids are picky eaters or junk food lovers, there are simple ways for you to influence them to eat healthy.

In this article, I’ll share with you the 10 best tips I know.

The tips are organised according to these three sections:

Part A: Eating less junk food
Part B: Eating more nutritious food
Part C: Eating less in general

Let’s start with the first section.

Part A: Eating less junk food

Tip #1: Buy only one serving of junk food at a time

It’s hard to tell your kids to stop snacking on candy or potato chips without coming across as a nag.

The simple solution?

Make it a family rule that you only buy one serving of junk food (or the smallest packet available) at a time.

This means that when you buy a chocolate bar for your kids, it’s just one chocolate bar – not a whole pack of chocolate bars.

The same principle applies to all other types of junk food.

Value packs appeal to us because we think we’re getting more bang for our buck. In addition, we assume that we’ll be able to control the amount of junk food we eat.

But the research says otherwise.

When researchers gave people bigger bags of snacks, they ate an average of 53% more than those who were given smaller bags.

So by buying value packs, it’s actually a case of being penny wise but pound foolish.

When you buy only one serving of junk food at a time, you allow your kids to indulge, but you also limit the amount of junk food they eat.

If they’d like more, they’ll either have to wait for the next grocery run, or they’ll need to pay for the snacks out of their own pocket. [Read more…]