Labor Day marks the unofficial end of the summer, but for local students, summer ends with the start of a new school year just days away. Many children experience anxiety at this time, being filled with the stress of what starting school again will entail. From bullying and being nervous about making friends and having a new teacher, there’s a lot that can weigh on a child. This stress can continue throughout the school year and have devastating consequences. According to the American Psychological Association, when children experience chronic stress it can contribute to psychological problems, as well as physical conditions. The good news is that there are plenty of things parents can do to help their child prepare.

“Kids don’t know just know how to handle their emotions, so it’s important for parents to take steps to help address them,” explains Reena B. Patel, a parenting expert, licensed educational psychologist, and author, who offer virtual workshops. “Parents who make emotional and social health a priority will help raise children who are more successful, stable, and experience less stress in life.”

There are many things parents can do to help prepare their children emotionally and socially for taking on a new school year. These include tips:

Teaching kids to embrace progress, rather than perfection. If they feel they have to get perfect grades, for example, they will have a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Setting your expectations for them based on your values. It’s important to let kids know what you expect for the school year from them, but that you realize there is room for error, too.

Taking the time to talk to your children about your own social mistakes, so they can learn from them. Let them know what mistakes you made and how you would have handled it differently if you could go back in time now.

Remembering that winning isn’t everything. Kids need to learn how to be a team member, and how to lose gracefully. Play games with them where they will lose at times, so they can learn good sportsmanship and resilience.

Discussing with them what “success” means. Teach them that we all learn through our mistakes on our way to success.

Kids need to know how to make friends, so discuss with them how to do that. Have your child pick five qualities you would want in a friend and then discuss the list with them. As social issues arise, refer back to that list of core values to see if the relationship is a good fit.

Having a family discussion about finding balance and discussing how much can be fit into one schedule. This is especially important when it comes to the number of extracurricular activities that can be taken on.

Making sure your kids know that it’s okay to ask for help.

Making a social media discussion a priority if your child uses it, ensuring that they use the T.H.I.N.K. acronym regarding what they post online. T (is it truthful), H (is it helpful), I (is it inspiring), N (is it necessary), and K (is it kind).

Having a discussion about bullying. Remind them that bullying is never okay and that they need to speak up if it happens. Discuss having boundaries, speaking up, being a good role model, and getting help when needed.

Teaching your child coping skills, which will help them be better prepared to handle stress and anxiety.
Letting kids know the importance of focusing on the positives in life. They can do this by keeping a gratitude journal, and having a positive affirmation that they repeat each day.

“Most parents are focused on the supplies that kids need for school, but those pale in comparison to the emotional tools they need,” added Patel. “By making sure kids have the emotional and social tools and skills they need, they will be more likely to enjoy the school year, get better grades, and be happier, all of which are good.”

Patel has a new debut radio show on Dash Radio, North America’s first mainstream South Asian radio station, which premiered in April 2019. The station was founded by Rukus Avenue Music Group, and can be head on 24-7 on the Dash Radio app, as well as on the on the Dash Radio platform at DashRadio.com.

Patel is the founder of AutiZm& More. As a licensed educational psychologist and guidance counselor, she helps children and their families with the use of positive behavior support strategies across home, school, and community settings. She does workshops around California, and virtual workshops globally where she provides this information to health professionals, families, and educators. She also offers concierge parenting services, helping families to reach specific goals, such as focusing on college admission. She is also the author of a book that helps children with anxiety coping strategies called “Winnie & Her Worries,” and author of a book about autism awareness and acceptance, called “My Friend Max: A Story about a Friend with Autism.” Both of her books are available on Amazon. To learn more about her services, visit the website at www.reenabpatel.com or view her reel at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=eqvx8dqszS4&t=4s.

About Reena B. Patel
Based in the San Diego area, Reena B. Patel (LEP, BCBA) is a renowned parenting expert, guidance counselor, licensed educational psychologist, and board-certified behavior analyst. For more than 20 years, Patel has had the privilege of working with families and children, supporting all aspects of education and positive wellness. She works extensively with developing children as well as children with exceptional needs, supporting their academic, behavioral and social development.  She was recently nominated for San Diego Magazine’s “Woman of the Year.” To learn more about her books and services, visit the website at www.reenabpatel.com, or to book her direct go to http://reenabpatel.com/ book-now/.

To get more parenting tips, follow her on Instagram @reenabpatel.

Parents will soon have a new option when their children get sick and their pediatrician is unavailable. Your Kid’s Urgent Care announces the opening of their fifth location and their first outside the state of Florida in Vestavia Hills, Ala. “You can’t plan when a child becomes ill or has an accident, but it’s often after hours,” said Michael Cibran, CEO of the company. “Your Kid’s Urgent Care seeks to bridge that gap by offering affordable, after-hours care to cut down on visits to the Emergency Room.”

According to Felicia Fortune, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Franchising for the company, their goal is to expand in Birmingham and the state over the next year. “We are building a national brand and will expand our footprint to more than 30 clinics in the U.S. over the next five years,” Fortune said. “We made the decision to move into Alabama after a careful analysis of the population, especially in Birmingham. There are many children from ages 0 to 21 in the area and a shortage of pediatric clinics that provide this service. In the past, parents had to take their children to the Emergency Room, visit an urgent care where there wasn’t a pediatrician on staff or wait until their child’s pediatrician office was open again.”

Your Kid’s Urgent Care will be open seven days a week, with weekday hours from 3:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. and weekend hours from 10:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. “It’s important for children to be seen by a pediatric provider, so our office will be fully staffed with pediatricians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants who will be caring for our patients,” said Derrol Dawkins, M.D. “We also send a full report of the child’s visit to their pediatrician so it can be added to their medical records.” Dawkins, together with Marquisha Jarmon, M.D., will serve as the medical directors of the Vestavia Hills office.

In addition, Your Kid’s Urgent Care is the only trusted pediatric urgent care franchise in the U.S. and is the first in Birmingham to offer virtual visits or telemedicine. “Our first clinic opened in Florida in 2007, and have a proven track record of the care we provide,” Jarmon said. “Not only do we have a full laboratory and X-ray facilities, but we also can see patients virtually through technology for minor issues such as a cold, skin rashes or a sinus infection.”

The office will accept most major insurance plans along with Medicaid and will be conveniently located at 790 Montgomery Highway, Suite 112. Your Kid’s Urgent Care is scheduled to open in early fall 2019.

About Your Kid’s Urgent Care:

Your Kid’s Urgent Care is an after-hours clinic providing exceptional care to infants, children and adolescents. You can turn to them when your child’s primary care physician’s office is inaccessible. Avoid the cost and hassle of the Emergency Room while enjoying their comfortable environment. For more information, visit the website at www.yourkidsurgentcare.com.

Your Kids Urgent Care is the only trusted pediatric urgent care franchise in the U.S. For franchise information, visit www.yourkidsurgentcarefranchise.com.

According to a new study done by Apartment Guide, Birmingham is one of the most affordable cities when it comes to shopping for groceries for the fam…

“Whether you call it a supermarket, grocery store, bodega, food mart or the corner shop, shopping for groceries is one of the biggest lines on any family budget. But prices for core grocery products fluctuate widely depending on where you live and what’s for dinner.

Factors like distance from distribution centers, cost of living, transportation and population help determine where a meal is pricey and where it’s quite affordable.

Being just an hour from the University of Alabama and two from Auburn University — the two historic Iron Bowl rivals — Birmingham is in prime SEC territory, tailor-made for throwing the best football parties. Fortunately, a trip to the grocery store to stock up on sandwiches, steaks and grilling essentials won’t break the bank, as it’s the most affordable city in the Southeast for supermarket shopping.

But Alabama’s largest city is more than just football (although some residents may not agree). The city can tout its own importance as an education hub, as the home of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Samford University, with its acclaimed Cumberland School of Law.

And its impressive growth from a cotton and steel center to a modern economy for banking, transportation, telecommunications and healthcare has diversified its workforce and community.

Birmingham’s downtown has undergone extensive revitalization, as well, transforming into a thriving 24-hour district brimming with refurbished converted lofts and trendy restaurants, cafes and breweries.

In fact, both the New York Times and Washington Post have called the city out as a vital new food and cuisine scene for the New South. Downtown also hosts several key cultural institutions, including the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Birmingham Museum of Art, the largest of its type in the Southeast.

Stocking up on groceries isn’t the only category for affordability in Birmingham, with an average one-bedroom listing for $995.”

To see the breakdown on the score or how other cities ranked, you can see the full report here.

Back to School time brings a mix of emotions for everyone, it’s fun, exciting, nerve wracking and… chaotic! Getting organized ahead of time can make all the difference in the world for getting out of the door on time in the mornings, and making sure everyone has what they need when it comes to homework in the afternoons. Check out these tips for starting the new school year off in an orderly fashion.

Plan outfits in advance: This is one tip that makes every list you’ll see on the interwebs, because it’s a good one. Whether you have your kiddos pick outfits each night before the go to bed or on Sunday night for the entire week, this tip is a time saver.

Set up family inboxes: We have these in our kitchen, one for each child and one for family. We use it to keep school schedules, teacher information, papers that need to be signed, etc…  Make sure to go through these papers periodically throughout the school year so they don’t accumulate and overflow.

Create a homework station: Have a designated spot for homework and have it stocked with all of your homework essentials.

On the go homework kit: If your family does extracurricular activities, it’s possible you’re spending a lot of time picking up, dropping off and/or waiting for activities to end. Keep a pencil pouch or box in your glove compartment with homework essentials. Pencils, erasers, etc…

Make your own lunch station: Portion out lunch items ahead of time and set up in baskets or bins for easy grab and go when kids are making their lunches. (also great for grab and go snacks after school)

Schedule a weekly “Clean Sweep:” Have everyone spend a pre-arranged 20 minutes each week cleaning, picking up and organizing their things for the week. Do this activity together as a family to help cut down on complaining.

What tips work for your family when it comes to keeping the back to school chaos to a minimum?

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When Children’s of Alabama launched the Alabama chapter of SAFE Kids in 1989, there were no child passenger restraint nor seat belt laws of any kind in the state. Now, 30 years later, a lot has changed to make the state’s roads safer for children and their families.

Alabama was one of the first states in the nation to establish a statewide SAFE Kids coalition. Since the chapter’s founding, Children’s and its SAFE Kids Alabama partners have led an ongoing campaign that includes education, legislation, environmental modification and technologic application. The coalition also tracks epidemiologic data to guide and evaluate intervention strategies.

Children’s, under the leadership of then-CEO Dr. Jim Dearth, supported the development of SAFE Kids
Alabama with Dr. Bill King as its first director. The purpose of SAFE Kids Alabama was to build a statewide, grassroots coalition and to encourage corporate and private participation in preventing unintentional injury in Alabama children.

“It’s one of those things that people may take for granted, but this state is truly safer for children and drivers of all ages today than it was 30 years ago,” said King, now retired at Children’s and a Professor Emeritus at UAB. “A lot of hard work by a lot of people and agencies from all across the state, including bipartisan political efforts, was necessary. Our numbers of severe injuries and deaths in children are much better than where we were.

“Improvement in usage rates of car seats and seat belts are particularly noteworthy,” King continued. “Of course, there are always important, new challenges for us to address, like teen driver and passenger safety!”

While the state is statistically safer, motor vehicle crashes (MVC) remain the leading cause of death and disability for children in Alabama as well as the United States. Accomplishments since the chapter’s founding in 1989 include:

• According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, overall child passenger safety usage has
  increased from less than 10% in 1981 to more than 96% today.
• The following laws have been passed in Alabama:
  o 1982 – State passed law requiring children through age 3 to be transported in child passenger safety seats.
  o 1991 – State passed its first seatbelt law, making not wearing a seatbelt while being in the front seat a secondary violation.
  o 1994 – Law passed stating that children younger than 8 years of age must wear a properly secured U.S. Coast Guard personal flotation device (PFD) at all times while onboard any boat, except when in an enclosed cabin.
  o 1995 – Bicycle helmet law passed, requiring everyone under the age of 16 to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle.
  o 1999 – The existing secondary seatbelt law was made a primary offense.
  o 2002 – First Graduated Driver’s License (GDL) passed, requiring new drivers achieve stages of advancement before unrestricted teen driving, generally limiting late-night driving and the number of passengers under age 21.
  o 2006 – Car seat law amended to include booster seats.
  o 2010 – GDL amended with numerous restrictions, including use of any handheld communication device.
  o 2015 – GDL amended to require additional supervised driving time and reduced nighttime driving.
  o 2017 – GDL amended to allow for primary enforcement.

Marie Crew, director of SAFE Kids Alabama, pointed to several Children’s-led initiatives involving pedestrian safety, bicycle and ATV safety, and distracted driving as examples of raising awareness.

“Our immediate focus is on helping raise safety awareness among teens and their parents,” Crew said. “As the old saying goes, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ We want to do everything we can to help parents model safe driving behaviors and to initiate what can be uncomfortable conversations with their children about the risks associated with the responsibility of driving.”

By Dr. Pamela Roggeman, academic dean, University of Phoenix College of Education

Summer vacations can be a wonderful time to relax and enjoy warm weather, summer camps and family vacations. However, these lengthy gaps spent away from the educational environment could negatively impact a student’s academic progress. Researchers who study education call this phenomenon “summer slide”—the tendency for students to lose some of the academic gains they made during the previous school year once summer arrives, when they are no longer in a structured academic environment.

Time away from school does not just mean progress stops. For many students, they may lose some of the progress they have made. By fifth grade, summer learning loss can leave students 2.5 to 3 years behind their peers. Summer learning loss in the elementary school years alone accounts for at least half of the ninth-grade reading achievement gap.

One of the best ways to combat the summer slide is a team effort made by teachers, parents and students themselves. However, Americans have mixed feelings about summer slide, as well as how to address it. In a recent University of Phoenix® College of Education survey of American adults, 61 percent of respondents agree that it is important that children be involved in an educational summer program while school is out during summer break. However, when asked whether it is appropriate for schools to provide assignments for students to complete while school is out on summer break, nearly half of respondents (48 percent) said that it is not appropriate, while only 37 percent said it is appropriate.

Given these statistics, it may seem challenging to win everyone over to the idea of being proactive about preventing summer slide. But there are many activities and resources that teachers can provide to students and their parents during the summer months that don’t include a heavy volume of homework or summer school. Here are some tips to help teachers communicate with parents in motivating their students this season:

Summer reading. Summer reading is helpful for students to maintain and continue building their reading skills. Teachers should consider assigning books that aren’t simply homework-based, but will make the child think on a much larger level.

Keep an activity journal. Encourage students to start keeping a journal to regularly document their activities throughout the summer. Give guidelines about what they can think about or consider writing about, and build in the potential for them to use this journal to write a summary at the start of the new school year.

Create a parent/student activity calendar. Provide parents with information for educational camps and structured social activities that parents can participate in with their children. Encourage parents to take part in these activities wherever possible to make it more fun for children and make it feel less like “homework.”

Capitalize on screen time. Challenge students to teach their parents about what they have learned from time spent on videos, podcasts and social media accounts.

Create a matching agreement. For every hour spent in front of a screen entertaining themselves by playing video games or watching Netflix, children should match that time with time spent on a learning activity. There are a multitude of educational online options varying from math games to improving key-boarding skills suited perfectly for this purpose.

Set learning self-improvement goals. These goals can include number of books read, minutes of math tutorials a day, or pages written. Then agree on a fun reward for goals attained.
Summer does not have to be a time where children fall behind in their academic development. Teachers, along with parents, with the tips listed above, can help students stay engaged and keep their minds sharp even when not in school.

About the Author:
Dr. Pamela Roggeman is a proven academic leader familiar with and passionate about technology in progressive education and has extensive experience designing curriculum and preparing teachers in a university setting. Roggeman currently serves as the Academic Dean for the College of Education at University of Phoenix.