Category Archives: Parenting

8 Annual Checkups That You And Your Family Should Never Miss

Most people know that they should get an annual checkup, but it is important to make sure that your entire family gets their regular physicals as well. An annual checkup offers the opportunity for a physician to detect and diagnose any potential health concerns before they become more serious.

It also helps you stay on top of any existing conditions or changes in your health status. Annual checkups should not be overlooked – they are a vital part of staying healthy.

Here Are The Annual Checkups That You And Your Family Should Never Miss:

1. Physical examinations:

At least once a year, it is important for all members of your family to get a physical examination from their doctor or healthcare provider. During this exam, the doctor will take vitals like temperature and pulse rate, conduct an overall physical assessment, and review your loved one’s medical history and current medications.

2. Eye examinations:

It is recommended that adults receive eye exams every two years, and those under 18 should receive exams annually. Eye exams can detect conditions such as glaucoma or cataracts before they become serious enough to cause permanent vision loss.

3. Dental checkups:

Dentists recommend that adults have a dental checkup at least twice a year in order to maintain good oral health. In addition, children should visit Loop Dentist every six months for a thorough cleaning and examination.

4. Women’s health screenings:

Women of all ages should go for regular breast exams, Pap tests, pelvic exams, and mammograms when appropriate. Additionally, women over 40 should qualify for an annual bone density scan which will assess the risk of developing osteoporosis later in life.

working on laptop, stethoscope, doctor, wellness, exam, screening, checkup

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

5. Vaccinations:

Annual vaccinations are a very important part of preventive healthcare for all family members. Vaccines can help protect against various diseases, including the flu and common infectious illnesses such as measles or mumps.

6. Mental health checkups:

Mental health is just as important as physical health. Regular mental health checkups can help identify signs of depression, anxiety, or stress that may be affecting your daily life.

7. Cholesterol checkups:

High cholesterol levels can lead to serious health conditions and should be monitored regularly. Adults should have their cholesterol checked every four to six years, and those with high-risk factors (such as a family history of heart disease) should ask their doctor about more frequent screenings.

8. Blood pressure checkups:

High blood pressure can put you at risk for stroke, heart attack and other serious health conditions. Therefore, it is recommended that adults have their blood pressure checked yearly in order to keep an eye on any changes or irregularities.

Regular checkups are essential to maintaining good health – they catch medical problems early before they become serious enough to require more intensive treatment. Make sure you and your family don’t miss any annual appointments – it could be the difference between staying healthy and catching a potentially life-threatening illness before it’s too late. So schedule your checkups today, and stay healthy!

Benefelence the Elephence and the Wonderful You – Children’s Book

Reflect on the way you’re living today and going about your business.
What if the Wonderful You lived it too? What do you think you’d witness?

Benefelence the Elephence and the Wonderful You is a unique, magical, and fun story that will entertain, engage, and enlighten readers of all ages. It’s a beautifully presented adventure and activity book that teaches readers how to use Wonderful Words to meet challenges and spend more time being true to our Wonderful Selves.
The Story

Traveling through a shimmering world tethered to a cluster of bright balloons, Benefelence (“Bene”) visits a family in crisis. Everyone has a problem! The dog ran off with the boy’s shoe, the daughter wants to play but has homework, the mother discovers the cat stuck in a tree, and the dad is working way too much. What are they going to do!?

Bene shows the family that sometimes being Wonderful simply means being calm and kind with your misbehaving puppy, patient and wise with your homework, reliable and resourceful with your stranded cat, or balanced and rested with your work life.

Thanks to this simple yet effective thought exercise, each family member gains a new perspective on their situation, and in choosing to be Wonderful (by selecting and thinking about one or two Wonderful Words), they prevail over their respective challenges.

In a joyous celebration, Bene rewards everyone with special balloons to commemorate the various ways they were wonderful with their situations.

As the sun begins to set and the eventful day draws to a close, Bene imparts a few final words about the importance of trying to be wonderful, and the positive effects it can have on the self and the world.

Reflections

Being Wonderful is when we connect our actions to our true values. Wonderful Words are the words that represent those values. Benefelence the Elephence and the Wonderful You encourages using these special, Wonderful Words as tools to help us spend more time being our Wonderful Selves.

Readers tend to love the book’s positivity, message, variety and usefulness. They also comment on the beautiful artwork, playful rhyming voice, and fun activities and extras. Notably, parents and teachers often comment on the uniqueness of the book’s premise and approach, and find that it often prompts conversation with the little ones they read it with.

“My daughter would ask me about what the words meant. The Wonderful Words glossary page was helpful for both of us!” – Parent of 5 year old

“this is a wonderful and much-needed way to introduce children to mindfulness” – Teacher, Parent and Grandparent, Literary PhD, and Private School Founder

Audiences will turn the pages to see how the family deals with their problems, enjoy the beautiful artwork and bouncy rhyming text, and explore the many activities such as the picture find hunt, the illustrated and rhyming glossary page, the drawing activity, the crossword puzzle, and the removable ‘Bene award.’ The last of these is intended to give the reader a way to appreciate someone else in their lives who they feel deserves to be recognized for being wonderful.

With gratitude,
Todd H. William, thw@benefelence.com

Todd H. William has always been fascinated with the concepts of mindfulness, healthy living, purpose, psychology, philosophy, physics, and pretty much everything in between. He’s been a teacher, designed and implemented best-in-class award-winning business intelligence systems for corporations, composed and performed music, written screenplays, and designed, built, and prototyped a variety of novel multidirectional wheels. He’s constantly writing, and when he’s not, he’s trying desperately to remember all the ideas that he needs to write down before he forgets. It was his work on a gentle prioritization app, combined with his commitment to achieving good mental health and a satisfying work-life balance, that helped spark the idea to write Benefelence the Elephence and the Wonderful You, his first children’s book.

The Amazing Artwork
Ilya Fortuna is an illustrator and game creator based in Ukraine. He enjoys working closely with authors and game developers to bring their words and stories to life in vibrant images. He is a graduate of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts, and served as the illustrator on many children’s books, including Marvelous Machines, which was the focus of a successful Kickstarter campaign. Ilya has re-skinned his own game, The Adventures of the Water Knight, for the Cartoon Network. His artwork appears in the successful game, My Lands, and he has created or contributed artwork to many other games, including Cowboy vs UFOsBrave AstronautAdventures of Water Knight, and Slumdog Billionaire (2048).

Book and Contact Details
Title: Benefelence the Elephence and the Wonderful You
Format: Large Print Square Paperback and ebook 29 pages
ISBN: Paperback: 978-1778094224. ebook: 978-1-778094217
Ages: 4–400
Author: Todd H. William
Illustrator: Ilya Fortuna
Publisher: Dizkorce
Publication Date: November 10, 2022
Price: Paperback 9.99 USD. ebook 2.99 USD.
Contact Email: thw@benefelence.com
Links (also available in many other marketplaces such as .ca, .uk, .au, etc.):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1778094228
Suggested Tags: Mindfulness, Picture Book, Words, Balance, Kindness, Patience, Resourceful, Virtues

What Can We Do if Our Kids Are Sick All the Time?

sick child resting on couch, sickness, illness,

Pixabay – CC0 License

There is nothing more difficult than when our children are constantly unwell. If you think about the time it takes for you to recover from an illness with your robust immune system when your kids are sick all the time, it can easily make you dread every time they start having a sniffle or a cough. Common colds, fevers, and ear infections can easily upend our routines, making it difficult to work or even to get a meal together. So what are the things we need to remember when our children get sick?

Know the Numbers

It might not be music to your ears, but if you are barely making it 3 weeks without a child getting ill, this works out to the average amount of times they could get sick in the space of a year. There are many common questions about ENT specialists, specifically in relation to ear infections, and if your child has 8 or more ear infections within the space of 12 months, this poses a major problem. The reality is that when it comes to ear infections, anything less than 3 is fine, and if your child is getting up to 10 colds a year, this is still in the normal range. It’s when a cold lasts more than 10 days, fever lasts more than 5 days, and difficulty breathing beyond a stuffy nose is when it becomes a problem and you need to seek medical advice.

Ensuring You Get the Balance Right

The fact is your children are going to be exposed to a variety of germs and bugs when they are in school or in daycare, but it’s essential for you to make sure that they have the right tools to fight off these things more effectively. When you have your first child, the number of bugs that you will catch from your children is incredibly surprising and can wage war on your own immune system you will find you are in a better place to help your children fight these things. The best thing you can help your children with include some of the following: 

  • Making sure your children get lots of sleep. It can be difficult, especially if they are waking up a lot at night, but ensuring that they feel as rested as possible makes a big difference. 
  • Increasing their vitamin intake. Vitamin C is incredibly important, and low levels have been linked to more severe colds. 
  • Improving their gut bacteria. If you have taken your child to the doctor a few times this year resulting in a number of courses of antibiotics, this could have an impact on their immune system. Improving gut bacteria is one of the best ways to improve the immune system overall.

It is incredibly difficult when our children are unwell, but it’s important to recognize that their being sick is more common than you think. If your children are unwell every few weeks, this is par for the course. The best thing you can do is to make sure you and your children are more comfortable so they can ride it out.