A very high percentage of children will have one or more of the following illnesses during their tender years:
1. Fever
2. Ear infections (the #1 reason that children seek a physician’s help)
3. Cold/sore throat/sinus issues
4. Tummy ache (including constipation or diarrhea)
What you SHOULD NOT DO…IS PANIC!
This is not the time to call 911, rush to your doctor’s office, rush to the emergency room, shove medications at your child immediately or lose control.
This IS the time to do your best to be rational, look at your options, and react to the above four illnesses for what they usually are:
Signals to you as a parent and to your child that something is wrong and then for you to
figure out what to do about it.
In my opinion after practicing pediatric chiropractic for three decades the worst thing that you can do as a parent is:
-Start shoving medications or over the counter drugs to cover up the symptoms
The best thing that you can do for these illnesses is:
-Take stock of your child’s overall health FIRST
What do I mean by this? Look at your child with any of the above symptoms/illnesses. Does she:
-still have good energy
-look lethargic, have shallow breathing, have bad coloring
On the other hand recent history of your child:
-Has she:
-been getting adequate sleep lately
-been particularly stressed with things at home, school, with friends, etc.
-been eating relatively well or does she deserve a spot on the classic “Super
Size” me video where a guy ate only McDonald’s super size meals for a month,
(if you haven’t seen it…it’s worth a viewing…it should gross you out and keep
you away from super sizing or even eating most of the fast food crap).
-been drinking enough water…or too much soda
Are you starting to get the picture? If your child has been sleeping badly, eating badly, is stressed out, then he or she kind of deserves to get sick! Don’t treat the symptom of a cold or tummy ache only…
CHANGE YOUR CHILD’S HEALTH HABITS!
The old commercial with the dude at a bowling alley that has just consumed all kinds of nastiness in food and drink…and lo and behold he gets an upset stomach?! GOOD…he deserves it! The commercial was for an antacid and the slogan of the commercial was:
“Don’t change your eating habits, just take our antacid with you.”
What the commercial should have said was:
“Go ahead and eat like an idiot, pay for our antacid and we’ll help you keep abusing your body!”
