Browsed by
Tag: health and well being of children

Growth Plate Injuries: What Parents Should Know

Growth Plate Injuries: What Parents Should Know

boy-with-chocolate
boy-with-chocolate

For a child, falling down is almost inevitable and generally doesn’t result in a trip to the emergency room. However, even minor falls can sometimes cause serious injuries. If you hear a cracking sound or if your child has bruising, swelling, or a limb deformity, there’s a chance your child may have broken a bone and you should seek medical attention right away if you notice these symptoms. Most types of breaks are routine (for the medical staff if not for the parent), but those involving a growth plate can present complications and require extra attention.

There is a marked difference between the bones of an adult and those of a child. Children have what are called physes—that is, growth plates. These growth plates are located at the end of long bones in the arms and legs. The growth plates, made of soft, rubbery cartilage, cause the bone to grow in length. Growth plates are found near the shoulder joint, elbow joint, hip joint, knee joint, ankle joint and wrist joint. Of the six main locations the ankles and wrists are particularly vulnerable to harm.

Growth plate damage can lead to long term problems. When a growth plate is injured, the bone may stop or slow growing. This is why it is essential to seek qualified medical treatment immediately to avoid problems later in life. If injured, a child should under no circumstances “walk it off.”

It is imperative to get the child to a doctor as soon as possible if you suspect a growth plate break. Growth plates heal quite rapidly, which gives doctors only a very short window to do non- surgical manipulations in order to set broken bones correctly. If your child has a minor, non-displaced break, the doctor may treat it like a sprain and recommend a splint, cast, or walking boot to protect the area for four to six weeks. Usually, these types of fractures do not require long-term care. Preferably, a growth plate fracture should be set within a week of injury.

When a child’s bone has moved or been displaced, an orthopedist can set the bone back in place in the emergency room without the need to operate. The child will be anaesthetized in the emergency department, and the doctor will use X-rays to determine where to correctly move the bone. Once the bone has been set, the doctor will set a cast in order to keep the bone in place. Usually the child will be allowed to go home that night, but occasionally they will be admitted to ensure the swelling is not too severe. Proper care and follow up will likely involve physical therapy and doctor’s visits for the next half a year.

Most growth plate fractures heal properly and do not result in any long-term issues. Once in a while, the bone stops growing and winds up shorter than the other appendage. For example, a fractured leg might become shorter than the opposite leg. Early detection that growth is unequal between the two limbs is essential. However, this is a true minority of cases and most children heal just fine.

Kids and Sports: The New Youth Athletics Landscape

Kids and Sports: The New Youth Athletics Landscape

?????????????Over the last twenty years, the landscape of youth sports has changed dramatically. It used to be that children would gather after school and choose (or invent) an activity or game to play until dinnertime. In this world of “free play,” the kids set the rules and managed themselves more or less independently. These days, though, it’s much more common for kids’ sports to be highly organized and stratified, with adults more heavily involved than they were even a generation ago.

The downsides of adult-led, year-round structure

Kids can sometimes be rough-and-tumble, and they can also be cruel. This means that free play can have its share of problems when seen through the eyes of adults who are most concerned about limiting safety and social risks. From their point of view, there are clear advantages to having a neutral adult coach providing instruction and “managing” play. Parents who view free play as an unstructured waste of time may also be drawn to what they see as the more targeted developmental benefits of organized sports, though for slightly different reasons.

It’s important to understand that this shift has come with a cost. Many child development experts now believe that adult-led, year-round structure has deprived children of important opportunities to practice innovation, independence and self-management—including social skills like cooperation and dispute resolution. They also believe it has deprived them of opportunities to learn where the boundary is between good-natured (even competitive) physical play and play that is rough enough to cause real harm. Learning where this boundary is requires live experimentation that entails some risk. This is how children learn how to read and respond to others and to different kinds of situations appropriately.

The up-or-out world of youth athletics

The shift to adult-led, year-round structure has also changed the nature of youth athletics, creating a two-tier system of “recreational” and “competitive” sports where recreation often gets short shrift. This can produce a high-pressure environment for many children, who automatically begin associating athletics with expectations of performance. This sort of environment has the potential to change the relationship between kids and sports in a few different ways. In some cases, it may encourage youngsters of 8 or 9 years (or their parents) to choose a single sport early in their “careers” and to commit to it for the entire year. Children who do not make this early all-or-nothing commitment (even very athletic ones) may find that their playing opportunities dwindle and that they’re stuck in the middle—somewhere between a competitive tier that may demand too much and a recreational one that may offer too little. In other cases, it may discourage children with less obvious talent or less drive to abandon sports altogether.

The impact on health and wellness

This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about long-term musculoskeletal health and fitness. For earlier generations, sports were more seasonal and it was common for kids to play several different sports throughout the year. Since they didn’t specialize until later (if at all), they tended to become more well-rounded athletes and their physical development tended to be more balanced. And to the extent that different sports require different types of movement and emphasize different muscle groups, it was less likely for a young athlete to suffer overuse injuries. Today, physicians say they are seeing more juvenile athletes come in with repetitive stress injuries. For example, a recent study from the journal Radiology revealed that young baseball pitchers are at risk of an overuse injury of the shoulder known as acromial apophysiolysis, which can lead to long-term and even irreversible consequences as kids grow.

And what about children who opt-out of sports early because of performance pressure or burnout, or because they can’t “keep up” with peers who are developing before them? It may take these children years to rediscover sports. And they may miss out on exactly the types of physical activity that keep them fit and healthy unless they find some other alternatives.

A healthier, more balanced approach to athletics

Most medical doctors and chiropractic physicians would probably agree about the importance of variety when it comes to children’s musculoskeletal health and development. Even more broadly, variety is the key to achieving balanced physical, social and psychological growth. Plus, varying your activities is a great way to prevent boredom and increase enjoyment. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with competition or with working hard to excel at something, especially when it comes to sports and if it’s done for the love of the game. However, we adults should remember to let kids be kids, which means trying out different athletic activities, succeeding at some and failing at others, and learning to enjoy the process every step of the way.

Why Strong Parenting is Important to the Happiness and Emotional Well Being of Your Child

Why Strong Parenting is Important to the Happiness and Emotional Well Being of Your Child

Child Refusing Vegetables© Beckyabell | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photoshttp://www.stockfreeimages.com/

We live in an age of enlightenment…or so they say. We definitely live in the information age. As for the age of enlightenment…that may not be so true.

Parenting is tough…no baby comes with an instruction manual and every child is unique.

However, too many parents seem to believe that children are fine without guidelines or moral teachings. They seem to think that with all the information available in the world – their children will just absorb everything that is out there and be equipped to sort it out all by themselves.

I would never be in favor of returning to the days of rulers across the knuckles but I have seen firsthand the effects of parents who don’t care sufficiently or provide adequate nurturing, teaching, and boundaries…and the effects of that type of parenting are neither good nor positive for a child’s health.

I believe that there is a natural order that is meant to be followed: which is that parents are the parents because they are the ones who are meant to be in charge of the household – not the children. If it were meant to be the other way around – I believe that God would have had children giving birth to parents.

I have dealt with two adopted children who have Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). RAD is an emotional disorder caused when children are not nurtured or kept safe. (There is more to it but for now that explanation will have to suffice). My children have RAD because they experienced abandonment and neglect. However, a child does not have to be abandoned or neglected to experience the emotional fall out of RAD.

Just let a child “Rule the Roost” and let him/her know in no uncertain terms that they are in charge and you have created a potential candidate for RAD yourself.
Have you ever noticed that children who run their homes are angry children with blatant disrespect for everyone and everything around them? There is a reason. A child needs boundaries. The soul of a child inherently knows that their parents should be in charge and teaching them and setting the example, etc.  When no guidance or boundaries are established by parents, the child is left feeling scared, abandoned and unsafe – even if the parents are right there in their presence.

I had a therapist describe it something like this: “Who knew that when we were changing their diapers (of our emotionally healthy children) while they were screaming, and fighting us and hating it; when we didn’t let they have their way or climb where they wouldn’t be safe; when we didn’t let them steal a toy from another child – they knew we were communicating that we cared and that they were safe and that we were helping them to be emotionally well.”

So…if you want your children to be emotionally healthy – love them, snuggle them, give them strong boundaries, teach them morals and appropriate behavior, teach them to work and be a contributing member of your family, teach them to respect you , others and themselves and you will have a much greater chance of raising a happy,  emotionally healthy child.