Helpful steps to better health for your children

You are your child's best health advocate.

You know when you need to push for the doctor to check for one more thing, when something doesn't feel right.

But what are you missing? See our ideas for getting your kids even healthier than they are now.

Tween, teen workouts

Rule No. 1 for parents trying to encourage their tweens and teens to exercise is to avoid calling it exercise. Treadmills and aerobics classes sound too much like punishment. Instead, try targeting inactivity and excess weight through the very things blamed for contributing to them: video games.

"Exergaming" at the XRKade, an innovative gym in the Glendale/Peoria Family YMCA's Put Play in Your Day Center, requires more than fast thumb work. Players must move their bodies - dance, swing a golf club, practice tae kwon do - to make the games work.

Help when your kids are too sick for school

Parents might be tempted to ignore the symptoms, but kids shouldn't be sent to school when they have a temperature above 100 degrees, an unidentifiable rash or an uncontrollable, productive cough, Phoenix pediatrician Maritza Irizarry says.

That's when moms and dads who can't get time off work start cobbling together creative solutions, from sharing care in short shifts with a handful of relatives or friends to leaving the sick child at a hospital-run day-care program.

Unfortunately for Phoenix families, John C. Lincoln Deer Valley Hospital's Wee Care program closed this summer, the result of financial belt-tightening. But if you live or work in the southeast Valley, Sick Kid Care at Chandler Regional Medical Center still is filling in for grateful families.

In the Chandler program, staff members with pediatrics training care for mildly ill infants and kids through age 13 under the direction of a registered nurse. Rates are $40 for six hours or more, $30 for fewer than six. Call first to make sure a spot is open immunization records are required.

Give up pediatrician

When your 150-pound 14-year-old son is squirming amid the Legos in the waiting room, it may be time to consider transitioning from his pediatrician to a family doctor. Some kids adore the doctors they've had since birth and wouldn't dream of moving on. Others are ready to leave the cartoon bandages behind.

Let teenagers be part of the decision, says the Parenting Teens Resource Network, because by college they will need to take more responsibility for their own health care. Parents also have to be ready for the switch because - gulp! - many family practitioners will want to talk to the teens without parents present.

Cholesterol check

The American Academy of Pediatrics raised eyebrows last year when it advised aggressive medical treatment, including prescription drugs in certain cases, for kids with high cholesterol. But the group also raised awareness that high cholesterol's contribution to heart disease often begins in childhood.

So, too, can the good habits that help keep coronary arteries clear. Pediatrician Duane Wooten of Phoenix advises lifestyle changes instead of cholesterol-lowering medicine, which the pediatrics group recommends for kids as young as 8 with high LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) and other risk factors. Wooten focuses instead on improving patients' diet and exercise habits, both proven to lower cholesterol. This needs to be a family effort, though, so he monitors the progress of his patients and their parents every month.

Kids' urgent care

There's another option for kids who are not experiencing a health emergency but need more than Mom and Dad's TLC. Urgent-care centers, such as the northwest Phoenix facility that Phoenix Children's Hospital opened this summer, are staffed by pediatric specialists. Doctors in a number of specialties see patients by appointment from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays at the new Phoenix Children's Specialty and Urgent Care-Northwest Valley Center. In addition, pediatric urgent-care services, with no appointment needed, are available at the center during the hours when it can be hard to get into your regular pediatrician's office: 5-11 p.m. weekdays and noon-11 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. 20325 N. 51st Ave., Phoenix. 602-972-KIDS (5437), phoenixchildrens.com.

Vaccines for preteens, teens

Although your preteen and teenage kids will be quick to remind you they want to be treated like adults, they need protection against diseases as much now as when they were preschoolers. Two immunizations, which are required for Arizona students age 11 and older entering sixth grade, fight the following:

• Meningococcal meningitis, a potentially fatal bacterial infection that's especially risky for college students sharing close quarters in dorms.

• Tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough). The immunization for these three bacterial infections is administered to preteens and teens in a combination booster shot.

Advised by some health organizations for this age group, but not required in Arizona, are vaccines that guard against:

• Flu (shot recommended every year for 10- through 18-year-olds).

• Human papillomavirus, or HPV (recommended in a series of three shots for girls 11 or 12 or those who are not yet sexually active).

source: azcentral