Check Your Health- Prioritize Your Child’s Emotional Wellness this School Year

When getting your kids ready to go back to school, make sure they know how to get there safely when walking, riding a bike or scooter, carpooling, and by other means – and that they know how to talk to you about their emotional wellness.

“The first day of school is an exciting time, and we want to be sure our kids arrive there safely and are equipped with tools to maintain physical and emotional wellness throughout the school year,” said Karlee Kump, community health program manager with Intermountain Children’s Health and Primary Children’s Hospital.

Prioritize Emotional Wellness

As a parent, you help your children learn new skills at each stage of life, with each new grade. As children grow, they need new skills to navigate feelings and emotions – and you’re the perfect person to help them identify their feelings, accept, regulate and validate them.

It all starts with spending time with them, talking to them – and getting them to talk to you, which is more natural when you are doing things together.

Intermountain Children’s Health’s “Talk to Tweens” is an emotional wellbeing toolkit for parents. It offers free conversation-starters, ways to identify and talk with kids about their feelings, and tips on how to help kids manage challenging emotions and situations. The resources are available at TalkToTweens.org.

“Back to school is a time when many kids will be experiencing big feelings,” Kump said. “That’s why it’s so important to talk through them with your child.”

Here are some tips from Intermountain Children’s Health to help kids go back to school safely:

Bring a Booster Seat to the Carpool

Kids should sit in the back seat until age 13, and use a booster seat until they are 4 feet, 9 inches tall, Intermountain Children’s Health experts recommend. For shorter kids, seatbelts fit too high on the neck, and too high across their soft bellies, which can cause serious injuries or death to kids in the event of a crash. That’s why it’s important your carpool has enough booster seats for kids who need them, or that you make arrangements to put your child’s booster seat in the carpool vehicle.

Here’s a 5-step test on how to know whether your child is tall enough to ride without a booster:

• The shoulder belt crosses between the neck and shoulder.
• Lower back is against the vehicle seat.
• Lap belt is on the thighs or hip bones.
• The knees bend at the end of the seat.
• The child can ride like this for the entire ride.

Wear a Helmet Every Ride, Every Time

Children should wear helmets every time they ride anything with wheels, from a bike to a skateboard and the adults in their lives should as well.

The Intermountain West has the fourth-highest traumatic brain injury hospitalization rate in the country for children. About 1,500 traumatic pediatric injuries are treated at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital each year, and about 40 percent of them are head injuries. Many injuries could be prevented by wearing a helmet.

To ensure a child’s helmet fits properly, parents should make sure:

• The helmet fits snugly and sits level on the child’s head.
• The helmet fits two finger widths above the child’s eyebrow
• The side strap V-shape fits just under the child’s ears.
• One adult’s finger can fit between the child’s chin and the strap.

Remember, kids outgrow helmets just like they outgrow clothes or shoes. Parents should check the fit of their child’s helmet regularly.

Stay Safe Walking and Playing Outdoors

Across the country, more than 67,000 child pedestrians are injured each year. Here are some pedestrian safety tips to help kids stay safe:

• Teach children that they shouldn’t play in the driveways, streets, parking lots or unfenced yards by the street.
• If there are no sidewalks, walk facing oncoming traffic.
• When walking at night, wear light colors or reflectors.
• When crossing a street, stop at the curb first. Then look left, right, and left again before crossing.
• Make eye contact with drivers to make sure they see you before crossing in front of them.
• Put away phones and headphones, and keep heads and eyes up, to cross the street safely.
• Never run across the street. Children under 10 years old should not cross streets alone.
• Cross the street only at corners using traffic signals or at marked crosswalks.

For more information, visit Intermountainhealth.org/childsafety