Childrens Behavioral Health and the Many Influencing Factors

Childrens behavioral health results from a combination of factors, many of which moms can influence in healthy ways.

Your child's behavioral and emotional health are influenced by some or all of your responses to the following questions:

• how well does your child manage unhealthy stress?
• how much anxiety does she live with?
• does she eat a diet loaded with sugar?
• are there too many artificial food dyes in her diet?
• how is her exercise and emotional health?
• how is her mental clarity?
• does she have loving friendships with children her own age?
• does she have a loving friendship with the most important person in her life, herself?

Childrens behavioral health is not a simple matter, as you can see by the questions above.

So, since Childrens Educational Books offer Inspiration Empowering Children, here's some inspiring information that deals directly with each of the questions.

Children Managing Unhealthy Stress and Anxiety

I've been healthily managing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosed by the Veterans Affairs as a result of my tour of duty in war-torn Vietnam since 2003.

I've handled stress, reduced stress, and recognize much quicker when something, often my own thoughts, are causing me to feel stress.

This highly effective, FREE (and somewhat strange form of energy medicine) has helped many kids worldwide. It is comparable to acupuncture for the emotions Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). Read about it at stress management for kids.

Does Your Child Eat a Diet Loaded with Sugar?

When I was an anti-nuclear activist in the mid-1970s in central California trying to keep Diablo (meaning the devil) Canyon Nuclear Power plant from going into operation, I read by a highly respected nutritionist that "sugar was like an atomic bomb going off inside your body." (Sugar Blues by Adelle Davis).

Boy did that scare the living .... out of me!

Childrens behavioral health is directly related to the amount of sugar consumed, affecting their minds and bodies.

It's estimated that the average American consumes 152 pounds of sugar per year, up 40 pounds per year from 50 years ago.

“Sugar contributes empty carbohydrate calories, which Americans certainly don’t need,” says Walter Willett, M.D., chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

"Sugar sours behavior, attention, and learning. Studies of the effects of sugar on children's behavior are as wildly contradictory as a sugar-crazed four-year-old after a birthday party, but the general consensus is that some children and adults are sugar-sensitive, meaning their behavior, attention span, and learning ability deteriorate in proportion to the amount of junk sugar they consume."

The rest of the article is available here on how sugar depresses immunity and affects childrens behavioral health by a doctor with impeccable credentials.

Artificial Food Dyes in Your Loved One's Diet

"Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Orange B, Red 3, and Yellow 6 - Food coloring or dyes are in many of our foods we eat - We’ve heard reports of cancer concerns, but did you know that recently The Center for Science in the Public Interest is asking the FDA to ban these dyes because of behavioral issues in children?"

If you wish to discover how artificial food dyes have an adverse affect on childrens behavioral health, read the rest of read the remainder of the article.

How is Her Exercise and Emotional Health?

It has been conclusively shown that exercise has a direct affect on brain chemistry and emotions are affected by brain chemistry. This is what is often referred to as mind body medicine.

Exercising naturally produces endorphins and serotonin in our brains. These help us feel better and more mentally alert.

"Studies show that regular exercise helps to alleviate stress, lessen anxiety, and improve mild to moderate depression. In some cases, vigorous activity is more effective than medication or therapy, making exercise a first course treatment in matters of emotional health."

Taken from this excellent website on childrens behavioral health, exercise and emotional well being.

So if your child exercises sufficiently, it aids in ...

Her Mental Clarity.

Another aid to mental alertness in children is nourishment.

Ruth Kava, PhD, RD, director of nutrition at the American Council on Science and Health in New York states: "We do know nourishment improves brain function."

Judith Wurtman, PhD, director of a women's health program at the MIT Clinical Research Center in Boston states..."two brain chemicals, epinephrine and dopamine, govern mental alertness. These chemicals are made from an amino acid called tyrosine.

"If you're engaged in sustained mental activity, you need to replace the tyrosine -- and it comes from proteins, not carbs."

Does She Have Loving Friendships with Children Her Age?

We all need friends, others we can just be ourselves with. Not our family in most cases!

Friends play an important role in listening to our challenges and inspiring us in the wright direction. Assuming of course you child hangs out with healthy friends.

One of our kids printable, online, coloring drawing books, Bingo and Bonner, A Read-Me, Draw-Me Book is about the meaning of true friendship.

Check out my discussion on kids friendship and a list of kids friendship books.

Does she have a loving friendship with the most important person in her life, herself?

Self love is a crucial factor influencing self-confidence, self esteem, and childrens behavioral health.

Only children who honor and respect themselves can consciously strive for excellent behavior. A child not feeling good about herself often doesn't know the difference between good and bad childrens behavior.

Or, if she understands the difference, somehow is unable to manage to exhibit good childrens behavior.

Health, especially emotional health, is complicated.

Parents are always doing the best they can. However, parents have also learned unhealthy patterns of behavior that subconsciously they pass on to their kids.

Our health education for kids discusses the critical role self-love and the subconscious play not only in childrens behavioral health but in life.

I had lots of behavioral problems as a teenager, beginning with getting drunk at 12 years old and regularly getting drunk until age 39. (I've not had alcohol for over 25 years).

I also stole from my father, set school records for absenteeism, and gambled excessively.

Part of this was caused by my parents' divorce when I was four and no longer had a father figure to model. I never learned how to express the grief, sadness, anger and feeling abandoned that I felt.

So, drinking was one way to feel better about myself. I was trying to fill a vacant void from the outside, not knowing how to care for myself.

So you see, childrens behavioral health has many aspects to it, more of which are covered at health education for children.

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The information found on Childrens Behavioral Health is the property of Childrens Educational Books.

Kindly treat us as you would treat family and friends. Gratefully, Harvey