There are, in fact, nuances to the common allergy medications that are prescribed like Zyrtec and Benadryl, that are worth considering when deciding which to use and when. Continue reading Best Allergy Medicine for Kids
Having children with severe food allergies can be very difficult on the parent as well as the child. However, other than plain avoidance, there are now actually a number of different options for families to consider. If you have a child under 5, you have a particularly good chance of using some of these options (particularly OIT), to cure (not just desensitize!) your child’s food allergies. Researchers have found that the younger kids have much more lasting benefits of immunotherapy – meaning they could actually be cured(!) rather than just desensitized. My kids were unfortunately past that age when I … Continue reading 6 Treatments for Food Allergies
My child sprained an ankle and immediately, every well-meaning person around us kept at us with ice, and more ice. The day after the injury, our sporty, super-fit friends quizzed me, double-checking that we were continuing to ice the ankle. All this emphasis on ice gave me pause, because in traditional Chinese medicine (whose philosophy I have followed growing up), ice is never used for an injury. These opposing views sent me running to Google. It turns out that recent research suggests icing an injury may not be the best way to heal an injury. My findings The bullet points … Continue reading To Ice or Not to Ice (Injuries)?
In another post, I wrote about how I decided to lean towards minimalist footwear for my kids and for myself. Well, I didn’t realize that finding children’s minimalist, athletic footwear (and there are definitely degrees of minimalism here) would be so difficult! In fact, most popular brands had very thick soles and were heavy. Others were too rigid and narrow, particularly in the toebox, and even others also had positive inclines, so much that I was effectively putting my child in a slight heel. None of those made any sense to me and yet those were the majority that I … Continue reading Best Minimalist, Athletic Shoes for Kids
In my quest to quell my child’s myopia, I discovered the myopia reversal community online. It seems there are many adults who are trying to improve their vision naturally. Yet while the medical eyecare community has not reached the point where they will even consider that myopia reversal is possible, myopia control for children is a growing sub-specialty and reaching mainstream eyecare practices. Considering that myopia control didn’t exist when I was growing up, (and yet here it is), I’m wary of dismissing the possibility of myopia reversal too quickly. My takeaway Researching and comparing these two “fields” was helpful … Continue reading Myopia Control vs. Myopia Reversal
Sticky post
If you or your child have a food allergy, you’ve probably had your share of sudden panic or major scares, or you subconsciously carry a low level of stress for anything food-related. We have nut allergies in our household, so I’ve had some scares and ER visits, followed by frantic googling of “food allergy cure.” Recently, we decided to have our children try oral immunotherapy (OIT) for nuts. (OIT is just one of many treatment options emerging – see my other post on this.) This was a huge, agonizing decision for us and we went back and forth several times … Continue reading 10+ Things to Know About OIT for Food Allergies
After a lot of searching the Internet and asking around for best practices, we settled on a few key resources for teaching Chinese to our children. The amount of resources and choices online can be really overwhelming and paralyzing if you don’t know where to start. There are a lot of good options and none will be perfect. I was definitely in the “paralyzed” camp for awhile. Now that I’ve done the research, I realize that the key is to just pick a strategy and structure and get started. Below are the five main resources we use: Resource #1: A … Continue reading Top 5 Resources for Teaching Chinese to Kids
