Send Your Kids Back to School with These Healthy Habits "As your tots, tweens, and teens head back to school, you won't be there to watch their every move-but you can still send them off to the classroom or dorm with some good habits." [Consumer Reports Health]
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6. Stay in school
7. Don't do drugs
Yay! I do all these things! Especially drink my milk. :)
OT but also, tonight I did my Pilates DVD for the first time. It was a whole hour and I thought about halfway through, "This smirking Pilates bitch is trying to kill me!" My mother said do it every day for a week the first time and then it will rev me up. Good God, I'm going to die. But I'm sick of being fat!
Also, I ate my peas. Good for Me.
I hate the phrase tween. It is dumb. When my daughter turns 13 she will become a teenager. I will never call my 10 year old soon to be an 11 year old a tween. I'll enjoy her being a 10 year old little girl thank you very much.
The advice is nothing but common sense. My daughter enjoys veggies, gets enough sleep, wears sunscreen and she loves milk. She will also wash her hands without being told to do so. Teach them properly from the start. It is not that hard to do.
Who ever came up with the word tween can suck my taint.
Seven to nine hours of sleep a night for a college student? Really? Good luck doing that if you're paying for your education by working full time.
For the college crowd:
Buy your own condoms and learn to use them correctly or don't have sex with the first smooth talker you meet as a freshman (more directed at the girls than the guys). Don't get used. This is not the time to be an emotional mess. This is something I have seen way too much of.
Get out of the pizza line. There are good entrees that you should be eating along with the veggies. Cereal is for breakfast...not for every meal of the day!
If you get depressed or feel lonely or whatever, go talk to a therapist. They are on your campus. Ask and you will be led to them. There are too many unhappy and suicidal people on college campuses. On my campus alone, last year two freshman killed themselves. Please.seek.help.
@HogwartsAlum: Tomorrow morning you are going to be very sore....get the Tylenol ready. But good for you! Keep it up!
@militarydave: We hope you enjoyed your short stay here at the Consuermist. We won't miss you, though.
@thelushie: +1. Even if you get yourself in a situation you may regret, at least you will have the calm assurance that you don't have anything permanent - like a disease or a kid!
@Quatre707: 6 hours + a 30 minute nap is almost as effective if you can catch up on days without a full schedule.
@HogwartsAlum: I know how you feel. I started running in January, and though I can now run almost 3 miles at a go, I still. weigh. the. same. AUGH.
How about: Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze?
It seems like common sense, but as I was waiting on the bus with my girls this morning I reminded them to do so (they have allergies and are prone to sneezing)... and *immediately* after I reminded my kindergartner's another bus rider's MOM coughed directly ON me, an open mouthed hacking.
Fucking disgusting.
@rpm773: Because if you do do drugs, and happen to live in my district, I have to vote on whether to expel you, and that makes me feel shitty. So try to avoid teenaged dumbassery so that *I* don't have to feel bad, kids!
Get free condoms from the infirmary, don't be afraid to call the campus police, talk to your teachers and see them during office hours (if they remember you out of the hundreds of others in a big class, it can help during grading time), assorted beverages keep cool on the windowsill, drink water before drinking, call safe rides if you have been drinking because the police do constant sobriety checkpoints (and they know all the shortcuts and backroads too), bring as little with you as possible because you will have to pack it up again (trash bags instead of hampers, no personal garbage cans), in an emergency, you can use the bathroom soap dispenser as laundry detergent and those empty cans do add up, recycle them.
@Blueskylaw: Most of the freshman i know followed the "don't bring too much" rule but ended up accumlating crap while here and ended up having to pack up everything anyway. I would say invest in crates (you know plastic colored ones) and use those to move. Trash bags break to easily.
I tell my little freshman friends to try not to drink. First, it is illegal for most of them. Second, if you get drunk, pray someone you actually trust is around you. I began thinking about that when I was walking on campus, notice a shoe in a bush and pulled the drunk person connected to said shoe out of the bush.
And yes recycle cans and plastic bottles! Fortunately, my graduate campus has places to put them. My undergrad campus (stupid backwoods hicks:-) ) didn't.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: I was in a class that was cross-referenced with an undergraduate class this pass sememster. A girl got pregnant by a guy who she said was her boyfriend. She wasn't sure what he would think. The one thing I do respect is that she took responsibilty for it. And gave him a healthy dose of blame too.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: How you know you are a college student? You start taking naps again. (And I know a few people that you don't interrupt naptime unless the building is on fire or someone is dead...and it better be someone they know and give a rat's ass about.)
@thelushie: Dumpster diving in a college town after the semester brings some sweet rewards. Peopel throw out CDs, game systems, small appliances, barely used furniture and rugs. One freshman's poorly thought out purchase is another townie's new living room set! :D
Re: your bush encounter, my dad's big tale of heroism is the time when he was in college in the 60s and he stopped a rape in the bushes. Bushes, like ditches: is bad.
As if that will stop all that comes out of your mouth or nose when you sneeze. Have you ever seen this video?
+ Watch video
Also don't send your child to school when they are clearly sick. Just because you consider school "free daycare." Do not make it miserable for the rest of us that enjoy to be there.
@thelushie: Srsly! When I was in college I had the great disadvantage of working nights. Some nights, I wouldn't wake up even for work -_- it was bad.
@NotYou007: That's gotta be CG O_o but did anyone else thing it looked somewhat like.. um.. sex faces... before the actual sneezing?
@Oranges w/ Cheese: I hope my o-face doesn't look like that.
Side note: "O-o-o-o...you know what I'm talkin' about. Yeah."
Hahaha I just had a flashback to the realm of Mike Judge.
@thelushie: "(more directed at the girls than the guys)"
No, it's a good idea if guys think about using condoms too. The woman isn't the only one who should be responsible about the birth control.
@rpm773: "Take it from your Uncle Bill, kids. Don't buy drugs... Become a pop star and they give them to you for free."
While the advice is common sense, it also presumes the parent has started their kid on vegetables from the start - how many kids take their carrots to school to throw them away and buy a cookie?
The advice: Don't send your kids to school with money.
@Quatre707: I actually never napped during college. And even during my busiest years, I never felt the need to block off time to nap. I don't think I needed the sleep as much as I needed just to sit in a quiet room and relax for half an hour until I needed to run out the door again. Now after college, I feel as if I need more sleep than ever. Uggh.
College students:
- If you're not a morning person, don't schedule classes in the morning. If you're not a morning person nor a night person, suck it up and schedule classes in the morning because you'll be asleep by 11 pm anyway, you buzzkill.
- When choosing roommates, or signing up for dorm living, talk to your potential roommates. If you are a night person and regularly stay up til 3 am, and your roommate's first class is at 7 am, don't room together.
- Invest in a black sharpie to write your name on every food item you buy
- Things may be exciting, and it may feel like camp right now, but there is a strong division of "yours/mine" when things are involved. You may share your TV, but don't let your roommate think that also applies to your clothing, unless you allow it. Respect privacy.
- Hang out with your roommate, but don't feel obligated to be their best friend. If you end up being best buds, great. If not, not the end of the world. But you MUST be friendly. This person knows where you sleep and has a key.
- Pick battles wisely. This goes along with the previous piece of advice. Again, this person knows where you sleep and has a key.
- Respect the chain of command. If you have a problem with your roommate, talk to your roommate first and try to resolve it civilly. If this problem is agregious, like lack of personal hygiene or potential criminal activity (knowing about it could get you in trouble with the college) talk to the RA or whoever is "leadership" in your dorm.
For high school students:
- Stop listening to your friends on what's trendy, or popular. Even if you're in the AV Club and you're not one of the popular kids, just because your friends are hipsters doesn't mean they're the experts on what is popular.
- You don't understand it now, but after you get out of college, you'll understand why we "adults" (post-college) hate high school students so much. Keep that in mind whenever you decide to roll your eyes.
- If you have wise and respectable parents, listen to them. If you have terrible, horrible, crappy parents, don't listen to them. Always listen to Bill Cosby. He knows what he's talking about.
@NotYou007: I always thought 'tween' was better used on a twenty-something person. Tolkien's Hobbits called the twenties "tweens". Frodo celebrates his coming of age at 33.
The (human) brain doesn't fully mature until a person is in their early twenties. (Sadly, the article [www.newscientist.com] I want to reference is old enough to be restricted to subscribers on New Scientist, but Wikipedia will probably say the same.)
Plus, the twenties are a very confusing and unique time. In the teens, you are learning how to be in an adult body. In the twenties, you are learning how to BE an adult in practice and starting to be addressed as an adult by other adults (unless you got this as a teenager). Some people get this by 17, 18, or 19, but I'd say many people don't really have everything down by the time they get into their twenties.
If you are twenty and you've never lived on your own or bought a car, you aren't abnormal. If you are 30 and you've never done anything major for yourself, then there's something going on.
Tween for the 3-4 years between childhood and teenager still kinda works for the same reasons. But I'd read Tolkien first.
@pecan 3.14159265 (now with star power): It's funny how some guys don't think about what they'd feel about having a kid until their girlfriend is pregnant. It's unwise to be sexually active and not think about this beforehand.
Some men freak out and feel betrayed if she chooses to abort it. Some react the opposite way.
And some wind up paying child support for the next 1.8 decades.
I had a friend who got a girl pregnant and was completely distraught over it. He felt responsible to the child (because his dad had been horrible to him, and he loved his dad) - but he didn't want to marry the woman (she turned psycho and nearly killed the child as an infant).
And please... get checked for STDs/HIV at least once a year. Women get checked when they have pap smears (should be yearly, and is required to be prescribed the Pill). Sharing in this case is NOT caring.
@pecan 3.14159265 (now with star power): Well we're the ones who get pregnant, amirite? And they're the ones who ass is going to be paying child support. ;)
@NewsMuncher: "Women get checked when they have pap smears (should be yearly, and is required to be prescribed the Pill)."
STD tests aren't automatically done in conjunction a Pap smear. It's also not required to have one done to be on the Pill (some places do require it, but it's not 100%-everywhere-no-matter-what-type of requirement).
@Oranges w/ Cheese: Muscle weighs more. If you built up muscle, it weirds you out when you get on the scale. I don't weigh any more. I go by how my clothes fit.
My goal is to strengthen my core and get rid of fat rolls so I can wear my dress again, which looks like this:
[shop.guess.com]
I USED to look like that in it, too! :P
@pecan 3.14159265 (now with star power): Well you see, women are the gatekeepers of sex. If they get pregnant, it's all their fault!
@squinko: squinko is right. You have to ask to be tested. All the yearly gyno thing does is check for any abnormalities the doctor can see/feel and the PAP is to check for pre-cancerous changes in the cervical cells. Which can by caused by some forms of HPV.
Also, be very very careful about getting drunk. I know plenty of people who got drunk and ended up somewhere they didn't want to be.
Also, DON'T GO OFF ALONE WITH PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW VERY WELL. You could get raped! That includes neighbors, acquaintances and the hot guy you just met at the party.
The caps are because I know from first hand experience. :P
@HogwartsAlum: But I assume the face means you DIDN'T have the rape part happen...which is good, if it's the case. If not, rape doesn't strike me as a ":P" thing...
@pecan 3.14159265 (now with star power): i think i napped occasionally, although I definitely napped more often in grad school than undergrad. although most of my naps did occur in class....
@Blueskylaw: and if they go to catholic college where condoms ARE NOT given out like candy, learn where the closest gas station or pharmacy is.
don't go out in the bronx with 45 dollars to spend on alcohol and spend it all. that's a lot of 3 dollar mixed drinks and you will hate yourself the next day.
@G.O.B.: Come on!: *some* of them did at the beginning, though. More the initial breath not the actual sneeze.
![[shop.guess.com]](http://shop.guess.com/StyleImages/Y8471902-BLK-RF.jpg){kind=link}
@militarydave:
Should I link TMZ for you, or do you think you can find your way over there on your own?