Smart Ways to Take Control of Your Child’s Health

Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk via Pexels

Between doctor visits, IEP meetings, and other activities that involve your child’s mental and physical health, it’s easy to get disorganized and forget important information or steps. However, taking control of your child’s health is not something you should leave to chance. Today, InTemenos presents a few ways that we can be our children’s biggest advocates.

Include Healthy Activities Every Day

Living a healthy lifestyle is one of the best ways that anyone can take control of their health, children included. As a parent, you can model healthy behaviors by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, exercising during the day, eliminating alcohol from your diet, and skipping fast food. Show your kids the importance of drinking enough water, too!

You should also include activities that support your child’s mental wellbeing and their emotional development. Music is a great way to do both. InTemenos offers instruments and educational materials to get kids of all ages involved in music.

Go Digital with Your Child’s Medical Records

Your iPad is one of your greatest tools when it comes to ensuring that you are organized and can present information to your child’s healthcare providers. Make sure that you save scanned files as PDFs, which you can also organize by date using a PDF conversion tool. Or you can convert your PDF to DOCX if you need to make edits to ensure the information is up to date. You can easily convert them back to PDFs to send them to medical practitioners or specialists. The good thing about PDFs is that they work on all operating systems.

Maintain Behavioral Records

In addition to healthcare records, you’ll also want to keep a written record of your child’s behavior. These records are especially important for kids with ADHD because your journal helps you spot patterns of unwanted or wanted behavior. It’s almost a guarantee that your children’s healthcare team will ask you to keep a journal anyway, so the sooner you start, the better.

Ask for a Second Opinion

Although healthcare is a science, some people present with conditions that have subtle nuances that might make you question whether your child’s provider is correct. East Lancashire Hospitals explains that while you do not have a legal right to a second opinion, many healthcare providers will respect your innate right to request a second look. Keep in mind that this may involve additional travel and costs; but if you truly are uncomfortable with your original diagnosis, a second opinion may be the way to go.

Get Your Kids Involved in their Care Practices

In the UK, children are typically considered competent to make their own health care decisions at the age of 16, according to Patient.Info. However, you can give them some control from an earlier age. If your child is uncomfortable with her primary doctor, for example, let them interview other pediatricians. Unless their pediatrician is a specialist and there are no others available, your child may do better with someone they are more comfortable with, which can lead to better health care overall.

Ensure Shared Medical Information

According to the General Medical Council, providers have a responsibility to share and receive information from one another involving direct care. It is your responsibility to ensure that each understands the information presented to them. Confirm with your healthcare providers that they have received information from other pertinent healthcare facilities prior to a visit with a new doctor.

Make Your Child’s Health Your Priority

As parents, we do what we can to ensure that our children’s health concerns are adequately addressed. If you’ve been struggling for ways to do just that, start by modeling healthy behaviors yourself. You also want to make sure that you have online PDF files to share, that you’re letting your children make some decisions and that you know that your providers are always in the loop.

(by Ashley Taylor)