Family Health Articles by Ann Douglas

Fitness and nutrition

• Eating Dinner as a Family: How to transition into eating dinner as a family when your kids want to eat early and your work schedules don't allow you to make dinner until mid-evening. 
• Family Fitness: Resolve to Get Your Kids Moving: Who says fitness has to be boring -- or super-serious? Throw around a Frisbee (yes, even in January!) Play a game of tag. As long as you're moving your bodies vigorously enough to get your hearts beating faster, you're doing your body good.
• Parents' approach to children's nutrition could affect weight, fruit, and vegetable consumption later in life, study shows: ow you handle the Great Veggie Standoff (and other fruit- and veggie-related skirmishes over the years) could determine how much your 6-year-old weighs by the time he heads off to college and how often he chooses to consume fruits and vegetables during his college years.

Mental health and wellness

• Dear Parent of a Child Who is Struggling: An open letter to parents who have a child who is struggling (from the Parenting Through the Storm blog).
• Four Simple Yet Powerful Things You Can Do Right Now to Start Making Things Better for Your Child: Practical advice for parents who have a child who is struggling with a mental health, neurodevelopmental, or behavioural challenge (from the Parenting Through the Storm blog).
• "Don't forget about the siblings." An important reminder for parents who have a child who is struggling with a mental health, neurodevelopmental, or behavioural challenge (from the Parenting Through the Storm blog).
• Teen Brain Benefits from Mindfulness Training: Teenagers who practice mindfulness — a technique that involves focusing on what is happening in the moment and being aware of and accepting of emotions — benefit from increased self-control, healthier relationships, and improved overall well-being.
• Parenting a Child with ADHD Made More Stressful Because of Stigma, Misunderstanding: It's tough enough parenting a child who has ADHD. The stigma that surrounds the disorder makes it tougher.
• ADHD Parenting: Panic less. Live (and love) more. The joys and challenges of parenting a child with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
• Mom's Stress Guide: Why moms of school-aged kids feel overloaded.
• Mom's Stress Guide: Tweens and Teens: You may feel like you're back in the new mom trenches, except it's a much lonelier experience this time around.
• Handling Bullying: "My child is being bullied at school. What should I do?"
• Bullying Prevention Tips for Children Who Are Struggling: Why children who are struggling with mental health challenges are more likely to bully and be bullied.

Work-life

• Being Pregnant on the Job: You've come a long way baby, at least when it comes to being pregnant on the job.
• How to Tell Your Boss You're Pregnant: How and when to make the mother of all announcements at work.
• Working During Pregnancy: Follow these tips to get the most from your job while caring for your body's changing needs.
• How to Plan for the Post-Baby Money Crunch: hat can you do to sidestep the financial pitfalls of maternity leave?
• Do Dads Feel More Work-Life Stress Than Moms?: Forget supermom stress. Now it’s dads who are scrambling to find ways to minimize work-life conflict. 
• A Recipe for Sanity: What every mother who works outside of the home needs is a fairy godmother -- someone who will arrive on the scene, wave her magic wand, and make all the work and family related-chaos disappear.
• Why Our Economic Future Depends on a National Child Care Program: With a lack of spaces, inconsistent quality control and a reduction of subsidies, Canada’s child-care system is severely under-developed. This puts the economic future of our country in jeopardy and leaves our kids severely disadvantaged.
• The Daycare Blues: While there's no miracle cure for the daycare blues that many children experience when starting a new childcare arrangement, there is plenty you can do to make the transition as stress-free as possible for your child. Here are a few tips.
• Sick Kids and Daycare: When are kids infectious? When can they return to school or daycare? Some basic guidelines for some common childhood illnesses.
• The Childcare Swap Moves Online, But Will It Work?: “Parents are really struggling to find something that is seriously lacking in our society: quality, accessible, affordable child care," says Paulette Senior, CEO of YWCA Canada.
• February is RRSP Money Guilt Season for Parents: t’s February, which means it’s money guilt season again – the time of year when the financial industry reminds us that we should be contributing to our RRSPs and our children’s RESPs and, now, our tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs), too. 

Ann Douglas is the author of The Mother of All Pregnancy Books, The Mother of All Baby Books, The Mother of All Toddler Books, The Mother of All Parenting Books, and numerous other books about pregnancy and parenting.