True, it is a growing concern that our nations children are becoming obese. With high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol becoming part of the their health concerns how do we help children practice habits that will help them live longer and healthier lives?

Richard Simmons knows personally how it feels to be a child with a weight issue. Cutting public schools funding for PE and Extra Curricular Activities are not acceptable options! To cut PE as well as reduce or limit recess prevents a child from learning good habits about health and weight loss. Additionally, children need physical exercise and good eating habits to preform better in their daily subjects. Keeping focused and energized for Math and Reading helps the child preform better on their daily work and to be a good student. Ultimately, helping the school achieve higher marks on their standardize testing requirements under No Child Left Behind (NCLB.)

State testing will become more difficult in the coming years as the new testing requirements begin to be implemented. (TAKS, STARS, EOG'S)

A healthy life style includes; eating right and including exercise in your life. From an early age, our children need to learn both habits as they move through different ages and stages of their lives.

Healthy children have happier lives keeping depression rates lower for our nations children. Parents, pay attention to this issue. It will help your child live a healthier, happier and stronger life!

Learn more about this important issue by listening to some of the radio interviews by Richard Simmons.

47% of public school students ride the school bus to and from school. Growing violence to students riding the bus concerns parents about the safety of their child on the local school bus system. School fights and violence seem to be spreading over from school day to the school bus. The rising number of students that have their own cell phone allows students to text message and call their friends to meet students at the bus stop and continue the violence even after exiting the school bus.

Without a Doubt Public School Buses Need Safer Standards!

440,000 public school buses each year serve more than 24 million students!

How do we help to solve the violence on our public school buses?

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Are you facing the new school year with dread because you have an unmotivated or underachieving teen or pre-teen? Is your child’s answer to everything, “I don’t care” or “It doesn’t matter?” In Part I of this two-part series, James Lehman, MSW explains why your child does have motivation—and how you can coach them to better behavior. READ MORE http://www.empoweringparents.com/Motivating-Underachivers-The-Truth-about-Unmotivated-Kids.php

Written by an adult who battles with mental health. A message to think about.

- Suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents and teenagers, following unintentional injuries and homicide.
- According to a recent survey, one in seven high school students reported they had seriously considered attempting suicide. Nearly one in 14 said they had actually attempted suicide one or more times.
- It’s estimated that half of all serious adult psychiatric illnesses – including depression – begin by age 14.
- Of the teenagers who die by suicide, 90 percent have a diagnosable mental illness at the time of their deaths.

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This last year, in the most difficult year of my life, struggling against a seemingly unbearable injustice and cruelty, angry and sad, trying to decide to walk the path of healing or revenge, I came across a wonderful quote.

"Cry, hurt, or call it unfair, but be grateful to the grave, that in this hurt your the one who received, and not the one who gave."

Wonderful poem, hard lesson. How can we drive this message, of choosing forgiveness and love, choosing to "light a candle rather than cursing the darkness" home to our children? Children who can encounter so much injustice and cruelty, in the form of bullying, discrimination, intolerance, and ignorance, simply walking to and from school and back everyday. How I wish my grandparents would have done what these grandparents did for their grandson. Read enjoy this powerful parable for tough times! How are you driving home these important lessons in your own families? Let us know!
http://charactercounts.org/michael/2009/04/im_better_than_that_6164.html

It is arguably the most overlooked ingredient in the recipe for student success. Encouraging words. Taking time to celebrate the little successes so that they will grow into bigger more frequent successes. Children can be such fragile little plants requiring just the amount of sunshine and water and time to grow. It is so easy in our sometimes overzealous and caring quest to create blossoming, beautiful and hopefully fully self sustaining living beings, to be inadvertently overzealous, huddling and worrying over every little thing rather than gently cheer leading, nurturing and guiding our children to the next step.

There are many tools for success you can teach a child but giving them the tools to believe in themselves and to persevere in reaching their goals even in the face of the constant criticism of others, will take them far in a world that is already full of negative feedback.

A psychologist told me today that for every negative thought that enters our world it takes ten positives to counteract it. The adult world is so full of negatives. The world needs adult children who can give out of the overabundance of positive love they have received from their parents, teachers, and others of influence in their childhood to be a life changing influence in the lives of so many peers who have not been so blessed.

It's never too early or too late to help your child develop the skills for academic success. Learn how to build these skills and stay on track all year long.

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