admin, Author at 3 Kids and Us

7 Useful Tips on Raising a Healthy Family

May 21, 2018 by admin

Raising a family is something that often takes determination, sacrifice, and time. It can be tough to find a balance, but the juggling act tends to get easier over time, or you get better at managing it. Every parent usually hopes that they’ll be able to raise a family that’s happy and healthy. This often means exploring different ways to ensure they’re eating the right things, staying active, and keeping an open flow of communication. There are several other ways that you can raise a healthy family, but it’s left to you to choose a method that works for you. This article is going to explore seven different ways that you can raise a healthy family.

Make Nutritious Meals

There are several components of health to consider when trying to raise a healthy family, and physical health is one of them. What your family eats is key as it can affect them in both the short and long term. Nutritious meals are a great place to start which means you may need to put careful thought into the meals you’re going to give them and take time to do a little planning. Some ideas for nutritious meals that you might want to consider are slow cooker chicken tortilla soup, homemade tacos with your own special recipe, and spiced oven-fried potatoes to avoid the oil in frying. You could also try oven-baked almond fish sticks, light chicken Caesar salad, garlic chicken, and potatoes, as well as lightened-up mac and cheese.

Don’t be afraid to try new recipes with your kids which include all of the nutrients necessary in a balanced diet. In case you forgot what that consists of, it includes healthy carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and fibre as well. You can also consider cooking together as a family to make it fun as well as ensure everyone feels like they’re contributing to their healthy eating journey.

Spend Quality Time

Spending time together as a family can be a bit of challenge sometimes. This may be due to busy and conflicting schedules as well as tiredness after a long day for the most part. However, finding time to spend together is imperative when trying to raise a healthy family as it’s an important aspect of each individual’s wellbeing. There are several benefits of family time which include teaching children to interact with others, reducing the chances of your children getting involved in dangerous activities, improving their emotional well-being, and encouraging them to attain greater heights educationally.

Family time also creates the opportunity for you to bond and create lifelong connections with your loved ones. If you’re stuck in terms of ideas regarding what you can do for family time, perhaps consider designated family holidays which are tailored to each personality, planting and tending to a family garden, having devoted movie time, having a family sports event, having family art time, or a book club. These are all great ways to spend time with one another as well as learn more about each individual. You should also remember that you don’t always have to spend money just to have family time as a games night, walk around the block or park day are also adequate enough to bond and enjoy one another’s company.

Teach Them About Drugs Early

Education goes beyond the classroom and can often be taught at home as well as in school. For this reason, alongside sex education, your family should be informed and educated regarding the effects of drug use on their body, mind, and general wellbeing. People often end up using drugs for a number of reasons related to peer pressure, low self-esteem, or depression amongst others. You should inform them regarding the impact that drugs have on the brain such as straining the essential areas of your brain and leaving you vulnerable to picking up addictive and harmful behaviours.

In addition to this, it has been found that most drugs flood the brain’s limbic system with a neurotransmitter called dopamine, causing the user to enter a state of euphoria. Going into detail and explaining how drugs affect the brain can help deter your family from being tempted to use. If you do, however, notice any signs that your loved ones may be using drugs, it’s best that you look for ways to get them help and stress the importance of them doing so. You should read more about the negative effects of drugs and share this information with your family. Seeing as in 2013, approximately 24.6 million Americans over the age of 11 used illicit drugs, you should also know that it’s never too early to educate your children on the negative effects of drugs.

Make Exercise a Lifestyle

Staying active as a family can be fun and it’s also very beneficial for your health. If you have young kids, you may notice that they’re considerably active due to their frequent rushes of adrenaline as well as mandatory school activities. Likewise, if you’ve got teens who are keen on sports they may also be pretty active. Nevertheless, encouraging fitness as a lifestyle is a great way to make a long-term impact. Seeing as it’s always good to lead by example, perhaps think about coming up with family workout routines and dedicating a day every week to exercising together.

Some fun exercise ideas you should think about doing with your loved ones that aren’t too stressful include making time to play games that will make you move like hide-and-seek, musical statues, or hopscotch. You could also walk or ride a bike as frequently as possible, plan active family gatherings, sing and play during chores, and make yard work a lot more fun. This should make exercise less of a strenuous activity and a lot more fun as well as give you the chance to bond along the way. Try your best to be as consistent as possible in order to make working out as a family more of a lifestyle than an activity.

Encourage Honest Conversation

If you want to raise a healthy family, understanding the importance of open and honest communication is critical. As well as being physically healthy, mental health is also important, so creating an environment that people feel free to express themselves is key. Some ways to do this could be by having weekly family meetings where everyone is able to floor any issues they may have and discuss things that are bothering them. This can also help teach your children how to express themselves, not bottle things inside, and amicably deal with disagreements and misunderstandings. Asking your kids questions and showing a genuine interest is also a way to get them talking. Show them that you value both their time and opinion as a way of encouraging them to talk to you irrespective of the circumstances. Additionally, it’s an excellent way of building their communication skills which can be beneficial to them in various aspects of their lives.

Build Their Confidence

Confidence is important for both children and adults, so creating an environment that makes everyone feel confident and safe is key. There are so many ways to build confidence in your kids including speaking positive words of affirmation to them, always encouraging them and giving them the opportunity to be more independent. Other ways to build their confidence include letting them help out around the house, giving them the freedom to make their own choices in moderation, letting them take healthy risks, and also reminding them about how loved they are. Making sure their goals are within reach is also a good way to help build their confidence because they’re more likely to achieve those goals. Seeing as self-esteem is said to come from feeling loved and secure as well as competence, providing them with these things at home can go a long way in ensuring they’re mentally healthy and happy.

Teach Them Positive Values

Values often determine people’s behavior as well as their boundaries, so teaching them to your family should go a long way. Doing so can help teach your kids who they are and what they stand for as well as help put boundaries in place as a means of protecting themselves. Some positive values worth thinking about having in your home include kindness, hard work, authenticity, balance, boldness, and achievement. You can decide to write the values for your family somewhere that everyone can see it as living by them could result in a healthy life too.

Raising a family isn’t a job that can be done in single day. It is something that happens in an accumulation of days, months, and years and it requires both consistency and dedication, especially when you want to raise a healthy one. You will make mistakes along the way and sometimes your imperfections as a parent will show, however, the key is to be as transparent as possible and keep giving it your best shot. By doing these things, hopefully, at the end of the road, you’ll be able to boast of a healthy family.

Safety and security products to make your home a safe place

May 20, 2018 by admin

There are many young families staying on their own with both the young parents having to work away from home. They have no choice but to employ live-in maids or part-time maid to look after their little kids while they are at work. As with little children, they are extremely inquisitive and they love to explore all over the places. There are many reports of children injured in accidents in and around the home even with adults in the house.

There are many ways we can help reduce or prevent these accidents from happening to our little ones such as using toddler safety products. You can easily get these safety products from supermarkets, baby equipment shops, home safety products shop, online stores, etc. Most of these products are relatively inexpensive, easy to use, and they are strong enough to prevent hazards from happening.

Before you buy these products, be sure to check out the installation instructions. There is no product that is completely child proof, but these products can help reduce accidents and injuries to our children. There are many types of safety products such as the child monitoring devices to alerts you when your child wanders off from your sight. There are also child locators and bulletproof backpacks available.

For parents who leave their little kids in the care of maid, fixing a hidden indoor security camera is a good way to keep tabs on the movements of the maid and kids while you are out of sight. The hidden camera can be fixed in the child’s bedroom, playroom or any area they frequent.

Hidden camera can also be fixed in different parts of your home to monitor who is coming and going, or sign of trespassers especially when you are away from home. There is no limit what a high quality hidden spy camera can do. It can show you who has been stealing your newspaper from your doorsteps or if there is any uninvited visitors in your compound.

A spy cam usually comes with built-in DVR recorders to smartphone hook ups to motion activated sensors. A spy cam can be disguised as a cute teddy bear or a wireless LCD wireless LCD screen you can watch from your work place.

No home is safe without keeping some home defense weapons at a standby in case of any break in by intruders. As parents, we need to maintain home safety for our family members by installing high quality locks, portable door alarms, emergency systems, doorbell cameras, door stop wedge alarms, etc. There are many types of safety devices we can use for our home such as dog-barking alarms, doorbell security cameras with wi-fi and night vision.

Why cheese is an important dairy product?

May 19, 2018 by admin

Cheese is one of the major dairy products which is very popular amongst the people due to its royal taste. Most of the people like eating cheese and it is available in various distinct qualities. It also has different varieties. Cheese is usually obtained by using pasteurized milk. The cheese has distinct flavour and texture depending on the quality and process of cheese making.

However, some cheese varieties require that the milk is warmed a bit before it undergoes any treatment. This heating kills the bacteria and germs which are present in the milk and provides optimum condition for the cheese to be made. It is essential for milk to be aged at least for 60 days so as to reduce the disease-causing bacteria get dead.

There are other products apart from cheese which can be obtained from milk like yoghurt and other products which are equivalently important. Yogurt strainer bag is often used to drain out excess water from the yoghurt.

Ingredients

Usually it is made up of milk. Cheese can be obtained from all sorts of milk of cow, goat, sheep and water buffalo. They can also be obtained by the blend of different type of milks.

The other important aspect is choosing of coagulant and it depends on the type of cheese that you require. If you want acid cheese then an acid coagulant is used like acetic acid and lemon acid. If you want rennet cheese more commonly it is calf rennet which is famous. Sometimes calcium chloride is also used to make the cheese more solid and better in quality. Different kinds of flavours can be added depending on the needs. Some common types of ingredients which are used are port wine, hers, spices and hot pepper.

Different type of cultures used

Usually bacteria act as a main source to turn raw milk into yoghurt or cheese. These bacteria are present in lactic acid as these micro organism feed on the energy which is given by lactose of a milk. There is wide type of bacteria which are used for the making of cheese. Some distinct cultures techniques are used to improve cheese quality and flavour.

Where to buy rennet?

Buying rennet cheese is not an easy task you should always consider it buying either from a reputed shop or you should buy cheese from a good company. The rennet is the most popular type of cheese and is available abundantly. Always keep in mind that you should find a quality product. Rennet is usually made from calf milk which provides it a good texture and colour.

Rennet varies in the type of strength. They have the tendency to be coagulated with various kinds of different milk has also one of the major cause which make rennet cheese one of the most popular cheese. It is recommended that you use Kosher certification-based equipment for the manufacturing of rennet cheese. It is one of finest cheese quality which you will get out there.

Emergency-Proof Your Family Budget

May 17, 2018 by admin

Source

In 2017, it was reported that 1 in 7 Australians has no savings at all. If a personal emergency were to occur, 2.6 million people in the country could not afford to cover the expense. For individuals and families who like to travel and explore, it is especially important to be prepared, as there are numerous expenses that could suddenly arise. Someone could get sick or break a bone. The family vehicle might break down. Any number of situations can occur that require the use of emergency funds. However, if you are part of the millions living paycheck to paycheck, you could be one minor emergency away from a bad financial situation.

Now is the time to ensure that your family’s financial picture is as solid as possible. Thankfully, no matter what your current situation may be, you can immediately begin to take actions that make your budget emergency-proof.

Have an emergency fund that you don’t touch

A recent report revealed that the average Australian saves $427 each month. If you find it difficult to put cash away, this is the first habit that you must build. Having adequate savings is the top way to ensure that you do not have to go into debt for emergency expenses. How much should you plan to save? While something is better than nothing to start, you should make plans to achieve a significant savings goal as quickly as possible. Experts recommend aiming to save at least 6 months of your income. This amount of cash will cover you for some of the most major expenses, and for extended periods of income loss.

Ensure that your credit score is in top shape

While it is ideal to have the cash to cover emergency expenses, you may be caught in a position where you do not have the necessary funds. Even the most financially responsible of individuals will find it incredibly challenging (if not impossible) to pay for large purchases (such as a new vehicle). In the event that financing is needed to accommodate an emergency expense, be sure that your credit score is in top shape. Taking the time to understand your finances and credit score can ensure that you get approved for needed financing, and ultimately save you thousands in interest. Is your credit not where you want it to be? In addition to building an emergency fund, make a plan to reduce and eventually pay off any outstanding debt. Always be sure to make your payment on time, and explore the possibility of lowering your current interest rate on credit cards and existing loans.

Maintain your property, vehicles, etc. to avoid emergency expenses

It is obviously impossible to prevent every emergency expense. However, being proactive in the maintenance of your property, vehicles, and other things you own can reduce the risk of a sudden expense. Create a schedule for yourself to be sure that nothing is missed. Take your car in for regular maintenance, such as oil changes and filter replacements. Have the heating and cooling system in your home routinely serviced. Do everything in your power to avoid the possibility of a preventable emergency expense.

For families who live an on-the-go lifestyle, it’s crucial to prepare for unexpected expenses. Make your budget emergency-proof by building a savings fund that you don’t touch, keep your credit score in top shape, and be proactive in avoiding sudden, preventable expenses. Spend more time enjoying life and less time worrying about what expenses await in the future.

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING A CAREER

May 17, 2018 by admin

Your choice of career determines the kind of life you will live since you will spend almost a half of your waking hours work. Your career determines the kind of lifestyle you will lead, your social life and even your health.

Your choice of career dictates the quality of life you will lead and it is important to choose a career that you are passionate about and in which you will find fulfilment, happiness and satisfaction. Finding satisfaction and meaning in your work is essential otherwise you will have to drag yourself out of bed every morning and endure at least 8 hours of torture in a job you don’t like.

So, you need to consider a number of things when choosing your career.

Passion

Choose a job you love and you won’t have to work for a day, so the saying goes. You still have to work even if you follow your passions but you will find enjoyment and fulfilment if you go into a career that you are passionate about.

In any professional life, there are bound to be the hard times and it’s passion that will keep you going and motivate you to weather the storms when they come.

Skills

Going to Dental Assistant Schools America leaves you with one career option, that of being a dental assistant. When making a career decision, the best option to with the one that needs the skills that you already possess. You will settle in faster and excel in your role since you are already well equipped with the skills you need for the job.

That’s not to say that you can’t diversify to other careers. In fact, most people never know what they want to do with their lives by the time they join college and end up pursuing careers in different fields from what they majored in.

Personality

If you want to minimize work-related stress then go into a career that is suitable for your personality type. This begins with you knowing yourself well and having some self-awareness. It is also easier for you to thrive in your workplace when you choose a career based on your personality.

Using the Holland code, you can match broad career choices with your personality type and then narrow down to the most suitable one considering other factors like skills, passion, and qualifications.

For instance, if you are a creative extrovert, then a career in the performing arts or media would be more suitable than a banking job.

Work environment

It is also important to put into consideration your preferred work style and environment when choosing your career. If you prefer an organized work environment with minimal disruptions, then you will find a career that involves a lot of shuttling between cities and countries strenuous.

Similarly, if you like working on your schedule with minimal supervision, then you will find working in a formal office environment where you have a dress code to maintain quite restricting and suffocating.