0:18 - Make sure that your toddler is drinking enough water
0:40 - Keep it a little bit colder at our preschool and also at home
1:00 - Hand washing, that's a really, really big thing.
1:37 - Make sure that your toddler does get enough sleep
2:00 - Make sure they are getting probiotics and vitamins
Hi, everybody. Harper Jones with Bow-Tiger, and you're watching "Saturdays with Harper".
Now, we're coming into a cold and airborne illnesses season, and I wanted to give you guys some strategies on ways to defend your toddler against the different colds and viruses that are out there.
Now, the first thing that you want to do is make sure that your toddler is drinking enough water or an electrolyte fluid per day. They typically should be drinking at least five glasses of water per day. And the reason for this is that the immune system actually cannot work efficiently when it's dry, so we want to make sure to wet that immune system with as many fluids as possible.
Another thing, if you have your preschooler or your toddler in a preschool or daycare, you'll notice that it's super cold in the rooms. Well this is actually because warm environments house germs and house viruses. So, if we can keep it a little bit colder at our preschool and then also at home, this will help defend against those different germs.
Hand washing, that's a really, really big thing. Make sure that your child's daycare does have your child wash their hands several times a day, and do the same at home. Make sure they're doing it properly. It does need to be done with soap, under warm water for at least 15 seconds to be efficient, and that will help them, as well. We have a lot of hands in the mouth while we're a toddler, so we want to make sure that we're washing those hands as much as possible, as well.
When dressing your toddler for daycare or just while you guys are going out, make sure they're not wearing anything drafty. If it's cold outside, make sure that they are warm enough. This will help them to defend against illnesses, too.
One thing that is kind of overlooked, although we try to make sure that our toddlers get enough sleep, you don't realize that sleep is a very, very big component of them keeping healthy. The immune system needs time to basically regenerate, reboot, and it does that while we're sleeping. So making sure that your toddler does get enough sleep each and every night is very, very important, especially during this season.
Another thing would be probiotics. Now, my daughter absolutely loves yogurt, so this is super easy for me to do. If your children do not like eating just the regular yogurt, they do have a bunch of different ways that you can get yogurt into children, and one of those ways is actually through the Go-gurts. It's like a stick of yogurt that you can freeze, and then it's a Go-gurt popsicle, and my daughter absolutely adores those. So try those out, too. Get those probiotics into them.
A vitamin that we want to make sure that our child is getting - of course we want to make sure they're getting their multivitamin - but during the cold season you can make sure that they're also taking an extra dose of Vitamin C, which defends against illnesses. Now, if your child gets sick, and you're trying to figure out how to shorten that cold, you can actually provide them with an additional dose of Vitamin D-3. This actually decreases the length of the cold and also decreases the symptoms, so it's not such a stress on your toddler's little body.
So there's a couple of suggestions for you guys, and I hope not everybody gets too sick over this season, but if you do, don't worry about it. You guys are defending against sicknesses in the future.
Now if you're watching this video on Facebook or YouTube I'd ask that please check out our videos on bow-tiger.com as well, and of course we will be back next week. Thank you.
