Category Archives: Parenting

Your Hearing Matters, Here’s How to Take Care of It

10/13/2020 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

hearing, music, ears, health, listening, phone, singing, songs — Image Pexels CC0 License

Your hearing is a precious thing. The ability to listen to music, hear your children’s laughter, and engage in conversation are things that many people take for granted. Hearing is something that is often not appreciated until it starts to deteriorate.

Hearing loss is a relatively common chronic condition. According to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 466 million people worldwide have a disabling hearing loss. While some babies are born with a hearing loss, it commonly occurs in later life due to the aging process, but can also develop due to environmental factors. Protecting your hearing is vital, so knowing how you can avoid hearing-related problems is essential to ensure that you enjoy clear hearing for many years to come.

Experiencing hearing loss can have a significant impact on your life. You may struggle to keep up with conversations and feel left out both in social situations and in the workplace. This can impact on your confidence and your sense of wellbeing. It is crucial to remember that hearing loss can happen gradually, which makes it harder to detect. This makes it all the more crucial to take care of your hearing and schedule regular hearing tests to learn more about your current hearing ability and how you can help improve it. Seeking professional help from an audiologist when you start to notice your hearing deteriorating can slow down the process and will help you to get the right treatment faster.

Here are some common causes of hearing loss and how you can help to prevent them from causing damage to your ears:

Workplace Hearing Damage

Occupational hearing loss is surprisingly common. Figures from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) show that 22 million American workers are exposed to hazardous levels of noise when at work. This means that potentially, millions of workers’ hearing is being put at risk during their working day. If you work in an environment that exceeds the recommended noise level, your employer should provide you with ear protection. But remember that if your employer fails to provide your safety and, as a result, you end up getting hurt, you’ll be entitled to workers’ compensation. To learn or read more about workers’ compensation, visit the given link. If you are self-employed and use noisy equipment for work, you will need to ensure that you take responsibility for reducing the noise levels or wearing ear protection to ensure that you don’t damage your hearing.

Music Volume

If you play in a band or blast out your favorite band at home, you could be causing hearing problems. Frequent exposure to music that is above the recommended level can cause damage to your hearing that could be irreparable. Try to keep the volume down to protect your ears, or consider investing in a pair of noise-limiting headphones.

Don’t Ignore Ear Issues

Whether you have a blocked up ear, or your ear feels irritated, it is vital that you get it checked out by visiting your doctor. You may have an ear infection that could cause damage if left untreated. Scheduling a consultation to see your doctor will help to identify the issue and allow treatment to start before damage is caused.

Parenting

Time To Make The Most Of The Dad Life? How You Can Make Positive Changes

10/12/2020 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

When it comes to the chapter of our lives that involves children, it can be a very overwhelming part of your life. The family aspect is amazing, filled with priceless moments and time with your children. The day to day aspect of it can be tough as you start to work out juggling the time of working, family life, commitments and the finances. However, the main thing is that you need to make the most of the time that you have.

It is so easy to let each day escape you, while you slump in a heap on the sofa after bedtime has been done and you feel shattered. But in years to come you may look back on this time and realize you may not have embraced it as much as you could have. With that in mind, here are some of the positive changes that you can make to help you make the most of dad life.

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Look after your skin

One of the first things to consider would be your skin. It is often the biggest giveaway that you are tired, struggling and feeling a little run down. However, there are things that you can do to improve the situation. First up, it may be worth looking at any skincare routine that you have. You may want to think about dealing with oily skin or putting more moisture back into your skin. Thankfully there are things that you can do by upping your skincare routine and perhaps changing some of the products that you use. You may also want to think about other things you can do such as drinking more water. The more water you drink, the more hydrated your skin will be and it can improve skin tone and overall appearance.e

Make sure you eat the right things

Another thing to consider would be what you are putting into your body. Water can help, but it can extend much more from that. You can make positive changes such as having a better plan when it comes to meals. You could also start by cooking from scratch and using fresh ingredients. A balanced approach to the food that you eat can have a big positive impact on energy levels and other aspects of your life.

Become more active

The amount of exercise that you do can also impact how you feel, and generally making a choice to be more active can be a great thing to incorporate into your lifestyle. It might be hard to look at exercising in classes or different establishments, but you can still choose to be active by walking more, running or even doing home workouts. You will start to feel happier mentally and also see increased energy levels.

Embrace the time with your children

You may think that you are embracing your time as a father and enjoying the time with your kids, but are you really? Sometimes it is good to have time away from other distractions such as your phone and focus on the quality time with your children. This might be as simple as putting your child to bed and enjoying reading a story, or taking them out for one on one time. Time can move so quickly and before we know it, our children are grown up. Make sure you embrace some time with them and enjoy the priceless moments.

The importance of couple time

On the flip side of that being a parent is tough, and if you are with your partner, wife or husband, quality time together can seem scarce. But it is equally important to ensure that you do all that you can to embrace the importance of couple time. This might include time on your own without children, date nights or even nights away when possible. Remember that you were a couple before you had children, and nurture and work on your relationship just as you work on being a good parent.

Feel passionate about things

Finally, when it comes to your life and day to day routines, it is important that you do what you can to feel passionate about things. If you can, make some changes to help you find that passion. Whether that is cooking the evening meal for everyone, a change in career or having a hobby so that you can have some downtime doing something that you love. The more you feel passionate about, the more you will feel happier in your lifestyle.

Let’s hope these suggestions help you to make the most of the dad life.

Going Green, Going Healthy, Health, Life, Parenting

How to Turn Your Kids into Environmental Ambassadors

09/29/2020 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

Later, hotter summers and colder winters prove that global warming is a real issue. The impact of this will affect those we care about most- our children.

In 2020, working toward protecting our environment and global warming has never been more important. We should, every day, be doing our bit to help to protect, sustain and care for our natural world before these irreversible issues take hold too quickly.

As adults with children, it is our job to teach them about the damage being made to the planet- a vast topic to understand, but a valuable, lifelong lesson to learn.

Here are some of the things to teach our kids about the environment, and how they can care for the world around them.

What areas Should You Cover When Talking to Young Children About the Environment?

Children are very receptive to life lessons. They will be highly influenced by the people around them- friends and family, and will want to start doing some of the same things as them. If they see you recycling, then they’ll want to know how and why they should do that and want to get involved.

Some topics of conversation to help to engage your children with environmental issues should be: deforestation, global warming, recycling, and endangered animals. Talk to them about how some of the smaller changes and habits they engage in now will help them to make an essential impact for the future generations.

Help them to understand the ways in which they can help to save electricity and water around the home such as, turning the tap off when it’s time to brush their teeth, and to unplug items when they are not being used, as well as turning off the lights when they leave a room.

Here are Some Fun Activities to Help Children to Understand the Importance of Caring for the Environment

Invent craft projects using items that would usually be thrown away- for example a jar for pasta sauce can be used again to hold trail mix snacks, or painted brightly and turned into a pencil pot.
Get outside in nature. Visit a nature reserve, a farm or a national park and help them to point out all the wildlife they see. Why not create a finder mission activity where they can tick off each animal or bug that they see. You can laminate an activity sheet and have them circle pictures with a dry wipe marker so they can be used again.
Read articles and listen to talks about the environment. Stephen Troese has a wide range of these that are accessible for most audiences. You can read some before speaking to your children to get a better understanding of this area yourself.
Create a small compost box to keep outside. Teach children the items that can and cannot be collected in the food waste tubs, and have them watch these items decompose to turn into compost.
Use the compost to plant their own vegetables. It’s exciting to watch a seed begin to sprout and then turn into something recognizable as something to eat!