Hi. Today we will be talking about physical health in young children. Hand hygiene is arguably our most important life skill, so teach it well, and teach it often. By hand hygiene, we're talking about the importance of the correct way to wash your hands. First we're going to talk about illness. How are illnesses spread? They are spread through respiratory transmission, which includes the particles that leave your nose, mouth, and your throat. What you might see with respiratory illnesses are sore throat, common cold, strep throat, RSV, pneumonia, or bronchitis. They are also spread by fecal-oral transmission. That is when a person maybe doesn't wash their hands after using the bathroom, or/and touches other objects, and someone else touches it. Or if the person themselves doesn't wash their hands, and then those hands go into the mouth. The illnesses we might see through that are diarrhea, hand, foot, and mouth disease, or pinworms. Another way illnesses are spread is through direct contact. Direct contact with another person's skin or hair, and from those are cold sores, conjunctivitis, pink eye, impetigo, lice, scabies, and ringworm. Illnesses are also spread through bodily transmission, through our saliva, urine, vomit, and blood. These would include cavities and dental caries. I say this to my students and it's something that people don't think about, is when you maybe put a baby's pacifier in your mouth, it falls on the floor, so you put it in your mouth to wash it, and then you put it in the baby's mouth, the baby is getting all the bacteria that's in your mouth into their mouth, which they might not have the immunity for that, and they might not already have that bacteria in their mouth, and it might cause some illness in there. Then hepatitis B or HIV. Then there are vector-borne transmissions. These are illnesses that can be caught by a living thing that will transmit a disease, such as ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, rats, mice, and racoons. How do we prevent the spread of illness? Number 1 as in the quote that we started with, is hand washing, very important. We're going to go into that a little more in-depth in a little bit. Also by fostering health and well-being. This is teaching your children and their families, the importance of immunizations, nutrition, good sleep habits, and physical activity. We can prevent the spread of illness by wearing gloves when we're handling bodily fluids, by disinfecting surfaces, and by properly disposing of our waste. Hand washing. I've seen it many times before that they say this is the number 1 way to stop the spread of illness, is by hand washing. It's funny because I talk with people in the childcare field about you wash your hands so often working with children. The children wash their hands so often in your room when you are caring for them, and people didn't realize until the spread of COVID, how important hand washing was, but we always knew. Me I always knew how important it was. We should be washing our hands before eating, before feeding other children, and before handling any food. We should wash our hands after feeding a child, or after eating, ourselves. After using a tissue, whether it's using a tissue on yourself, or wiping a nose of the child. After toileting or diapering, after touching any animals, when they are visibly dirty, and when coming in from outside. It's sometimes recommended too, I see in many centers in my area where anytime you enter a new room in the center, that you should wash your hands because different rooms are going to have different germs in them. If you are a floor person and you're in the toddler room, but then you go to another room, you should wash your hands when you enter another room. Good hand washing lasts for 20 seconds at least, and uses soap and running water. Here's a poster example, I know it's a little blurry and I apologize but you should have some poster near your hand-washing sink in your bathroom so that children are reminded of the steps that they need to take when they are washing their hands. First is wet your hands, then you put soap on, then you wash for 20 seconds. Singing a song that takes 20 seconds, happy birthday or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Stars one or two times might take the 20 seconds so it gets children aware of what that time frame looks like because 20 seconds means nothing to children so give them that information. Rinse hands thoroughly, make sure that you're showing them how to wash, that they're washing in-between their fingers, on the back of their hands, on the palm of your hands, on your wrist, that you're showing them exactly every place that they should be washing their hands to. After you're rinsing with running water drying hands with a disposable paper towel is important and it's a good idea if you can teach children how to turn off the water with a paper towel and even if the door is closed to open the door handle with a paper towel and then to throw the paper towel in the garbage. Thinking about that if you come into the bathroom with dirty hands and you turn the water on your germs are on the faucet and if you wash your hands and then dry them and throw your towel away and then turn the water off you're just reapplying those same germs that you just tried to wash off onto your hands again. Teaching children to use that paper towel is a good idea. Liquid soap is recommended rather than bar soap if there is an option because the liquid soap is new to every person where if you use bar soap then you're all sharing the same item and hand washing is preferable to hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer is not recommended for toddlers because everything goes in their mouth. If you have preschool children and you are not near somewhere where there is running water, where you can wash your hands then you might be able to use hand sanitizer check your regulations to make sure that that is appropriate. But one thing you need to think about is hand sanitizer kills those germs on your hands but it doesn't clean them, it doesn't get that dirt off like soap and water would. Wearing gloves is important when you are changing diapers, when you're helping a child who has been hurt sometimes when you're wiping noses it might be a good idea to put gloves on, they should be disposable. There are proper ways to take off your gloves and there are ways that you should do it so you don't touch your hands and your fingers onto the contaminated part of the gloves and it's pushing your fingers into them and putting them inside out. There are many videos on how to do that and I recommend that if you have never seen one that you look up one of those videos. When you are using gloves it's important that even after you remove the glove you still wash your hands. Just in case something came through or you touch the outside of the glove, when you are taking it off but it's a great practice even when wearing gloves to wash your hands after. Make sure that you properly dispose of the gloves in a trash can with a lid on it so children are not going to be able to go in there and pull them out and make sure that you're not reusing the gloves. That's why the disposable part is in there, disposable means you use it once and you throw it away, we don't reuse them. Properly disposing of waste and waste could mean many different things. It could be your tissues, it could be your lunch leftovers, it could be soiled diapers so we need to properly dispose of all of those different waste. Disposable items should be discarded immediately. Thinking about those gloves, after you take them off you don't put them on the counter, you don't put them in the sink, you don't put them on the changing table, you throw them immediately into the garbage can. Your garbage containers it's best practice if they have a foot pedal to open them that way you're not touching the trash can every time that you throw something out or the children are not, teach them to use the foot pedal. It should have a cover. Children if they're walking by a trash can without a cover on it, they might see something in there that looks enticing to them and really don't always think about. The implications of going into the garbage can to pull something out. Make sure that there's a cover on your can. Make sure that your can is lined with a plastic bag, and it is emptied every night, cleaned, and sanitized. Spraying it with a bleach solution, soaking it in a bleach solution would be a great idea. Soiled diapers, and by that we mean diapers that a child has pooped in. That we want to make sure that they're thrown into individual bags before throwing them into the trash can. You should have a trash can separate for your soiled diapers than for your tissues and your paper towels that the children are using. The only person that should be using the diaper trash can, is the adult in the classroom the children should not be using that. Close with bodily fluids, should be put in an individual plastic bag. They should be put somewhere where children do not have access to them, and they should be sent home with the families at night to be washed and cleaned. Cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting, what is the difference? Cleaning is talking about removing dirt. The best way to do that is soap and water. Sanitizing is reducing the germs on your hard surfaces. For example, eating tables, high chairs, and toys. Disinfecting is really the most stringent of these, it destroys the germs. We use a disinfectant on our diaper changing table, on our toilets, and anywhere we're going to prepare food. It's important for us to be thinking about, how are we doing all three of these on our surfaces? Where I am and you check your regulations because it's going to specify how you have to do this. But we have to have three different kinds of liquid in our classrooms, in our rooms. The first one is for cleaning, and we make that with dish soap and water, so it's just soap and water. The next one is for sanitizing. So it has a little bit of bleach and water in it. The next one is for disinfecting, it has a little bit more bleach and water in it. The disinfecting is in the bathroom by the diaper changing table and by the toilets, and the kitchen person would have one in the kitchen. The sanitizing spray is what is used before mealtimes. Before mealtimes, the tables are cleaned with a soap and water solution. Then after that, then they are sanitized with the bleach and water solution. In order for the bleach and water solution to really kill the germs, it has to have a two-minute contact time. That means after you spray it on the table, you have to wait two minutes before you can wipe it with a disposable paper towel. Which is the best idea because if you're using a washcloth, then you might be spreading germs from another area. If you are using bleach solution for your cleaning or for your sanitizing and disinfecting, look up in your area, and your regulations what is recommended for the bleach solution. It should be made daily and dumped out at the end of the night. Immunizations. This is something you're going to have to look in your regulations again, this might differ from state to state. Some states are requiring immunizations for a child to enter a group daycare or public school system. Whereas some states, it is optional, and they might have waivers that they can use. Either way, it's important for us to understand what immunization is due to be educated on immunizations, and to be able to talk to our families about the importance of immunizations. Immunizations can prevent infectious diseases. Vaccines reduce a person's risk of infection by working with the body's natural defenses to help safely develop protection against disease. This is all information that you can share with families. Did you know that babies are born with immune systems, but they're not very strong? They might need a little bit of help for the serious diseases that they are not born with those immune system. Children are exposed to thousands of germs every day. That's something that we need to think about as we're cleaning and disinfecting and sanitizing all of our materials in our rooms. Vaccines are 90 to 100 percent effective. Nothing is ever 100 percent. They're mostly effective. We need to be educated about the value of the risks and the side effects of vaccines. Let's go on a different tangent, maybe a different direction, thinking about our physical health. We want to foster health and well-being with the children and the families that we work with. That can be done by talking about and practicing good nutrition and sleep and physical activity habits. When we're talking about nutrition, we want to drink plenty of water. We want to have water available in our center with our children. We want to avoid too much sugar in our mealtimes and our snacks and eat a variety of healthful foods. There is a lesson later on that goes more into depth with nutrition and how you can teach it and what you should be doing with the children. I'm going to leave it at that and we will talk more about nutrition later. Health and well-being are also fostered by good sleep habits. That's not something that we often discuss with families, but it is important for our bodies and our children's bodies to have that good restful sleep. It allows our body and our mind to recharge and be ready for whatever is going to come up the next day. It improves brain performance, mood, and health. If children do not have enough sleep, they may be at risk for diseases and disorders. We should be allowing children to have a nap if they require a nap during our care and talking to parents, maybe giving them information on the importance of a scheduled bedtime and bedtime routines, and a child sleeping in their own space, and how that they would get better sleep, the parents and the children if the child was sleeping in their own space. Giving the parents that information and education is a great idea. There are so many resources we can look for to find information. Another way to foster health and well-being is through physical activity. We all know that this collectivity promotes strong muscles and bones. It improves our respiratory and cardiovascular health and overall health. It can boost your self-esteem, your mood, your sleep quality, and your energy. It reduces the risk of stress and depression. Childhood obesity. An important topic that we should not be avoiding is a serious problem. It puts children and adolescents at risk for poor health. There's some statistics in here. The prevalence between 2017 and 2020, according to the CDC, 19.7 percent of children fell into the obese category, which seems like a huge amount, 14.7 million children in adolescents. We need to be thinking about the food that we are feeding the children. Are we offering them enough physical activity? Are we having them sit for long periods of time without that movement? That should be something that we are intentionally thinking about and adding to our lessons and activities. Recess and outdoor play is something that should be included every day in your schedule. It should be right in your schedule. It's recommended that children have at least 60 minutes of outdoor play and it can be broken up into smaller increments. If that's okay, if you do have half hour in the morning and half hour in the afternoon, just try and get that 60 minutes or more would even be better. Recess or outdoor play or physical activity, gross motor activity, it helps develop muscle strength and coordination. If you are advocating for this, especially in your public school system. If they are thinking about cutting recess, if they're having children's sit because they didn't do their work in the classroom and they have to sit when children go outside for recess. These are great points that you can bring to parents, families, administrators, whoever it is that you want to talk to about the importance of this physical activity, that children learn valuable skills when they're outside. It's less structured, and they don't have a teacher or adult rate over their shoulder much of the time. They need to learn negotiation skills. They learn cooperation, sharing, problem-solving, perseverance, self-control, all great and important skills as we move forward and as adults, and if the children are learning this in their childhood, they're going to be more successful as they move forward. It also serves as a necessary break from academic challenges. Children who are especially in elementary school and they are sitting down and they're doing work for hours, then their mind gets tired and going outside, having that freedom running around, it recharges their mind and their body. It can lower levels of stress. It helps children learn social skills. They need to learn how to get along with each other, how to cooperate, how to make rules of the games that they're playing or role-playing or whatever it is. It helps them learn pro-social behavior. It gives the opportunity to release excess energy, which can improve focus and concentration, and that therefore can decrease interruptions when you have your structured activities when you go back inside. This is really important because researches shows how important this physical activity and this recess is for children. If you need to find statistics and look up information to advocate for recess in your area, please do that. It's so important. We talked about illness and the spread of illness, the importance of washing your hands, how to keep us healthy in that aspect, we talked about physical activity, but we also need to stay healthy by having good oral health. Oral health is really important. Oral health is determined by the type of oral hygiene and dental care that a person receives, their diet, meaning if they're drinking five sodas a day and that sugars in their mouth all the time, then that's not a good thing, and heredity, sometimes we have no control over some of the things that happen. But if we are taking care of our teeth and we're going to the dentist and we are drinking lots of water, eating teeth friendly foods, then chances are we're going to have some healthy teeth. Oral health can affect a person's ability to eat, speak, and smile. If your teeth hurt all the time because you have a lot of cavities, then you are not going to be comfortable eating. Speaking, if you remove some of your teeth because you haven't taken care of them or because they had to be removed or whatever, is a little bit harder to speak, and people are self-conscious sometimes if their teeth do not look healthy and maybe try to avoid smiling. Good oral health can affect a person's self-esteem. It can affect school performance and attendance. Again, if a child has a baby bottle decay, or if they have the sippy-cup syndrome or in their teeth are just hurting all the time, and they might not go to school. They might not be able to focus. They might not be able to really determine what their brains wants to do, because all they can feel is that pain in their mouth , and it hurts. We should be with young children teaching them proper tooth brushing. Tooth brushing with your children while they're in your care is a really good idea. Each child should have their own toothbrush. They should have their own toothpastes labeled with their name along with the toothbrush. They should be kept in an area where they're not touching each other. Teaching the children how to brush their teeth is very important. Oral health equals over all help. Thank you.
