TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Bay Area students are just one weekend away from the new school year.
“First experience with school. I think she’s excited, but we’ll see,” said Larissa Guevara.
Watch full report from Mary O'Connell
Guevara is sending her four-year-old daughter to VPK. Her back-to-school checklist is almost complete.
“Getting a book bag, last minute like small little things that I still have to run around and go get, and just basically putting uniforms together and sending her off,” said Guevara.
From school supplies to sleep schedules, doctors want families to take steps to make the first day as pain free as possible.
That means getting some shut eye and starting routines now.
“Children should be getting more than 8 hours of sleep, and a lot of these kids are going to bed at 3:00am, 4:00am nowadays when summer comes, so they need to go to bed earlier and start waking up earlier,” said Dr. Patrick Mularoni with Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Mularoni said one of the things they see in the beginning of the school year is headaches.
“A great way to prevent back to school headaches is one get on a normal sleep rhythm, the second is make sure they’re hydrating well, and then watch that caffeine intake,” said Mularoni.
Doctor’s offices are often busy this time of year with back-to-school physicals.
“The physician is going to look over the child and make sure that nothing else has come up, nothing new has come up in the last year,” said Mularoni. “They’re going to monitor growth. They’re going to monitor development, obviously help with immunizations.”
Parents will want to make sure backpacks fit just right to avoid back pain, and if your child is nervous for school, try walking them through their day.
“Talk to them about what their day is going to look like, how they’re going to get to school, what they’re going to eat,” said Dr. Mularoni. “Do those things ahead of time because that way on the morning of the first day of school, you can kind of decrease that anxiety.”
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