Lake Travis ISD Wellness Watch

By: Marissa Albers, MPH, RD

Dietitian & Marketing Coordinator, LTISD Food and Nutrition Services

Have you recently experienced sticker shock while shopping at the grocery store? Supply chain disruptions are increasingly evident and affecting everyone. While these disruptions are inconvenient, they have revealed an opportunity to shift our focus towards supporting local economies and building economic resilience. According to the US Economic Development Administration, a resilient local economy has 3 main attributes: 1) the ability to recover quickly from, 2) withstand, and 3) avoid shocks or disruptions. How can we all get involved and make a difference?

In The LT Café

This month, the LT Cafés are participating in the Texas Department of Agriculture's (TDA) Farm Fresh Challenge, a fun way for child nutrition professionals to earn recognition for bringing local foods and garden-based learning activities to their schools. Lookout for Texas-grown apples in all elementary cafés! As food supply challenges shed light on the increasing importance of local farmers and businesses, our participation in this year’s challenge has taken on new meaning. It has also strengthened our commitment to providing local foods and educational opportunities for our students. Lake Travis ISD is participating in the Good Food Purchasing Program, which provides actionable guidance to help institutions direct their buying power toward 5 core values: local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare, and nutrition.

At Home

Here are a few tips to offset the rising costs of food supply chain disruptions and support your local economy at home!

1. Buy lower cost proteins. Protein is often one of the most expensive items on our grocery bill. Choose protein options such as beans, eggs, tofu, nut/seed butters, and plain Greek yogurt.

2. Reduce waste. Challenge yourself to find a use for every scrap in the kitchen. Carving pumpkins this weekend? Roast the pumpkin seeds for a protein-packed snack! Chopping veggies for dinner? Save the scraps and make your own veggie stock!

3. Shop Local! Visit your local farmer’s market or look for the “Go Texan” symbol on products at the grocery store which designates Texas-made goods.

For an easy way to get started and have fun, download and participate in our Farmers Market Scavenger Hunt! Elementary students who complete and return the scavenger hunt will be recognized as a "Local Foods Leader" with a certificate in their classroom and have their photos featured on our digital screens in the cafes during the month of November! Share your experience on social media, and tag @LTCafes using the #FarmFreshTexas or #FarmFreshChallenge so we can follow along!

By: Becca Harkleroad, RN, NCSN

Lead Nurse, Lake Travis ISD

Fall is here in the TX Hill Country, which means ragweed reigns supreme on the allergy charts, with mountain cedar lurking around the corner. Many adults and children suffer seasonal allergies, which is a nuisance but not contagious. Fall and winter are prime times for other respiratory illnesses to spread, such as cold, flu, or COVID-19. These added illnesses make it difficult for parents to decide if their child needs to stay home from school to prevent the spread of illness or if it’s just allergies.

Overlapping symptoms add to confusion on whether or not a student needs to stay home. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), COVID-19 and seasonal allergies have multiple overlapping symptoms, some of which are also common for the influenza virus and other respiratory illnesses, or colds. These diagrams shows the overlap of COVID-19 and allergies as well as COVID-19 and influenza.

Prevention is Key

If your child suffers from seasonal allergies, they may need to take allergy medicine during peak season. Most people do well with an over-the-counter medication, but you should contact your healthcare provider if you have questions or need recommendations. Also, try to avoid prolonged outdoor exposure during times of peak allergy seasons. After spending time outdoors, a quick shower and change of clothes will help eliminate the allergens from the allergy sufferer.

Ways to help prevent yourself and your family from getting sick include: frequent handwashing; proper respiratory etiquette (cover nose and mouth when sneezing or coughing, and immediately washing hands afterward); getting lots of quality sleep; fueling your body with nutritious meals; and fortifying your immune system according to your healthcare provider’s input. There are vaccines available to protect against severe infection from the flu for people 6 months or older. The COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for people 12 years or older, with hopes that a vaccine for children ages 5-11 years will be available by the end of this year.

When in doubt, rule it out!

If your child is not feeling well, even if you suspect it’s just allergies, it’s a good idea to keep them home from school to monitor their health. If the child’s minor symptom is resolved by allergy medication, that child may be welcome to return to school the following day. If your child comes to school and is exhibiting symptoms that may be related to COVID-19, the school nurse is required to send them home and exclude them from school according to Department of State Health Services (DSHS) guidelines. DSHS requires people to be excluded from school for at least 10 days with symptoms improved and fever-free, or to be cleared by a healthcare provider or a negative molecular test before returning to school.

In-school learning is essential…

Public health and education experts agree on this fact: kids thrive in an in-person school environment vs online offerings. They also agree that students’ health and safety should remain a priority when it comes to in-person learning. Keeping your child home for one or two days while ruling out flu and/or COVID-19 actually supports in-person learning for all by preventing the spread of these illnesses at school, which would take more students out of the classroom.

Why should we see a healthcare provider?

If your child is ill, it’s important that they be seen by their healthcare provider. Frequently, especially when a child is sent home from school for COVID protocols, people seek a quick answer with a molecular COVID-19 test. Unfortunately, sometimes people look at their child’s symptoms with “COVID blinders” on, which means they can miss an important diagnosis that is not COVID-19. Consult with your healthcare provider when you determine that maybe it’s not just allergies after all. Many treatable illnesses have similar symptoms and early access to treatment means they'll be feeling better fast.

By: Coach Z (Danielle Zibilski)
Physical Education and Health Teacher, Serene Hills Elementary School

Deciding when to have your children specialize in just one sport or join a select/travel team is a challenge faced by many families. It might mean stopping or limiting other sports or activities. There is also definitely a time and financial commitment. Not to mention the worry about a child missing out on opportunities that may influence ability to play in high school or even past high school.

As a parent of 2 school-age kids, an elementary PE coach and a LTYA coach I definitely acknowledge the pressures placed on families and children to specialize at a young age.

Doctors are seeing a huge epidemic of injuries in kids nowadays, and some feel a big reason is sports specialization leading to overuse injuries. Many kids are playing sports — the same sport — at a much younger age, and they're playing on multiple teams, sometimes even year round. So they're not giving their body a chance to recover and rest. It can cause muscle imbalances that affect children’s growth and development.

It also increases the risk of anxiety, burnout, and quitting sports altogether. Restriction in exposure to a variety of sports can lead to the young athlete not experiencing a sport that he or she may truly enjoy, excel at playing, or want to participate in throughout his or her adult life.

The biggest prevention tip doctors give patients and their parents is to take three months off from your sport. Do other sports in the offseason, give your body rest, and condition or train in other ways.

I suggest parents encourage your kid to tackle different athletic activities throughout the year, and don't forget to take a few timeouts. After all, we need time for kids to be kids too.

by: Jennifer Lyon, M.Ed.

Director of Health and SEL, Lake Travis ISD

Parenting kids today is so different from any generation before us. We are raising Generation Z, kids born from 1996 to the present day. The first generation raised as digital natives, the most diverse, the most anxious, the most educated and least attentive. Parents today try to keep up with their kids' high-tech lives but often feel overwhelmed and/or tend to over-function (we do too much to control our kids’ lives and outcomes).This can lead both parents and children to experience greater than normal levels of anxiety and stress. Children feed off of parents emotions, soaking them up like a sponge. For example, read the following excerpt from Growing Leaders regarding the book Generation Z Unfiltered by Tim Elmore:

“Generation Z is growing up in a time that is causing some drastic changes that can be difficult to understand. While they are the most socially connected generation in history, statistics show that they are more lonely than ever. While they will enter the workforce with more education, they will also have less job experience than any previous generation. While they can binge watch or game for hours, most struggle with 6-8 second attention spans in the classroom. Most concerning of all, they are now the most anxious youth population in human history. Research tells us that the average student today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s. The fact is Generation Z is completely different from past generations. These challenges, however, don’t have to mean they are guaranteed to fail. In order for them to successfully reach their potential as a generation, we, their parents, teachers, coaches, employers, and leaders must choose to believe in them, encourage them, and walk with them through the nine greatest challenges they will face.”

So what can we do? The following advice from Christine Carter, PhD author of The New Adolescence may help. In a recent edition of the Berkeley News, she stated, “Kids today are really exhausted and overstimulated and coping with so much more than their parents were when they were teenagers,” says Carter. “It’s really imperative these days to have parenting strategies to help them cope.”

Carter’s tips for parenting Gen Z teens

- Model the behavior and skills you’d like your teens to develop. (Don’t eat dinner while scrolling through your mobile devices). Few things are more irritating to a teen than adults who don’t practice what they preach.

- Take a deep breath, and let teens make their own decisions about their lives. It’s not that we never say no anymore; nor do we stop enforcing our family rules. It’s that we involve teens more in creating the rules, and we let them make their own decisions — which they are going to do anyway.

- As parents, we are most influential when we are able to work with teens’ existing motivations, rather than trying to get them to feel motivated by our goals. Hint: Teens are very motivated by their desire for greater freedom, by social status and by their need to feel a strong sense of belonging with their peers.

- Touch and eye contact are fundamental for human bonding at any age. Even an extremely brief touch (like a fist bump or a half hug) can soothe their anxious nervous systems.

Teens need help resisting the unrelenting siren song of their smartphones. We can help them configure both their devices and screen time so that they are less tempted to check their phones and social media compulsively.

If you or your child needs support navigating mental health issues, please reach out to your school counselor, or the Licensed Social Worker at your child’s campus. Our staff are ready and able to help!

"The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model is CDC’s framework for addressing health in schools. The model focuses on the student and emphasizes the collaboration between schools, communities, public health, and health care sectors to align resources in support of the whole child." -U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

Notice at the center of the WSCC model is a child. We believe every child should be safe, healthy, challenged, supported, and engaged. This is achieved through the supportive structures of family, school, and community surrounding the child.

This spring, Lake Travis ISD's School Health Advisory Committee (SHAC) decided to create a quarterly newsletter to share information that will help families and the community support student health in the areas of nutrition, physical activity, social and emotional wellness, and health education. We will focus on these areas to support and encourage families to implement simple habits that are important for healthy development.