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Admit it, you love your kids but you’re positively giddy they’re headed back to school soon. It’s OK; me too. After weeks of juggling kids at home, summer vacations and work schedules, my wife and I celebrate the welcome relief a regular school schedule brings. We’re not alone. Heck, I know parents that take the first day of school off work just to stay home and enjoy the peace and quiet.
Beyond the return to normalcy, back to school time offers an easy way to stay on top of critical annual health checks that are far too often delayed or overlooked altogether. Every child, even perfectly healthy ones, need annual vision exams and physicals as well as twice-a-year dental cleanings and checks. Now is the perfect annual reminder to make those appointments for young kids and teenagers.
This is no small matter. The data around the number of kids not getting these exams regularly and the consequences of skipping those exams are alarming. Check out these facts from the National Children’s Oral Health Foundation, the American Optometric Association and The Annals of Family Medicine:
- 10 million kids in the U.S. suffer from undetected vision problems that can impact learning.
- 80 percent of classroom learning takes place visually.
- Each year, U.S. kids miss more than 51 million school hours due to dental disease.
- The number one chronic childhood disease in the U.S.: tooth decay.
- 15 to 18 percent of kids in the U.S. have chronic diseases, many of which go undetected for months or years.
Vision exams are one of the most often overlooked. Yet, a simple eye exam for your kids can help identify vision issues before they impact school, learning or sports and help build good health prevention habits at a young age.
Regular dental cleanings are absolutely the key to avoiding expensive (and painful) treatments like fillings and extractions. They can also spot early warnings of other health issues because the mouth is often a window to disease elsewhere in the body.
Annual medical exams with your pediatrician are vital to making sure your child’s growth and development is on track, assuring critical vaccinations are being administered when needed, and addressing small problems before they become big ones.
All of this is true for kids of all ages. Far too frequently, even kids that had been getting their annual exams fall off in their teenage years. A recent study in the Annals of Family Medicine found that about 30 percent of U.S. teenagers did not go to even one preventive care visit from the age 13 to 17, and 40 percent had gone only once.
When any medical, vision or dental plan worth its salt will cover regular exams completely, there’s no reason to skip them … and the most important reasons in the world to get them done. I know, as parents, time tends to fly and it’s easy to forget to get them scheduled. That’s why I use the joy of back-to-school season as my reminder to get my kids’ appointments on the books.
I strongly suggest you do the same.
