Back to school time brings lots of emotions.

For students is usually excitement and nervousness.

Dr Tom Potisk 4th grade

For parents it’s relief. LOL!

My 3 teenagers started school this week , and my wife and I are celebrating. Yay!

I’m a proponent of rewarding kids for good grades. Dangling a carrot for good performance is an activity congruent with real life. I give them cash for each A they obtain on their report card. When I reminded them of that recently, they immediately started calculating how many good grades they need to get an Ipad. That’s a good warm-up for mathematics.

They were not so happy when I reminded them of a few after school rules. Like no TV  or computer games until their homework is done. And their chores have to be finished. And they have to exercise first. Wow, I seem like a meanie don’t I. But I mean well – it’s called tough love; a good idea.  I highly recommend it for all parents.

Let’s not forget about kids health. I recently gave a radio interview on WENG with the topic “How to Sickness Proof Your Child for Back to School Time.  The key is all about building stronger immunity. My family and I have enjoyed having medical bills at or near zero year after year (about 16!) Pretty phenomenal. I believe any family can decrease their health care. medical, hospital, and insurance expenses using my whole health healing lifestyle recommendations. In fact, I wrote the book on it.

We do a lot of things to maintain that superior wellness level. You can learn our secrets by reading my previous posts.

But here is an important, inexpensive, and simple one – give the kids garlic. Garlic is a wonderful immune boosting food. It’s anti-viral. Use lots of it in your cooking. Better yet, pickle some cloves by dropping them into your pickle and olive jars. let them soak in the brine for at least 2 weeks. Them give the kids one at least weekly, more if they get some symptoms. Kids love it. That make for  great natural and holistic health.

And you’ll love the savings!

May God bless you and your family with whole health,

Dr Tom Potisk – Author of Whole Health Healing: The Budget Friendly Natural Wellness Bible for All Ages, Wellness Wins: A Simple guide to a Happier, Healthier Life and Reclaim the Joy of Practice: An Advanced Guide for Advancing Doctors

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Be sure and get my 4 free health reports available on the right side of this website.

Oh, and by the way, have you seen my other cool websites – http://www.wholehealthhealing.com. And specifically for doctors – http://www.reclaimthejoy.com.

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Kids and exercise equals natural health and wellness.

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Kids benefit from swimming

Kids need a lot of exercise and it needs to be fun. Look around my yard and you’ll see a trampoline, skate boards, basketballs, baseballs, tennis rackets, roller blades, bicycles, frisbees, and scooters. I trip over all this stuff on a regular basis. LOL.

I purposely resist buying my kids the motorized stuff because I want them to have exercise more than a thrill ride. They whine about it all the time like “But Daaaad, the neighbor has a dirt bike!” I’m a real meany!

But I urge all you parents to resist also. There are so many neat motorized toys for kids to ride on these days it’s amazing. And I’m not even concerned about kids having accidents with those – it’s quite rare. What I am concerned about is the growing problem of obesity in children. Much of that obesity is due to inactivity in children. They need more physical activity!

Television, video games, and computers are another blessing from God, but like all blessings, abuse of them leads to problems.

In my new book Whole Health Healing, I have a chapter called Raising Healthier Children. In that chapter I explain how I control my kids electronic gaming by requiring that all home work be completed, household chores be completed, and a series of exercises be completed before they get some computer or gaming time. I suspect some adults need this same control. LOL.

Having a variety of physical activities for them is crucial because the most common reason anyone quits exercise is boredom. We are blessed with a nice pond to swim in and I notice that swimming is a wonderful choice for warm summer days. Sometimes it’s hard to get the kids out of the water (and me too!) LOL.

In the right sidebar of this website, you will find an opt-in to receive a free report with more details about getting control of your child’s electronic gaming. If you’ve allowed it to get out of control you’ve got a real challenge to regain control of it. But regain control you must! This is serious stuff. The physical inactivity can lead not only to obesity but also poor posture, blood sugar imbalance, and even weak bones and joints.

I remember my parents and grandparents asking “What’s going to become of the world with all these misfit kids?”

Now I’m asking “What’s going to become of the world with all these unfit kids?”

So fill your yard with all kinds of fun, physical activity. And start using it yourself too! The activity will do you good and the time with your kids will be priceless!

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Recently my wife and I had a conversation with a lady. She did most of the talking. The topic was children and college.  God help us!

It was a beautiful spring day, so I wonder now and regret why I didn’t intervene and change the subject or suggest we play a game like cards, dice or even Russian roulette; anything would have been less painful. LOL.

What was painful about it was that the topic, children and college, is and always will be dominated by the parent with the bigger vision for their child, the bigger, more materialistic worldly vision that is. I’m happy to report that my wife and I don’t qualify for that position.  We still think kids should be content to fulfill their goals, not ours. That brings my wife and I contentment, a vital component of health and wellness. Unfortunately, many other parents believe it’s their duty to not only intervene, and not only to control, but to actually make the goals for their children. That worldly way leads to tremendous stress for parents and children.

So this visitor, who I will keep anonymous, spent the afternoon bragging about her children’s potential and how she will guide them in their activities, all designed to qualify them for select colleges.(Her 4 kids were all under 14).

I did try to put in my two cents, explaining that I know many very content people who wouldn’t qualify for what is commonly recognized as success, that being owners of oversized houses, expensive cars, trophy spouses, designer children (i.e. children with the best of everything like expensive orthodontia, manicures, various therapies, and even unnecessary after school extracurricular activities). But the worldly lady kept coming back with “Oh, I checked it out and there are thousands of parents preparing their children for elite schools, there’s a lot of completion out there”.

Now settle down, I’m not criticizing success, especially when it’s acquired ethically, through good old fashioned innovation, creativity and hard work. What I’m saying is that many people, these days more than ever, get all the materialism that accompanies success confused with happiness and contentment.

That’s the worldly way, and working myself in the field of healthcare for over 25 years, I know all too well the trouble that accompanies the overly driven quest for money, and then more money. In fact I wrote a book on the subject called Reclaim the Joy of Practice – An Advanced Guide for Advancing Doctors. The jist of the book is that joy, happiness, and contentment does not come from seeking and making money, or even going to the best schools. You would be amazed how messed up and miserable many people are who you would classify as successful, including doctors.

This worldly way of pursuing success by rigging one’s life or the life of one’s children, produces a very stressful existence because of the very superficial appearance of success and the dead end road it leads to. Yes, the stress in this lady’s family was quite apparent.

So my wife and I have a strategy, we will certainly insist our kids do their homework and fulfill all their school requirements, we will do our best to introduce them to a wide range of experiences and professions, we will encourage higher education, and then we will listen to their choices and be supportive of them. If that strategy leads my kids to a kind of greatness the world recognizes we will celebrate. If it leads my kids to anything else, we will also celebrate their individual greatness – both outcomes are success that really counts because the kids themselves chose and did it, not us parents.

How do you define success? Do you think your definition might be the source of your stress?

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