Nervous overloads and the health of schoolchildren

Parents are always waiting for the start of the school year with tension - it doesn't matter if the child goes to school for the first time or for the fifth time. Other problems include persistent anxiety about health, which, many believe, deteriorates from school stress. This is confirmed by statistics: about 25 percent of children come to the first grade healthy, but the further they go, the thicker the medical record becomes.

Natalia Pechatnikova told the newspaper "Interlocutor" why schoolchildren have nervous overloads, what they can lead to and what to do.

Among schoolchildren, there are those whose nervous system is particularly vulnerable, and they are advised to show them to doctors before classes begin. Which children need it?

- Children with neurological diseases should be constantly monitored by a doctor. But before school, especially before the 1st grade, it is advisable to show any child to a neurologist, even if he has never had head injuries, seizures or neurotic reactions. School is stressful, which can provoke any kind of illness. A neurologist will help prevent an exacerbation or identify the first symptoms of diseases of the nervous system.

For example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often first appears at the beginning of school. There is no "magic" pill for this disease, so parents often lose patience and stop taking children with ADHD to neurologists and psychologists. In fact, it is necessary. Firstly, the diagnosis of ADHD can only be made by a doctor, and not by a teacher at school just because the child is restless. Secondly, communicating with a doctor helps parents who are tired of endless complaints from teachers to understand that they are not the only ones who have to solve this problem. Parents of children with ADHD should be prepared for the fact that their child may not immediately "get involved" in school life.

On the one hand, school is not always easy and pleasant, and parents, who were students themselves in the past, try to ignore the child's complaints about lack of sleep, fatigue, and bad mood. On the other hand, all these may be signs of chronic overexertion. What should be the reason for a child's behavior to see a doctor?

- Frequent headaches and any sleep disorders should be alerted - the child cannot fall asleep, wakes up at night or the sleep-wake regime is generally disrupted: during the day he walks sleepy, does not think clearly, and at night sits down for lessons. Tearfulness, moodiness, and a bad mood can also indicate that the child is not coping with the load.

Parents constantly say that children are overloaded with school, but at the same time they try to cram English, music school, and dancing into their child's schedule. Are there standards for additional workload?

- Parents often exaggerate the workload, feeling sorry for the child. This is normal, even good! Who but Mom would feel sorry for him? There are no regulations regarding how many clubs you can attend, and how many are already too many - everything is individual. If your student is happy (periodic complaints that "I want to sleep" don't count), active, and rarely sick, then everything is fine. Someone can take out school, a music room, and choreography with a ski section, while someone has a lot of six days of study - they would have enough strength for lessons. It is useful to listen to the opinions of school doctors, if any. They usually know the situation "from the inside out" and can sometimes tell when a child is just lazy and when he is really suffering from an unbearable workload.

There is no standard of sleep for an adult. A student should sleep at least 9 hours, and this is the norm for high school students, for students in grades 5-6 - 10 hours, first-graders are supposed to sleep 11 hours plus a couple of hours in the afternoon. It is from here that the tradition of putting children to bed no later than 21 o'clock is "growing". Elementary school students who study in the first shift should be sent to bed even earlier, otherwise they simply will not have time to sleep in time for the start of lessons and overwork with a whole bunch of unpleasant consequences will not keep them waiting.

The regime for schoolchildren is a necessity of "No."1, whatever you want. All cases should be time-bound, but psychologists advise giving the child the choice of when to sit down for lessons, swim in the pool or read. He wants to do math after lunch, and Russian after a walk, so be it. It is noted, by the way, that schoolchildren spend the longest time at home studying chemistry, literature and a foreign language, it is better to take this into account when drawing up a schedule. The evening is generally not very suitable for homework: the brain, working on memorization, is more difficult to switch to sleep.

How long should a student walk? By and large, time is not important, the main thing is to walk. In order for the brain to work properly and retain rules, foreign verbs and theorems, it needs enough oxygen. Children have been living in hypoxia for almost half of the summer due to the heat and smog, and doctors fear that this may affect the first months of the new school year. So schoolchildren should visit the street more often, especially now.

The menu of a child who goes to school must include meat, poultry and fish for growth, cereals, vegetables and fruits as sources of vitamins, cottage cheese, dairy products and cheese for bone growth. Many of the above (especially cocoa, chicken breast, eggplant, sweet pepper, bananas, milk) contain tryptophan, which activates the brain, so it is not necessary to feed the student with cakes to boost cheerfulness and efficiency, especially since you do not need to take sweets with you to school.

According to Rospotrebnadzor of the Russian Federation, every third Russian school does not have a medical office. Almost 13 percent of school medical centers do not meet sanitary requirements. Only 86.9% of educational institutions have gyms.

Pediatricians consider grades 1, 5, and 9 to be the most stressful and dangerous in terms of overloads. The first-grader has to get used to completely new conditions, the danger of the 5th grade is that children enter the transition age, and the 9th grade is a kind of threshold beyond which preparation for exams and admission to university begins.