Spring is in the air in much of the country, and kids who have spent months bundled up during the winter are ready to get outside and play. For many kids, that means riding their bikes, scooters, or skateboards with friends through the neighborhood.
March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and helping keep children safe from head injuries is very important. A traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when someone's head is hit by something or shaken violently. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.7 million people receive TBIs each year. Of children up to 19 years old, TBI results in 631,146 trips to the emergency room each year.
Brain injuries, including concussions, can occur to kids while biking, during sports games or even on a playground if they were to fall while playing and hit their head. As a parent, before you let your kids go out biking, you need make sure that their helmet from last season still fits properly. If you have to buy a new helmet, make sure it fits snug. Buying a larger size that they can grow into can lead to disastrous consequences if they fall and hit their head. If the helmet doesn't fit properly, it won't protect as it should in the event of a fall.
What Symptoms Should Parents Look For?
According to Parent Center Hub, the term traumatic brain injury is used to describe trauma to the head that can cause permanent changes to areas of their mental cognition such as:
- Thinking and reasoning
- Understanding certain words or parts of language.
- Short-term memory loss
- Paying attention
- Problem-solving
- Thinking abstractly
- Speech and other communication skills
- Behavioral patterns
- Walking or other physical activities
- The ability to learn new things, especially if a skill was never introduced to the child before trauma.
According to the Brain Injury Association of America, there are some essential ways to protect your children’s safety and significantly reduces the risk of brain injury. make sure your children (and you), stay safe from brain injuries:
- Wear a seat belt every time riding in a motor vehicle.
- Buckle children in the car using a child safety seat, booster seat, or seat belt according to the child’s height, weight and age. Children should start using a booster seat when they outgrow their child safety seats. Children should continue to ride in a booster seat until the lap/shoulder belts in the car fit properly, typically when they are approximately 4-foot-9 tall. Local police or fire departments often have clinics for parents to help make sure child safety seats are properly installed.
- Wear a helmet and make sure children wear helmets that are fitted properly. Specialty bike shops generally have staff member who are great at fitting helmets. The right helmets can reduce the risk of severe brain injuries by 88 percent, according to SafeKids.org.
- Make sure playground surfaces are made of shock-absorbing materials, such as hardwood mulch or sand, and are maintained to an appropriate depth.
- Use the right protective equipment and make sure it is maintained properly.
Help Local Children’s Charities
Each year, many children are affected by serious or chronic (?) medical condition. Vehicle donations help to provide these children with better lives. Donate a car, truck, motorcycle, boat, or camper and let Wheels For Wishes turn your vehicle into hope and encouragement for a child in your community.
When you donate a vehicle to Wheels For Wishes, your donation will go towards supporting the children’s charities in your area. See which charity your donation will benefit by checking out our Chapter Locator. When you donate a car, truck, boat, or motorcycle to Wheels For Wishes, you will receive free pick up or towing of your vehicle. To make a car donation, simply call [chapter_phone] or make your donation online.
Help to support children’s charities by donating your vehicle to Wheels For Wishes.
Spring is in the air in much of the country, and kids who have spent months bundled up during the winter are ready to get outside and play. For many kids, that means riding their bikes, scooters, or skateboards with friends through the neighborhood.
March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and helping keep children safe from head injuries is very important. A traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when someone's head is hit by something or shaken violently. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.7 million people receive TBIs each year. Of children up to 19 years old, TBI results in 631,146 trips to the emergency room each year.
Brain injuries, including concussions, can occur to kids while biking, during sports games or even on a playground if they were to fall while playing and hit their head. As a parent, before you let your kids go out biking, you need make sure that their helmet from last season still fits properly. If you have to buy a new helmet, make sure it fits snug. Buying a larger size that they can grow into can lead to disastrous consequences if they fall and hit their head. If the helmet doesn't fit properly, it won't protect as it should in the event of a fall.
What Symptoms Should Parents Look For?
According to Parent Center Hub, the term traumatic brain injury is used to describe trauma to the head that can cause permanent changes to areas of their mental cognition such as:
- Thinking and reasoning
- Understanding certain words or parts of language.
- Short-term memory loss
- Paying attention
- Problem-solving
- Thinking abstractly
- Speech and other communication skills
- Behavioral patterns
- Walking or other physical activities
- The ability to learn new things, especially if a skill was never introduced to the child before trauma.
According to the Brain Injury Association of America, there are some essential ways to protect your children’s safety and significantly reduces the risk of brain injury. make sure your children (and you), stay safe from brain injuries:
- Wear a seat belt every time riding in a motor vehicle.
- Buckle children in the car using a child safety seat, booster seat, or seat belt according to the child’s height, weight and age. Children should start using a booster seat when they outgrow their child safety seats. Children should continue to ride in a booster seat until the lap/shoulder belts in the car fit properly, typically when they are approximately 4-foot-9 tall. Local police or fire departments often have clinics for parents to help make sure child safety seats are properly installed.
- Wear a helmet and make sure children wear helmets that are fitted properly. Specialty bike shops generally have staff member who are great at fitting helmets. The right helmets can reduce the risk of severe brain injuries by 88 percent, according to SafeKids.org.
- Make sure playground surfaces are made of shock-absorbing materials, such as hardwood mulch or sand, and are maintained to an appropriate depth.
- Use the right protective equipment and make sure it is maintained properly.
Help Local Children’s Charities
Each year, many children are affected by serious or chronic (?) medical condition. Vehicle donations help to provide these children with better lives. Donate a car, truck, motorcycle, boat, or camper and let Wheels For Wishes turn your vehicle into hope and encouragement for a child in your community.
When you donate a vehicle to Wheels For Wishes, your donation will go towards supporting the children’s charities in your area. See which charity your donation will benefit by checking out our Chapter Locator. When you donate a car, truck, boat, or motorcycle to Wheels For Wishes, you will receive free pick up or towing of your vehicle. To make a car donation, simply call [chapter_phone] or make your donation online.
Help to support children’s charities by donating your vehicle to Wheels For Wishes.
If you want to take part in a night of exquisite wine and food, then Wine & Wishes is for you. March 23 is the 13th Annual Wine & Wishes event, hosted by Make-A-Wish Metro and Western New York. At Wine & Wishes, you'll enjoy a delightful evening of fine wines, desserts, and silent and live auctions, with earned proceeds benefiting Make-A-Wish Metro and Western New York.
Make-A-Wish Alaska and Washington’s annual Wish Night Gala & Auction: Flights of Fancy will be an especially magical event this year. Make-A-Wish Alaska and Washington is celebrating its 30th anniversary of granting the wishes of local children, but the real magic of the 2016 Wish Night is its focus on raising funds to grant 400 wishes this year. You can help the Wish Night Gala & Auction achieve its goal through contributions and donations to the event. With your support, Make-A-Wish Alaska and Washington can provide more life-changing experiences to children battling life-threating medical conditions and their families.
Make-A-Wish Northeast New York has granted nearly 1,600 wishes over the past 29 years. You can help celebrate their impact of all these wonderful wishes at the 18th Annual Gala for Make-A-Wish. This year's theme is "Wishes Light the World." Make-A-Wish Northeast New York plans to grant 100 wishes this year, and you can help by attending the gala.
If you live in Iowa, you have four opportunities to support Make-A-Wish Iowa at an upcoming gala. This spring, you can attend a gala in Dubuque March 19, Des Moines April 2, Clinton April 9, or Cedar Rapids April 22. Each gala will have its own flair, but all of them help Make-A-Wish Iowa keep doing wonderful work for kids in your state.
Now that spring is just around the corner, most of us are ready to begin the season by decluttering and downsizing for a fresh start. It can be refreshing to clean out your closets and get rid of household clutter you've been hanging onto.
Feb. 14 is known for Valentine’s Day, but it’s actually so much more than that. Not only is it a day to shower your sweetie with candy hearts and chocolates, but it’s also a great time to raise awareness for Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Day and National Donor Day. Plus, Valentine’s Day falls right in the middle of Random Acts of Kindness Week (RAK Week). This Valentine’s Day, have a heart and combine all four of these great events into one day, or share the love all week long!
February is American Heart Month, a time dedicated to learning more about heart disease. Heart disease includes conditions such as stroke, high blood pressure, angina, rheumatic heart disease and coronary heart disease, which can cause heart attacks. These conditions would be rare in children since they normally affect adults as they age; however, it's never too soon to adopt heart-healthy habits that the whole family can benefit from!
Now that we're in the heart of winter, you've had a chance to get reacquainted with driving in the snow. The first couple of snowfalls, getting used to driving in the snow is an adjustment. People slipping and sliding down the road is a common sight as people figure out how much time and room they need to stop.
One way to help yourself and stay safe while driving in the winter is to equip your car with winter tires to replace your other tires until the snow goes away.
Even if you don't live in a cold climate with snow, winter weather can seem endless and get you down. With the holidays far behind us, most people are ready for winter to be over. However, with a little creativity, winter can still be a blast even if you are stuck inside!
The Make-A-Wish Central & Western North Carolina Wish Ball raised more than $450,000 in 2015, and with the plan to grant more than 260 wishes this year, being part of this signature annual event has never been more important. The Wish Ball is once again being held at The Westin in their mission to help children with critical illnesses. The 2016 Wish Ball is on Friday, Feb. 12, at The Westin Charlotte (601 S. College St.).
The event starts with registration from 6-7 p.m., dinner from 8-9 p.m. and a live auction and raffle from 8:30-9:30. The evening includes an entertaining cocktail hour, an elegant dinner prepared by the master culinary team at The Westin, music and dancing to the sounds of Flashback the Party Band, and silent and live auctions. Most important, The Wish Ball is an evening of charitable giving: Since the event has started, it has raised more than $2 million towards granting the wishes of children with critical illnesses in our community.
Parking for the event will also be discounted for Wish Ball guests, at a rate of $12 for valet services and $6 for self-parking.
With road trips, errands and daily commutes, cars play a major role in our lives. But your car can also make a huge difference in someone else's life when you donate your vehicle to charity! Wheels For Wishes supports children's charities around the country, and the proceeds from your donation can add to that impact.
Many home improvements are costly up front, but save you money down the road. The long-term value of installing energy efficient windows or an Energy Star-rated air conditioner can be huge, but the cost of such upgrades can be a major barrier to some families. Luckily, there are also a lot of simple changes that cost next to nothing and can start saving energy and resources almost immediately. If you've made a New Year's resolution to go green in your home this year, these ideas can help you get there!
After the holidays are over, the last thing you probably want to do is clean up the decorations you spent hours putting up. It's never as much fun to put things away, which is why it might be so tempting to just throw things out and start over fresh each year. A better way is to recycle and reuse your old decorations that you can't necessarily save and reuse in the same way next year. And if you haven't already, check out our tips for recycling your Christmas tree.
Each year, nearly 13,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed in the U.S. This disease was once one of the leading causes of cancer death among women, but the death rate has dropped more than 50 percent over the last 30 years.
Christmas has been over for a few weeks now. Hopefully by now you've got your Christmas tree down, and your lights and ornaments packed away. But if that's not you, and you still have your tree up, it's probably getting to be about that time to pack it up.
February is meant to be all about hearts with events such as Valentine’s Day and National Heart Month, but January is just as important! The American Red Cross celebrates National Blood Donor Month this January and encourages you to have a heart and give blood, if possible. If you’re unable to give blood, there are other ways to give back and make a difference.
Birth defects are structural changes that can be detected before birth, at birth, or any time after birth. They can affect almost any part of the body, such as the heart, foot, or brain. Birth defects are common, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), birth defects affect 1 in every 33 babies born in the United States each year. January is National Birth Defects Prevention Month, and you can help to reduce your child’s risk of developing a birth defect by making healthy choices during pregnancy.
It’s the start of a brand new year, and you may have a list of resolutions that you’d like to accomplish in 2016. If car donation is on your list of New Year’s resolutions, you’ve come to the right place. Wheels For Wishes helps to improve the lives of local children in communities throughout the U.S. Find a local chapter in your area and see how your car donation help local children near you.
The year is coming to an end, and it’s time to celebrate the New Year ahead. What better way to bring in the New Year than by throwing a green New Year’s party? By green, we don’t mean the red and green colors from your holiday decorations—we mean green as in environmentally-friendly. At Wheels For Wishes, we practice recycling everyday through our car donation programs that benefit local kids in your area. If car donation is on your list of New Year’s resolutions, we suggest that you donate your vehicle before 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve to get a tax deduction for the 2015 year.
