Summer is time to travel and it is definitely a time too to sit down with your kids and have a talk about safety. After all safety is more paramount than ever when you are on the road. After all it is quite easy to lose your kid at the beach or at a theme park.

The best way to avoid this type of problem is to create some kind of buddy plan. Most parents forget to teach family safety strategies but they are essential and necessary. Having travel plans in place can even help save a life or prevent your child from being abducted or being lost.

It is always a good idea to decide on a family code word. This helps your child from going off with a stranger. Make sure the word is easy for you guys to remember but not so common that others could guess it.

Make sure your child has memorized basic numbers such as their address, home phone and a parent’s cell phone number. If your child is lost on vacation then you need to be called on a cell, as obviously you will not be home.

You also need to assign each family member a travel buddy that stays with him or her at all times.

It is also a good idea to teach kids how to keep themselves safe from harm. Make sure they stay in at night when you are traveling and that they know the traffic or other rules of where they are going. Children always perform best when they know what to expect.

If you are at the airport make sure you have a current photo of your child. These are big places and it easy for them to get lost. These are used of identification purposes. Have other information such as your child’s height, weight and full name as well as your cell number on the back. Make sure that it is a good photo in case your child goes missing and a poster must be made.

It is also crucial to wear bright colors when you travel. This allows you to keep track of your family and for everyone to be easily recognized.

Make sure your child’s name is also on tags or written inside his or her clothing. This helps you keep track of each other. Don’t write the name on the outside of clothing as the child might become familiar to the stranger who calls their name. This might give them the ability to spirit your child away from you in a crowd.

Wear matching bright colors when traveling. This is a great way to keep track of your family, and allows everyone to be easily recognized.

Another good trick is to always designate a meeting spot for your kids and you if you should get separated. Meeting an entrance gate to an attraction or other obvious place is an excellent idea.

It can be heart breaking to see your teens suffer from acne. The low self-esteem it causes can be extreme. Teens, both – male and female are very sensitive about the way they look. Acne can be hard to get rid of and also leave scars. A good course of action is to prevent them from starting in the first place by taking some preventative measures.

Usually a bad case of acne starts with a blackhead. Your teen picks at this thinking it is a pore filled with dirt. This is an illusion Oil, dead cells and other substance block the pore and mix with bacteria and it is the exposure to air that turns it black. Once these become inflamed they turn into the angry red pustules we know as teenage acne. What it really amounts to being are a hole in the skin that can become inflamed.

Over time these inflamed pustules develop white heads and when these break they cause horrible scarring on the face. Many teens, especially girls find this quite disfiguring. Unfortunately covering up these scars with make up is also not such a hot idea. It can make the acne problem look even worse.

There are some acne home remedies you can try. Some are actually silly sounding but they do work. Some might worsen the condition. Common remedies include toothpaste, egg whites, ice, salt water, and steam, wheat germ and apple cider vinegar. Usually these ingredients are applied directly to the acne pustule in an attempt to shrink the inflammation.

Your teen’s acne may also respond to Acutance. If it is you that has the acne keep in mind that you may not be pregnant while taking it. The same goes for a pregnant teen if you should, God forbid, happen to have one!

Sometimes it is just hormones. Birth control pills may be prescribed to a girl to help correct her acne in that case. Some teen girls break out in acne around their period just like we do. In adult acne incases the pustules almost always develop along with a severe case of premenstrual syndrome or PMS.

There are also a lot of herbal remedies for acne. Herbs such as juniper, dandelion root, chamomile, lavender, bergamot, and burdock root can be used to reduce toxicity and improve the overall condition of the skin. Echinacea, pokeroot and red clover may aid us.

Witch hazel is a cheap medicine that can help dry up acne and it has excellent astringent properties.

If scarring is really bad you can get acne laser surgery. This can help clear it completely. Laser surgery is very safe and there is next to no risk of damaging the skin surrounding the scar. This is important as acne scars can affect a person’s self-esteem for a very long time in life.

Bullying is a fact of life but that does not mean it should be “just let go”. If your child is the one being bullied it can cause a lot of damage to his or her self-esteem. Nowadays teens and young children are experience even more violence than ever. My own personal opinion is that this is caused by stress and nervous tensions. Teens today have more reason to be depressed than ever. They have schedules as bad as we do. It also seems they are losing their innocence when they are younger then ever.

Bullying has even caused suicides in very young children and teens because it makes them feel so left out of their peer group. A kid subject to bullying may also see no recourse or no way out of the situation. With no way to fight they give up and become very depressed.

If your child’s behavior shows any changes you should encourage them to talk to you. Often a sullen or withdrawn kid or one that looks depressed is dealing with a bully at school. Let’s face it. If you own a child they will not always tell you what is wrong. You need to perceptive. I am an excellent min d reader.

One tip off is the kid that keeps trying to think of ways to get out of going to school. Teens may not sleep or act listless. There may be no engagement at all in any social activities. They may be irritable and even bully other children to kind of release the energy of what is being done to them all day. In some cases the bullying is so bad that your kid can’t eat, develops an ulcer or becomes physically ill.

If you find out there is a bully you need to instruct your child on how to avoid it. Often that is all you can do to help them avoid it. Make sure that they know that it is the bully that has the problem or that is not good enough and not they. You can also teach your child to avoid bullies whenever possible without changing too much of their lives. The idea is to find a compromise between avoiding the bully and having the bully control your life.

Kids also have to know that violence also makes it worse. Tell them of the dangers of fighting fire with fire and how that can cause conflicts to escalate.

You should also tell your kid to stand their ground and walk away from bullies. This is part of a lesson about choosing your battles wisely. If a bully approaches you make sure that they aren’t afraid and that you will not be pushed around.

I always contact the school officials when this sort of thing happens. They are more serious about stopping bullying then ever as they have figured out that this type of aggression can lead to something as severe as the Columbine high school shootings.

When it’s hot who feels like cooking a heavy meal? Not me. Why heat up the kitchen. It is time to make lighter meals for you and the kids because the heat reduces the appetitive anyway.

In the summer I just go for the fresh fruits and vegetables. You can make all kinds of different simple and delicious dishes with them. Most need very little preparation to make them absolutely delicious.

You can also use spices to add some pep to a meal that might seem too plain (as is often the case with dishes that consist of just cut up vegetables.) Use spices to add pep to a meal instead of drowning everything in a heavy sauce. There is also no need to cook anything. I like grating vegetables in the summer to make them more palatable.

You can also experiment with lettuces. They can be used as a base for a dish as in making a bed of lettuce or as part of the salad. You should also not use too much dressing as it can be really fattening for both you and the kids. I like to make my own oil and vinegar dressings for a salad. These dressings give a light taste that adds a spicy taste to the dressing for different flavors.

Lettuce of all kinds is a good platform to start building a meal on. You can add potatoes, macaroni, chicken, shrimp, turkey and other things to lettuce. I sometimes just pour hamburger made with taco mix and grated cheese over a bed of lettuce. You can make a complete meal like this in a matter of minutes and you won’t bore your kids taste buds (or your own!). Also these types of meals can be very nutritious as well.

To save time I sometimes buy precooked meat or that chicken that is part soy in the store and just dump it in the salad.

One of the most nutritious meals you can make is a macaroni salad. My kids love it with peas, cheese and tuna. They love this mix of foods whether they are cold or hot. Sometimes I add chopped up boiled eggs or a few chopped up raw tomatoes to this mix as well.

Another macaroni recipe I like is eggs, onions, tuna, relish, mayonnaise and cup of mustard. This makes a cool spicy macaroni salad dish. Of course you could add a little yellow or red curry powder to this to spice it up.

Of course if it is really hot I make sure there is a lots of cool fruit on hand for dessert. My kids love frozen fruit chunks, especially grapes. Frozen bananas with chocolate drizzled all over them are also a nice idea.

Don’t bother slaving over the oven in the summer. Instead save energy, air conditioning bills and keep your kitchen cool.