7 Simple Ways To Improve Your Night's Sleep

5 Tips For Creating Safe Havens for Your Anxious Child
The school environment can pose unique problems for a child with anxiety, especially if the type of anxiety is social anxiety. Often considered a “performance-related” anxiety, children exhibiting social anxiety are often triggered by both the social demands of a school setting and the performance demands within the classroom. The five tips below can help you, and the school, create “safe havens” within the highly social school setting, supporting your child’s anxiety before it develops into school avoidance or worse:
Partner with the teacher and school at the first indication of concern. Don’t wait until the problem is significant to approach the teacher. As soon as your child begins to avoid school or indicate a problem, speak with the teacher to develop strategies early. Doing this can help you avoid the more serious cases of school avoidance.
Develop strategies with the teacher for use within the classroom environment. Many anxious children are triggered by the typical performance demands of a classroom. Work with the teacher to incorporate some of the strategies listed below to minimize the negative impact:
Seat the child next to helpful and calming peers
Work out non-verbal signals to use with the child to signal when the teacher is going to call on him or her.
Provide advanced warning to the child for changes in routine
Establish “safe zones” for the child to use during recess and/or lunch. It is easy for a child with anxiety to be triggered by the noise and energy of the other students during lunch and recess. If this is a trigger for your child, work with the school to establish alternative places for your child to go. Working in another classroom and using the library often work very well for children with anxiety.
Establish “safe” people on campus to function as coaches to your child. Although schools can be huge triggers for children with anxiety, they also provide great opportunities for children to learn and refine social skills and coping strategies. Enlist the help of someone on campus that your child trusts to help your child learn and use social competencies at school.
Make sure the home environment is safe and supportive. As important as it is to mitigate the possible negative impact of the school environment for children with anxiety, it is important to remember that everything starts at home. Making sure that home is a calm and secure environment can establish a foundation of safety that can support the anxious child.
Children who demonstrate extreme shyness and social anxiety-like behaviors can really struggle in school and during social events. Following these tips and adapting them to your specific situation can go a long way toward supporting these children and improving their outcomes. Social anxiety disorder doesn’t have to dominate a child’s life. Providing safe havens can help your child find the balance needed to manage his or her anxieties.
Raising the Shy Child
By Christine Fonseca
The fear of being judged by others in social activities is a common human experience, especially during childhood. But when the fear becomes all-consuming, it can disrupt daily functioning and the development of social competency. Raising the Shy Child: A Parent’s Guide to Social Anxiety takes a fresh look at social anxiety disorder, coupling the latest in research trends with evidence-based strategies and real-world stories to untangle the complexities of this disorder. Presented in an easy-to-read, conversational style, the book uses a combination of real-world examples and stories from adults and children with social anxiety disorder to show parents and educators how to help children find a path through their fear and into social competence. With specific strategies to address school refusal, bullying, and identity issues, Raising the Shy Child is a must-read resource for anyone dedicated to enhancing the lives of children.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christine Fonseca is a school psychologist and award-winning author of nonfiction and teen novels dedicated to helping children and adults find their unique voice in the world, including the books “Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students,” “The Girl Guide,” and “Quiet Kids.” When she isn’t crafting new stories or working with student groups, she can be found sipping too many skinny vanilla lattes at her local coffee house.
BUY IT
Prufrock Press
March 1, 2015
ISBN: 9781618213983
$16.95
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | IndieBound

Top Wedding Flower Trends
There is a lot that needs to be taken into account when it comes to planning your special day. This includes everything from invitations and table seating arrangements to entertainment and the colour of your bridesmaids’ dresses. However, one thing that needs a lot of attention is your wedding artificial flowers. After all, flowers are responsible for creating a joyous and romantic mood.
It can be difficult to know where to start when looking for the best artificial wedding flowers for your big day. Thus, one of the best things to do is take a look at the latest trends to see if something inspires you. This is what we are going to do in this post. Pastel flower arrangements are coming back in fashion. This is because they provide a joyful and warm feeling, and they are linked with elements of luxury and romance. One thing that we have noticed is growing in popularity as the year goes by is wild wedding blooms. To get an idea of what these bouquets and arrangements look like, simply imagining picking something straight from someone else’s garden. The arrangements contain a number of different flowers. This is ideal if you are hosting a quirky and rustic wedding, which is certainly in fashion at the moment. Last but not least, why not go for a taste of romantic luxe with the artificial flowers you choose? This is all about high flower content and romantic blooms, such as orchids and hydrangea, in cream and pastel shades.
How to Choose the Perfect Band for Your Wedding.
Wedding bands are undoubtedly what you are searching for if you have a big wedding on the horizon. There are a lot of things to think about when organizing the big day, but the wedding band has to be pretty high up there. It’s the thing people will most remember about the day and can make all the difference to the atmosphere. But this is probably also your first time trying to book wedding bands. Unless you are a professional events organizer, booking a wedding band might strike you as a rather complicated process, and certainly a pretty big deal. Here are a few things to consider.
What to Consider When Booking Wedding Bands
If you are looking at wedding bands, there are more than a few things which are worth bearing in mind in order to make a wise and educated decision. The entertainment at your wedding is up there with the food in terms of importance. Making the right choice is a make or break decision for your big day. The first thing to bear in mind in your search for wedding bands is whether or not you can make choices from the play list. Most bands should have a fairly comprehensive playlist of songs they can play; this is actually important to check in itself. But after this, you want to make sure that you can customize the line up. A lot of bands might not give you this option – they will simply stick to all the familiar songs they have selected themselves. But to personalize your day and add that extra dimension of quality, it is important to make sure your chosen band will be right for your personal tastes. Some wedding bands will even learn your first dance if it is not in their repertoire to begin with! Another small but important thing to consider is whether the band will provide music between sets. Even band members need to take breaks or stop to have something to eat, but it can be pretty mood killing if this means the venue is suddenly left silent. Some bands will provide music between sets as part of their service and this avoids having to fork out extra for a DJ.
Other things to consider when choosing a wedding band
There is yet more to think about when you are choosing a wedding band. A really important one is to do with all important time considerations. Simply, how long does the band play for? How long can they play for? Band performance times really vary, but a typical wedding evening will usually take the form of a first dance, followed by three sets of 45 minutes or so until midnight. But other bands might offer variations on this theme and this isn’t always strictly true. Consider how long you want the band for and when you want them playing, before you start looking. Another seemingly obvious point when going about choosing live wedding bands is obviously the actual music you are going to hear. Of course, you will have considered what type of band you want playing, and have probably checked out their performance in videos, or even live if you are lucky. But you also need to think about the songs they play. If they have played your favorite song and played it well, then that is great, but they can’t play one song on repeat for over two hours. They also need to have an impressive repertoire that will offer a variety for your guests, young and old, and of varying tastes. This is just a sample of the decisions you need to make in choosing a wedding.

These days, the majority of us will not even step outside our front door without our mobile phone, but you know that the one time you go out without your phone, or the one day that it runs out of charge is the day that you will need it to call for help. Of course, it is a good idea to keep a spare mobile phone charger lead in your car, but these generally run through the ignition, and if you can’t turn your ignition on for whatever reason, you can’t charge it, and you are stuck. Having a portable phone charger in your glovebox is a good idea as is having an old phone, preferably with a working SIM card and some credit, although even without these, you can use it to call the emergency services. Make sure that your spare phone is charged every so often!
A Jack
Now, changing a tire on most cars is pretty straightforward, even for the least mechanically minded amongst us. Everyone should learn how to do it if possible, especially if they are going out alone and driving through the middle of nowhere. However, if you are unable actually to get the wheel off the ground, you are not going to be able to do it. Many cars come with a jack built-in, but unless you know for sure, it is best not to risk it – finding out that it doesn’t when you have a flat tire is not going to be very helpful!

Fitness is a subjective thing. What one person may believe define as fitness, another person may disagree with. It is crucial to think about what fitness means to you so that you know what you want to achieve. For some people, looking fit means building muscle using products such as muscle rage to increase their muscle mass, for others, their idea of fitness is achieving a toned, flexible body through activities such as yoga.
Clarifying in your mind precisely what you want to achieve and what being fit means for you will help you to determine how your goals can be reached.
Setting Your Fitness Goals
To achieve a goal, you firstly need to decide exactly what those goals are. Many people begin their fitness journey with a vague idea in mind of what they want to achieve, but no clear way of knowing when they have achieved this goal. It is tough to keep working towards a goal if it is not clearly defined in the first place. To overcome this uncertainty and to enable you to stay focused, it is useful to put together some SMART goals.
You are probably used to hearing the term SMART goals spoken about in business terms, but SMART goals are essential for achieving your fitness goals too. Applying the SMART principle to setting fitness goals will enable you to clarify exactly what you want to achieve and how you are going to make that happen. Set your fitness goals on the basis that they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relative, and Timely. This means that you know exactly what you want to achieve (Specific). Will be able to monitor what you have achieved (Measurable). Ensure achieving your goals is possible (Attainable). Choose activities that will help you reach your goals (Relative). Have a time-scale for your achievements (Timely).
Making your goals realistic, but still challenging enough to help you reach the result that you want is essential.

The modern mammal metropolis of Zootopia is a city like no other. Comprised of habitat neighborhoods like ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown, it’s a melting pot where animals from every environment live together—a place where no matter what you are, from the biggest elephant to the smallest shrew, you can be anything. But when optimistic Officer Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Goodwin) arrives, she discovers that being the first bunny on a police force of big, tough animals isn’t so easy. Determined to prove herself, she jumps at the opportunity to crack a case, even if it means partnering with a fast-talking, scam-artist fox, Nick Wilde (voice of Jason Bateman), to solve the mystery.
Check out the new Zootopia Poster! Does it remind you of anywhere?
Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Zootopia,” a comedy-adventure directed by Byron Howard (“Tangled,” “Bolt”) and Rich Moore (“Wreck-It Ralph,” “The Simpsons”) and co-directed by Jared Bush (“Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero”), opens in theaters on March 4, 2016.
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ZOOTOPIA opens in theatres everywhere on March 4th, 2016!