Parent Alert April 2024

By rbean | May 28, 2025 |

Helping Students Prepare for the End of the School Year

The end of the school year can be a source of stress for many students. End of year exams, moving up a grade, getting ready to go to a new building, and worrying about friendships are common stressors. Preparing your child for the end of the school year can help them deal with stress in a healthy way. Here are a few suggestions:

Be a cheerleader and supporter for your child by showing an active interest in their studies and providing the resources they need to succeed.
Help your child develop a schedule that will allow them to study and do homework while still leaving time for relaxation.
Develop a healthy definition of success. Make sure your children know that there is more to life than test scores, and that you care about them for who they are and not for what they do.
Talk about the dangers of substance use. Use of any substance to aid in studying is not healthy.

Tests are a common stressor for many students, and some students get stressed out to the point that they develop test anxiety. According to Progress Learning, “Test anxiety is a type of performance anxiety that explicitly causes a sense of nervousness before a test.” Test anxiety can come with both emotional and physical symptoms. Emotional symptoms can include negative thoughts, anxiety, and depression. Physical symptoms can include the fight or flight response being activated, and cardiovascular issues. Here are some ways you can help your child develop good study habits and deal with test anxiety:

Help them create a study plan and a good environment to study in.
Focus on progress not perfection. Teach them to learn from their mistakes, and to focus on the things that they did right.
Teach them anxiety-relieving strategies. These can include things like taking slow, deep breaths, staying positive and not focusing on negative thoughts, and getting proper sleep the night before an exam.
Help them develop test-taking strategies that work for them.

Check out the links below for more information on how you can help your child have a successful end to the school year.

Resources

7 Ways to Promote Good Study Habits
Calming End-of-Year Stress
How to Help Teens Develop Good Study Habits
How to Support Students with Test Anxiety
School Stress: 10 Ways Parents Can Help Kids Manage Stress

April is a good opportunity to highlight the adverse impact alcohol can have on health and society, and how these negative outcomes can be avoided by preventing alcohol misuse. It is important to remember that alcohol awareness should be an ongoing process of learning and growing, and not just something thought about once a year. Prevention Action Alliance lists family and medical history, brain development, and mental health as factors that influence an individual’s alcohol awareness. These factors play a key role in a person’s decisions about alcohol use. As a parent, you have a great influence over the decisions your youth make including their decision on whether they drink underage. Here are some ways you can develop alcohol awareness in your child:

Help them understand the importance of brain development. Alcohol negatively impacts the developing brain.
Set a good example when drinking alcohol. A study looking at the associations between parental drinking and alcohol use among their adolescent children found that adolescents whose parents drank frequently, or binge drank, were more likely to drink than children whose parents did not drink or binge drink.
Never provide alcohol to youth under the age of 21. Also be sure to monitor and secure alcoholic beverages in your home.
Advocate for policies that promote responsible drinking practices for adults and limit youth access to alcohol. Also teach your child media literacy so alcohol media does not have an influence over them.

Resources

Associations Between Parental Drinking and Alcohol Use Among Their Adolescent Children: Findings From a National Survey of United States Parent-Child Dyads
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism – April is Alcohol Awareness Month
Prevention Action Alliance – Nurturing Alcohol Awareness: A Lifelong Journey of Responsibility
PTTC Post Article – April 2024
SAMHSA – Alcohol Awareness Month

April is National Minority Health Month

This annual observance builds awareness about the health disparities that persist among racial and ethnic minority and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations and encourages us to take action to end these inequities.

Each year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Minority Health (OMH) designates a theme for National Minority Health Month. The theme for 2024, Be the Source for Better Health: Improving Health Outcomes Through Our Cultures, Communities, and Connections, is about understanding how the unique environments, cultures, histories, and circumstances (known as social determinants of health, or SDOH) of racial and ethnic minority and AI/AN populations impact their overall health.

Non-medical factors like poverty, limited access to health care, lack of education, and racism are all examples of SDOH that contribute to health disparities and inequities. SDOH impact everyone in one way or another, and simply promoting healthy choices won’t eliminate health disparities. Considering the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age is fundamental to improving health and reducing longstanding disparities affecting racial and ethnic minority and AI/AN populations.

Visit the National Minority Health Month 2024 website to find resources, social media messages, graphics, and information on how to Be the Source for Better Health.

This message and the above logo were created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. Please visit the links below to learn more about National Minority Health Month and the importance of health equity.

Resources

National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities – National Minority Health Month
PTTC – Intersection of Addiction and Racism: A Curated Bibliography
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – National Minority Health Month 2024 Toolkit

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