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The "Good Old Days" Are Now
Helping Our Kids Live Better Today
By Mark Stackpole
All good parents want their children to enjoy a higher quality of life than they did themselves. We want our kids to live longer, be healthier, make better decisions and have all of the things that we might have missed out on. Interestingly enough, parents (and grandparents) also like to remind the kids about the "good old days" – that golden era when kids respected their elders and everything cost a nickel, whether it be a gallon of gas, a trip to the movies or a loaf of bread from the corner market.
It is great to be optimistic about the future and nostalgic about the past, but what are we doing to improve the present? Isn't it possible to have a great life and still hope that our kids have an even better one? And just how good were those "good old days," anyway?
In our quest to help our children achieve that higher quality of life, here are a few things that we are doing better today than yesterday. Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement tomorrow.
Dr. Charles Shubin, the Medical Director of the Children's Health Center at Mercy FamilyCare in Baltimore, Md., identifies improved nutrition and huge advances in disease prevention as the biggest strides we have made in caring for our young people. True nutritional deficiencies are rare in the United States, and we know more than ever about the importance of eating healthy foods as opposed to junk food. "I tell my patients that if they eat junk, they will become junk, and if they eat healthy, they will become healthy," he says.
In terms of disease prevention, Dr. Shubin points out that many previously common and serious diseases, like polio and measles, have been markedly reduced. Great strides are being made in preventing and eliminating other diseases through the development of vaccines. "The future is bright," he says. "With many vaccines against viral illnesses in the works, I tell my medical students that their practices will be as different from mine as mine is from my dad's, who started in 1938 when there were no antibiotics."
