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Taking a Break

July 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Parenting is a stressful job; it’s highly rewarding, but since the job is basically 24/7, it can really wear on you. The important thing to remember when you’re a parent is you need some time to decompress and get your energy back. You need times where you have a chance to miss your kids so you can come back rejuvenated and ready to go again. Here are some tips on how to do that:

  • Take time after kids are in bed. Some parents don’t set strict bedtimes and this leads to dealing with kids all the way up to their bedtimes. This isn’t good; parents need time at the end of the day to relax. If you don’t have that, you won’t be able to sleep either. So enforce a strict 8 p.m. rule. This means that whether your children need to go to bed at 8 p.m. or not, they are in their rooms. If they aren’t sleepy, then they can read or play quietly.
  • Take breaks during the week. It’s important to have some time during the week as well. If your spouse works, then have him or her watch the kids at night so you can go out and have some alone time. This could be shopping or just getting a treat and relaxing.
  • Take breaks when you can get them. If you have friends who have kids the same age as yours, take opportunities for the kids to play together. If your parents live nearby, see if they’d like to have some time with them to become closer to their grandkids.
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Helping Your Child to Have a Good Relationship with Food

July 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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As a parent, it’s your responsibility to make sure that your kids get the proper nutrition. This puts a lot of stress on parents as they try to get their wee ones to eat their fruits and especially their vegetables. Unfortunately, this pressure has led to parents using threats and punishments in order to get their children to eat healthy. But at what cost?

When children are forced to eat foods that they don’t want to eat, it leads to children seeing the food as an obligation; they don’t eat it because it’s yummy, but because it’s a responsibility. There are ways to help your children to have a good relationship with food and eat a balanced diet naturally. Here are some tips:

Let your children see the vegetables, but don’t force them to eat it. Basically this means you should put the vegetables on their plates and let them choose whether they eat it. Be sure to let them see you eating vegetables as well. They may not eat the vegetables right away, but they will eat them eventually. More importantly, they will never see eating vegetables as a punishment.

Never use food as a reward or punishment. This includes desserts. Many parents use desserts as a reward for eating vegetables, but this can lead to a poor relationship with food where you see food as something you have to eat or something you only get to eat as a reward. Many overindulge on the sweets when they’re older or on special holidays because of this mentality.

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Preparing Your Child for the Move

May 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Karen Lee dreads moving because her daughter, who is in second grade, reacts very badly to change. How can she tell her they are moving to be closer to Mommy’s new job? Penny stopped speaking for 3 weeks when she got a new babysitter, and actually hid in the coat closet when she had a substitute teacher at school.

Karen is computer savvy. After finding her dream home while browsing Atlanta apartments for rent, she must now find a way to make the transition as easy as possible for Penny and thus turns to the internet for ideas.

She finds that parents can try too hard to put a cheerful face on a move. They forget that it can also be a time of loss for their child – loss of friends, their room, maybe even their town. Parents need to give children time to mourn. Gather telephone numbers, email, and street addresses of friends. Give a farewell party if possible.

Kidstimes.org suggests telling your child about the move as soon as possible. Don’t let them overhear talk of the move and start to speculate. Take your child to the new neighborhood and explore – take photos of playgrounds, new stores, and schools. Let your child help pack his or her room and choose which boxes he or she will unpack first.

Very young children are least affected by a move as long as you remain calm and upbeat. Preschoolers often do not understand that your belongings are going with you, but their friends will not. Check online parenting resources for children’s books about moving, and read them with your child.

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Routines for School Success

May 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Many reliable sources, including the Child Development Institute, tell parents that children with consistent routines will give those children an edge for a successful school experience.

Children should be encouraged early on to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyle. This healthy lifestyle will help keep children’s’ brains alert and their bodies fit. Parents should take an active interest in their children’s school activities as well as helping them learn independence, social skills confidence and other such skills.

Parents should make sure that their children are eating a healthy diet. This diet should include foods that are high in anti-oxidants and Omega-3 fatty acids. These foods will help keep the brain and memory skills healthy. Complex carbohydrates are also beneficial to a healthy brain function.

Children should be encouraged to keep children organized and on a routine. Children can do this by keeping a record of assignments and homework. This will help children develop good homework and study habits. Parents should take an interest in school activities and homework. Parents should not do their children’s’ homework, but rather encourage them to find the solution to the problems.

Parents should act as examples to their children. Parents should exhibit the behaviors and attitudes that they want their children to embrace. For instance, parents should read on a regular basis, as this will lead to their children’s desire to read as well. Parents can help their children develop conversation skills by listening to what they have to say and letting them talk through their ideas.

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Praising Your Children

April 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Almost everyone, especially parents, knows that offering praise and encouragement to children, regardless of age, is very conducive to increasing the self-esteem and self-image of the children. Some parents believe that it’s possible to harm their children with too much praise, but studies have been done that prove the opposite.

Older kids can, many times, see that some of the parental encouragement they’re receiving has been used as a way to get them (the kids) to do what the parents want. Patronization by parents or guardians is never a good idea because it almost always has negative effects on the children.

A reward system is always a good idea. Perhaps when your child does exceptionally well on an exam at school, you could buy him or her those new Nike clothes that he or she has been wanting. Nike offers an entire line of clothing, especially for the athletic-minded, and most students will participate in at least one sport in high school. Other rewards could be a weekend trip or new art supplies if your child of a budding artist.

Another good idea is to keep your praise focused when offering it to your children. Try to focus on efforts rather than abilities. The effort our child put into studying to get that A on a history exam is much more worth the praise than scoring twenty points in a recent basketball game. Giving praise for natural abilities can be detrimental to development because natural ability is out of child’s control.

Offer praise where it’s needed, and as often as it’s needed. Make sure your children know you care.

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The Most Dangerous Babysitter: Kids and Television

April 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Methods of raising children have been profoundly transformed over the last century.  Ways of caring for, disciplining, entertaining, and encouraging children have all evolved, and in some ways not for the best.  The circulation of widespread media, availability of unhealthy foods, and exposure to social disorder has made parenting more difficult than ever. Although there are a myriad of circumstances involved in raising a child effectively, the one that is constantly cited as the most influential is television.
Reports in the last decade have focused more and more on television as a source of problems in the upbringing of children—particularly toddlers.  Studies report that if children under the age of two watch television weekly, even if just briefly, it alters the way that their mind works.  Television is so rapid and interactive that the brain tends to diminish function while the T.V. is on.  For babies this is particularly dangerous, because it teaches their developing mind to cease functioning and can therefore disturb the healthy growth of cerebral response and basic thinking.
Also, according to   http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/tv_affects_child.html, children that witness aggression via television are more likely to be fearful of the outside world or violent themselves.  Kids constantly watching more than four hours of television a day are far more likely to be overweight.  There is also the clearly negative consequence of behaviors witnessed on television—including racism and sexism—becoming subconsciously ingrained in a child’s mind.  Programs exist that encourage beneficial and appropriate behaviors in children, but like everything else, they should be used in moderation, constantly monitored, and not exist as the sole influence in a child’s upbringing.

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Avoid Ineffective Parenting

April 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the best ways to learn how to be an effective parent is to recognize ineffective parenting techniques. Chances are, all parents have used ineffective parenting tricks at some point in their childrearing, but identifying them now and being willing to change can make a huge difference in the type of adult your child grows up to be.

The most common ineffective style is “permissive parenting.” While you may not think you’re pampering your child, certain things you do for her are actually taking away her chances to make independent choices. For example, looking for a child’s lost toy is considered permissive parenting. There really is no need to drop what you’re doing to go search for a missing item when you can be teaching a necessary skill—self-sufficiency. Even waking up your teenager every morning is teaching the opposite of self-sufficiency. Think about what you’re currently doing for your child that he or she can manage alone. Of course you want to let them know you’ll always be there for them, but draw the line somewhere.

Another ineffective technique is counting to three. This simply doesn’t work because most parents get to three and end up having to count all over again because the child doesn’t listen. This only teaches that there are no immediate consequences. Kids quickly realize that nothing bad is going to happen when you get to number three. The best thing you can do is ask the child to stop the bad behavior or they will lose a favorite item such as a special toy or video game. If they don’t listen immediately, take away the item immediately.

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Making Those Childcare Expenses Work for You

February 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Childcare costs can be very expensive. For many families it takes up a large portion of the family budget to pay for the various forms of childcare. While some families have the luxury of reducing the cost of childcare by having a parent stay home, or only work on a part-time basis, other families need to depend on childcare to allow them to be a two income family and pay all their bills. Paying for childcare can be difficult on a weekly basis, but there is a way to actually take advantage of at least a portion of those costs during the year and help your financial situation. That help arrives in the form of declaring childcare expenses as a deduction on your tax return.

According to the latest federal tax laws, a family can declare childcare expenses for a child that is 13 years of age or younger and is considered a dependent. The term childcare can cover any costs paid to any daycare center, babysitter, day camp or nanny that you had to hire in order to take care of your kids while you worked. Families are able to declare about 20 to 30 percent of their childcare costs on their taxes. This deduction means that families are able to get a small portion of the money that they invested into childcare back.

The best way to make this type of deduction on your taxes is to take advantage of some of the great free tax tips that are available to parents about tax filing systems. These systems will walk you through the steps on how to declare your childcare costs as an expense. In fact, if you use a tax filing system you might be able to find out about other great tax deductions you can get for being a parent such as declaring your child as a dependent or getting money back for donating old children’s clothing to charity.

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The Ups and Downs of Being a Parent

December 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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The journey of parenthood starts the moment the child is born. A whole new world has been opened up with so many possibilities envisioned for the new child. Life for the parent has now changed in ways that they never thought possible with so much happiness and frustrations to follow.

During the first couple years of development there’s not much to concern oneself with. The child is growing and presenting few problems other than the usual developmental ones. Ensuring that everything goes as planned is about it. To be sure, a young child that’s not talking or walking yet presents little challenges. But once they reach the age where both are being explored, watch out.

Kids test everything in their reach. It’s what they’re programmed to do. It’s how they learn how the world around them works. But for the adult who’s been there and done that, patience is key. Kids will say stuff and do things that will make the parent wish they had never reproduced. And that’s a normal reaction, one that any mother or father will express from time to time. The key is to not over react to anything, reward good behavior and punish the bad ones. This is a time of life for shaping the child to become a responsible human being, or so one would hope. There are some kids who are of a stubborn mindset and won’t want to listen.

Don’t ever lose patience with the process as it’s a form of giving up. Children need their parents for guidance and approval of things they do. Be engaged in their lives, no matter how hectic the day to day living may be. Over time, as their personality develops, the parent can better understand what their child needs emotionally and respond in kind. Above all always be fair.

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Be a Firm and Consistent Parent to Your Child

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Children don’t come with instructions, a fact said by many new parents. And it’s very true. A child is born and somehow maternal and paternal instincts are supposed to take over for the next 18 years. Sure, mother nature supplies the desire to protect the child as they’re born and grow, but she doesn’t hand out the logic needed to figure out the puzzle.

Too often a parent raises their child as their best friend instead of, well, their child. It results in a child that knows no boundaries with adults and acts inappropriately. No one is done any favors by treating their offspring as a friend. The child grows up into an adult who will have issues coping with others.

The time to start is when the child starts the process of learning concepts. At this stage, they have no idea that there are consequences for their actions. And this is when the parent needs to start introducing them. Be firm in stating no, stick to the guns, and do not give in to pleading and whining. It cannot be said enough that not doing so now will make it that much harder later. Trying to undo what wasn’t done before makes it a come from behind situation.

Being firm does not have to imply being mean. Even though a child will proclaim “you’re mean!”, this is nothing more than standing ground. There are things that kids should not do, get into, or play with as they can injure themselves. As a child has no concept of mortality, they gleefully get themselves into trouble. Protecting them from themselves is where being firm and unyielding come into play. Introduce the idea of something being non-negotiable early on. Instilling this into the child’s head will only serve to make life easier down the road. To be sure there will always be battles to be fought, but they don’t have to be hard.

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