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Susan* bought her 6-year-old son John an iPad when he was in first grade. “I thought, ‘Why not let him get a jump on things?’ ” she told me during a therapy session. John’s school had begun using the devices with younger and younger grades — and his technology teacher had raved about their educational benefits — so Susan wanted to do what was best for her sandy-haired boy who loved reading and playing baseball.
These 9 things your kids need from you—whether they know it or not—are too important to ignore.
If your child doesn't listen to you as she does to your partner or other people, this list will give you a comprehensive framework of what you can start thinking about. It may hurt, but it will be of help.
Breathing the fresh air, being unplugged and disconnected, experiencing the peacefulness of the outdoors ... it’s pretty fantastic. When kids go outside and play in nature, there are real benefits to both physical health and emotional well-being. The only problem is, kids are spending less time in nature and more time hooked up to their tablets, smartphones, and video games.
You’ve probably heard the arguments in favor of early toilet training. They train early in Europe! Toddlers are more compliant than three-year-olds! Diapers are bad for the environment! Perhaps you’ve even read scientific studies concluding that children who train later are more likely to end up having accidents.
I see you looking my way – when I hold my 7 year old, my 5 year old, my 3 year old in my arms. I want to tell you something: my 9 year old doesn’t fit there anymore… and that is why I still carry my kids.
Find out why apologizing for your mistakes makes you a more effective parent
Bose is releasing a step-by-step build kit that breaks down the science of sound and is designed to empower kids through discovery and education.
We all know that besides looking after you, stealing the last bar of chocolate from the fridge and sending you jokes only they find funny, it’s a dad’s main purpose in life to relentlessly mock the hell out of you.
Below are 13 tips for parents that will help them teach their kids about healthy money management.
Here is a list of questions that your child could hopefully answer with more than a single word or grunt!
Since my wife is a teacher, I have spent countless hours listening to teachers tell their stories. This has caused me to recognize some things I would like to share with my fellow parents.
My husband and I thought we were done having kids after we had our first two. Then when our youngest was 3 and we had just celebrated chucking the diapers—surprise!—pregnant! We rolled with it, and now I can’t imagine life without our three kids.
They're naturally independent.
For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out how to make kids listen. I tried following directions activities and listening activities for kids. Yet, there was a huge component I was always missing: helpful phrases that build connection.
As part of its latest guidelines on kids and screen use, the American Academy of Pediatrics says parents not only need to pay attention to how much a kid is using a screen, but also when and why they are using it.
Here are eight vital life skills that children aren’t taught in school:
1. Independence: Teaching children, a little at a time, to be independent, can show them that they can make decisions on their own. Letting them make their own mistakes can teach them valuable lessons they’ll carry with them.
2. Compassion: Compassion is needed to work well with others, to care for other people and to find happiness through making other people happy.
3. Individuality: They need to be taught that we come in all sizes, shapes and colors, and it is perfectly OK to be unique.
4. Welcoming Change: Teaching children that change isn’t something to be afraid of – just something to prepare for – can help them in so many aspects throughout their life.
5. Happiness: Many parents coddle their children in an attempt to keep them happy and safe, but it can make children rely on their parents for their happiness. Teaching a child from an early age that they can be happy on their own, by things like playing, reading and imagining, is a valuable life lesson.
6. Finding Passion: Many people struggle with finding their passion. Helping a child find what he or she is passionate about by allowing them to try a bunch of different things can help them find a source of lifelong internal happiness and motivation. Encourage the adventure, but let children decide on their own, where they find passion.
7. Asking questions: Teaching children that asking questions is a good thing, can encourage their curiosity and help them continue to seek knowledge in different aspects of life.
8. Solving problems: Constantly solving a child’s problems for them won’t help them as they grow. They need to know that they can solve problems on their own. New skills, a new environment, a new job – they’re all just problems to be solved. Modeling problem solving and allowing children to come up with their solution ideas can help them develop confidence and let them know that whatever comes their way, they are capable of handling it.
So your kid wants to write books? Great! All they need to do now is spend months hunched over their Fisher Price desk refining a book proposal; find a literary agent; wait for the lit agent to find a publisher; go through a million rounds of edits; fight about the cover design; and then, finally go to print. They’re number 4,453,632 on Amazon’s bestseller list! Hurrah!
More childhood experts are advocating less coddling and more freedom for kids to explore, problem solve and create their own play - even if it means bruises.
After the birth of my daughter, FaceTime conversations with my mother or my mother-in-law usually consist of a lot of cooing. “How’s my little princess doing today?” one of them will ask my five-month-old. “She looks like such a beautiful doll today,” the other will say. After ending a recent call, my husband came up to me and asked if we could please tell the grandmothers to stop referring to our daughter as a princess or a doll. “All dolls and princesses have to do is sit and look pretty,” he said. “Is that the kind of message you want her to grow up with?”
Yes, it was an extreme punishment from the beginning. However, the boundaries between extreme punishment and child discipline can be blurry for some people. Perhaps, before barraging blames to the accused parents, it is time to remind ourselves again of the unseen repercussions of child discipline so to prevent such incident from recurring.
Leaving the baby stage is bittersweet. Gone are the newborn snuggles, the new baby smell, the squishy baby cheeks, the itsy bitsy outfits and the adorable milestones. But as you leave this precious stage behind, you also enter a new one – and boy, it is a doozy!
You don’t find school reformers talking much about how we need to train more teachers in the arts, given the current obsession with science, math, technology and engineering (STEM), but here’s a list of skills that young people learn from studying the arts. They serve as a reminder that the arts — while important to study for their intrinsic value — also promote skills seen as important in academic and life success...
Biles, a 19-year-old gymnast for Team U.S.A., is already the most decorated gold medalist in world championship gymnastics history. In Rio, she is on the fast track to becoming the best in the world, again, being an odds-on favorite to bring home as many as five gold medals.
Today, we see increasing number of children with autism. So what is it that we need to know about it?
Every single day, babies across the world are born prematurely, which means that they're born before 37 weeks of gestation. Red Méthot, a Canadian photographer and student, decided to capture the resilience of many of these kids for a school photography project
In a day, there can be a number of instances when you end up yelling at your kids despite trying hard not to do so. You see your daughter sketching the walls and despite your repeated urges, she continues the act eventually stopping once you raise your voice. Your son is busy with his play-station and is least interested in doing his school assignment. How do you make him do that? Well, there is no other option other than yelling. Many parents adopt this strategy as they feel it's the best way to bring them under control.
To mark the end of Nutrition Month, stories on the importance of healthy eating habits and taking care of one’s body were the focus of Saturday morning’s Inquirer Read-Along session held at the newspaper’s main office in Makati
If you're like most parents, you'll do just about anything you can to increase the odds that your kids will be successful.
So, what if I were to tell you there's a simple thing you can to do to make it more likely that they'll be successful in life -- specifically by increasing the likelihood that they'll learn to read other people, and even predict how they'll react?
Every kid deserves to know the fun that comes with going down a slide, and a team in Israel is trying to make that possible.
I have a secret. It is something I don’t really talk about, especially to other parents. If the topic ever comes up, I try my best to find ways to spin the situation to avoid judgmental glares. I downplay it and laugh it off. My secret: I still co-sleep with my 5-year-old daughter.
Research has found that the closer a child is to their father, the less likely they are to have behavioral problems in the future, Independent reports.
After examining data from parents of 10,440 children, the researchers found that fathers who were emotionally involved with their child and who felt confident in their role as a parent had kids who were 28% less likely to suffer behavioral problems.
The researchers concluded that the psychological and emotional aspects of fatherhood are more powerful in influencing child behavior—not the amount of time fathers help in childcare or domestic tasks.
One particularly strange feature of middle-class family life is the way we train our children to sleep. “Go to your room,” we tell even very young children, “and stay there all night.” We have invented elaborate techniques to support this supposedly essential aspect of child development, implementing them at great emotional cost to all parties involved. For the parents: agonizing decisions about when and whether to comfort a crying child, bleary-eyed squabbles about which parent takes a turn in the middle of the night.
Contrary to the belief that homeschooling produces anti-social outcasts, the truth is that some of the most high-achieving, well-adjusted students are poring over math problems at their kitchen table, not a desk in a classroom. According to leading pedagogical research, at-home instruction may just be the most relevant, responsible, and effective way to educate children in the 21st century.
Between school drop-offs and pickups, dance classes and hockey practices, it’s hard to imagine any parent has enough time to fit in an effective workout. But guess what? You can do it if you break up the exercises throughout the day...
His growing up, moving on, and leaving childhood behind as he reaches for all his full potential. It's wonderful and magical and bitter sweet
Pushing the envelope. Pushing boundaries. Pushing buttons. Here’s to children’s books that expand our assumptions of what a children’s book can be.
Frustrating, isn’t it? But take heart, because there are simple ways to get your children to listen to you. I’ve worked with thousands of children and teens, so I’ll share with you the 20 best tips I know. - See more at: https://www.familiesforlife.sg/discover-an-article/Pages/20-Simple-Ways-To-Get-Your-Children-To-Listen-To-You.aspx#sthash.yF9zXCZ1.dpuf
Toddlers are a unique species all of their own, complete with their own rules, commandments, and (a very flighty) moral code. Mothering a toddler is not for the faint of heart. One minute I feel like Mary Poppins, and the next minute I’m the chick from Game of Thrones — and frankly, neither are a good look for me.
Don’t stop reading aloud to your kids—even when they’re in their teens. It sounds weird and funny, but speech language therapist Anthony D. Koutsoftas, PhD., one of the speakers at “Beyond Borders,” the first convention by the Philippine Association of Speech Pathologists (PASP), insists it is one of the best ways to improve your child’s reading and language abilities.
Is clutter taking over your space? You can’t always take the “throw it out” approach to your belongings, but you can stash your stuff out of the way. We’ve found plenty of inspiration to motivate you to get organized (or at least appear that way). Check out these 17 ways to hide clutter in your home.
The interior ministry of Saudi Arabia has released a list of 50 such names, including ones that are affiliated with notions of royalty. Saudi Arabia certainly isn't the only country to ban "given" names, and plenty of other countries around the world limit the names parents can give to their children for any number of reasons.
Dr. Phil explains why he believes it’s so important for children to have relationships with extended family, such as grandparents.
When we laugh off behaviors and compare them to different stages, we minimize the needs of the individual child.
Preschool children expand their vocabulary and become more articulate at expressing their thoughts every day and if you do something more frequently in the very early years, it will help shape their character for years to come.
We see "kid friendly" on a snack food and we think it hits all the nutritional sweet spots: not too much sugar or trans fats or garbage-y preservatives. Alas, we cannot believe everything we read. Although God knows, we keep trying!
It doesn't help. Here's what to say instead.
Today’s kids are more worried than any kids in recent history. According to some long-term surveys of mental health literature, the average kid today is more anxious than people who were hospitalized for anxiety in the 1950s.