Category Archives: Parenting

Manage Kids’ Media Use

Posted on by
1

kids and computers

The American Academy of Pediatrics just made a new statement on kids and media. Here is a review of what they had to say.

Tips for Parents on Making a Family Media Use Plan:

Make a media use plan for your family.  

  • Write rules down,
  • Check quantity and quality of media, take a look at the location of your tvs, phones, and computers including tablets.
  • Location- no screens in kids bedrooms and have a “media curfew”. Have a control center where all electronics get plugged in a night.
  • Excessive media use has been associated with obesity, lack of sleep, school problems, aggression and other behavior issues. Entertainment screen time should be no longer than 2 hours a day.
  • No screen time for children under 2 years of age.
  • Co-viewing programs with your kids and discussing values , look for educational media choices.
  • The Internet can also be a place where kids can run into trouble, keep the computer in a public part of your home.

Discuss the Internet Rules:

  • Discuss “digital footprint” with your children. Let them know that where they go on the internet can be remembered…nothing they do online is a secret.

Discuss Social Media:

  • Become familiar with popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram get your own accounts.
  • By “friending” your kids, you can monitor their online presence. Pre-teens should not have accounts on social media sites.
  • If you have young children, you can create accounts on sites that are designed specifically for kids their age.

Cyberbullying:

  • Good “digital citizens”, discuss the serious consequences of online bullying.
  • If your child is the victim of cyberbullying, it is important to take action with the other parents and the school if appropriate.
  • Attend to children’s and teens’ mental health needs promptly if they are being bullied online, and consider separating them from the social media platforms where bullying occurs.
  • Sexting of any kind is not appropriate and remember the internet is NOT private.
  • Check out a sample “Media Time Family Pledge” for online media use.

How do you monitor your kids’ screen time?

Additional Information:

via Doctors’ Rx: Make a plan to manage kids’ media use.

NICU: Then & Now, Children & Intense Emotions

Posted on by
1
IMG_6908

“Tree of Life”

NICU: Then & Now.

The March of Dimes Facebook page catches up with NICU babies in “Then and Now”. This past week, we celebrated National Prematurity Day…not too many years ago these fragile premature babies would not have survived. Here’s to all those that have made these miracle possible!

Helping children when they bite, hit and push – Genevieve Simperingham.

Biting and hitting can really pose a parenting challenge. There are so many reasons that a child resorts to this unpleasant behavior. For me, the most important way to manage behavior problems is through empathy. Empathy for your child and empathy for the victim of your child’s biting and hitting will guide your responses and help make them appropriate. Take a deep cleansing breath to retrieve your empathy and then respond quickly by removing your child from the situation and making sure the other child is okay. Show your child understanding with a sense of calmness, while he is acting this way… and then help him to express his anger and frustration in a more acceptable manner. Gradually, he will find other ways to express his frustrations and anger that do not involve lashing out and biting.

I Have a Daughter With Intense Emotions | Peaceful Parents, Confident Kids.

Keeping with the theme of children and their emotions…here is another post about how to “deal’ with children, who have intense feelings. It is a personal story, to which many of us can relate. Again, “empathy” plays a key role, I hope you visit this story…it is a sweet and endearing one.

Once again…have a wonderful weekend.

 

Weekend Review: Fallen Soldier’s Final Flight…Party Politics…Fall Back

Posted on by
Reply

Time change can wreak havoc with children’s sleep schedules. Sleepy Planet’s Jill and Jen have some suggestions to help navigate this challenge.

This weekend, it’s time to move clocks back one hour. This is the time change that we loved in college, but we hate as parents – especially if you’ve got young children who are already early risers. Whipping up breakfast at 4:30 a.m. is not exactly a solution. Armed with a game plan and a little patience, though, your child should adjust to the new time change after three or four days.

via sleepyplanet.com.

 

Party Politics is a right of passage…why should a child’s birthday create such crazy chaos? I have very strong feeling about the “birthday party dilemmas” and have done several posts about alternatives to huge celebrations with tons of presents and horribly  put together “goody” crappy bags.

 

Today begins November…we celebrate Veterans Day this month.

This is how a “fallen” soldier is welcomed home to Los Angeles. It is touching.

Water canon salute brings tears to passengers’ eyes, as tears of water run down the windowpanes.

A few minutes after touchdown, we did indeed have a water canon salute, which I’d previously only experienced on happy occasions like inaugural flights. This time, the water glistening on the windowpanes looked like tears.

 

via Flight turns unforgettable when passengers learn of fallen soldier – Yahoo Travel.

 

“Halloween Haul”-What to do with the Candy

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Halloween!!!

Halloween

The Switch Witch- what to do with hallowe’en candy

I wish the “Switch Witch” had been around when my kids were little.

 Halloween in the Neighborhood

As Hallowe’en approaches there is always the dilemma of  what to do with all the candy. Well, here is what I am going to do this year with my granddaughter’s haul complete with a “fairy  witch’s tale”.

The ‘Switch Witch’ is a nice way to “get rid” of the “Hallowe’en Haul”.

  • Your child picks some candy to eat on Hallowe’en night.
  • He then lays out the rest for the Switch Witch before he goes to bed.
  • The Switch Witch makes rounds takes the candy and leave a surprise!

What a great way to deal with the Halloween dilemma!

Any suggestions as to what the “Switch Witch” should do with the candy?

halloween 2015

 

 

Related: Meet the Tooth Fairy’s Sister

Teen Punished by North Andover MA High School For Giving Drunken Pal Ride Home

Posted on by
1

 2006-09-10 - United Kingdom - England - London - Trafalgar Square - Sign - Cutout - Yellow - Caution Teenagers

Teenagers and Alcohol  is a post I wrote a while back but it seems appropriate to share it again after what I read and saw on today’s television news.

via North Andover High Punishes Teen For Giving Drunken Pal Ride Home From Party « CBS Boston.

Today in the news a teenage athlete answered a call from her girlfriend, who asked her to pick her up from a party because she was drunk and needed a ride home. For this gesture the young athlete was punished by her school stating that she had violated the school’s “zero tolerance” policy.

I have many opinions about drinking teens. I am not in favor of alcohol at parties and underage drinking but I am also not in favor of zero tolerance policies that are misguided and enforced in such a way that they penalize a student for helping her friend get home safely.

Let’s try and teach something here…use this as a chance to address the very serious problem of underage alcohol abuse in high school and college.

It is not all about punishment, it is about education and the responsibility of parents, and schools to make kids aware of the consequences of drinking, drinking to excess and of course driving while drunk.

It is about teaching them to engage parents when faced with caring for friends who are drunk rather than bearing all the burden themselves.

I encourage you to voice your thoughts to the principal at North Andover High…an email longleyj@northandover.k12.ma.us was left in the comment section of the article posted

 

 

Toddler’s Tantrums, Creative Children, Smarter than Adults

Posted on by
Reply

Parenting in the Loop Facebook

Janet Lansbury offers many insights into how to take care of your babies and children. She    is a follower of Magda Gerber and her RIE philosophy.

Here are some of my favorite posts from Janet, that recently came across my feed. I hope you enjoy them and realize that as a parent and grandparent you have an awesome responsibility and a wonderful one as you involve yourself in caring for your babies.

“Take the mobile off the bed, take care of their needs, and leave them alone.” This odd sentence was my introduction to Magda Gerberand the child care philosophy that would become my passion. I had given birth a few months before reading this quotation, the only one by Gerber, in an article in L.A. Parent magazine about raising a creative child.

via Magda Gerber and the Creative Child | Janet Lansbury.

Babies and children are always fascinating and sometimes frustrating to me. As a former maternal child nurse, I feel privileged to have been one of the first people to have held some newborns. I always felt that the birth of another little being was a blessing and a miracle. I think I always knew that something special had just happened when a baby was delivered.

GENERATIONS of psychologists and philosophers have believed that babies and young children were basically defective adults — irrational, egocentric and unable to think logically. The philosopher John Locke saw a baby’s mind as a blank slate, and the psychologist William James thought they lived in a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” Even today, a cursory look at babies and young children leads many to conclude that there is not much going on.

New studies, however, demonstrate that babies and very young children know, observe, explore, imagine and learn more than we would ever have thought possible. In some ways, they are smarter than adults.

via Op-Ed Contributor – Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think – NYTimes.com.

 

Temper tantrums can be very perplexing to parents. This anecdote might help explain how RIE understands the mechanisms of toddler tantrums.

Young children are self-healing geniuses, have you noticed? Sometimes their tantrums are an expression of immediate discomforts like fatigue or hunger. Other times, however, they have a backlog of internalized feelings and will seem to deliberately and (seemingly) unreasonably push our limits so that we will hold steady and resist, which then opens up the escape valve they need to release these emotions. But this process can only work for them when we are able to set and hold limits and bravely accept their feelings.

via The Healing Power of a Toddler’s Tantrum | Janet Lansbury.

A WIC Shutdown: Here is Where You Can Get Baby Formula

Posted on by
Reply

Bottle Feeding

We all know that the government shutdown has caused problems for those parents receiving formula and baby food from WIC.

Jessica Lawson, the feminist mom has compiled a list by state of where to get WIC aid. It is not a complete list but it is a good resource for those in need.

Lisa Belkin published this information on Huffington Post earlier today.

I hope it is helpful!

Where To Find Formula And Baby Food During A WIC Shutdown.

Bedtime Rituals for Kids

Posted on by
Reply

Madeline

I sort of love rituals…it makes me feel somewhat secure to know that I do a certain thing  almost all the time and that some things are therefore predictable.

In the morning, my ritual is a cup of coffee, I am not the same person if I skip this ritual.

Orange juice at breakfast has also been a ritual for me since childhood as has been breakfast. My grandmother was a firm believer in breakfast. She made it every morning, whether we wanted it or not.

My morning ritual of coffee and breakfast is comforting and I rarely change it, I almost never skip breakfast of some sort and I never skip my coffee.

For children, rituals are also comforting and help to settle them when life hands them a chaotic moment.

A kiss from us when they fall down or a hug from us when they are crying is something that they rely on for comfort.

Bedtime rituals provide comfort at the end of a busy day. It can be very calming for a child to have us join in their bedtime routine of a bath, quiet time and reading. It is a time to help them settle down and quiet themselves. It can also be a time for us to talk with them about whatever is going on in their little heads.

The bedtime ritual of reading with my grandchild is one that I cherish.  Children’s books are wonderful and they generate such an opportunity to interact, whether it is about school, play, friends, or family. Even fairy tales have lessons to teach. The classics like Madeline and Winnie the Pooh bring back so many memories.

Life can feel so frenzied…it bothers me to see little ones lose out on story time before going off to sleep…it is a ritual that just might stay with them long into adulthood. Reading before bed can be relaxing and a way to self soothe as they did when as infants they watched their mobiles in their cribs. Soothing music goes well with bedtime too.

Honestly, after reading and music listening, I am ready for bed myself but many nights my computer beckons me to finish the business at hand. On those nights when “home” work has to get done…I feel robbed…just as I would if I did not have my coffee waiting for me in the morning.

What are some of your favorites to read with your children?

 

 

The benefits of parents reading to children are numerous, everything from stimulating a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development, to exposing them to language and storytelling, Zuckerman said. Bedtime stories also provide a special opportunity for parents and kids to interact, and create a “quieting tradition” as the child gets ready to go to sleep, he added.“Most family rituals – from families eating together to doing a variety of activities together – are declining because adults are busy and because everyone is on their machines,” Zuckerman said.

via Sweet dreams, bedtime story? Many parents skip nightly ritual – TODAY.com.

Life and the “Invisible String”

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_5594

Every Thursday I read a post on my FB page from Eric, who is Jessie Rees’ dad. He writes  a post to Jessie, his little girl who died from an aggressive cancerous brain tumor.

I began following Jessie’s story before her death and marveled at the strength and determination of this little girl, who was fighting cancer. Jessie Rees Foundation

Today, I also read part of “Donna’s Cancer Story” written by her mom. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and her mom remembers Donna by posting her story each year during September.

Her “Family Portrait” post really resonated with me as a nurse, who many years ago took care of children and families going through such crises. Donna’s Cancer Story: Family Portrait | Mary Tyler Mom.

Another mom that I am know through blogging lost her son, Henry to a drug overdose when he was just a teenager.

It is a sad story and though addiction is not “cancer”, in my opinion, it is a type of “cancer” that can go into remission but it lurks always in the background just waiting for a moment of weakness or crisis to rear its ugly head. It preys on children. Henry’s Fund.

In 2010, I lost my teenage son, Henry to drug overdose. In celebration of his life and legacy, my sister Betsy and I founded Henry’s Fund, a non-profit organization that provides grants to pay the direct costs of high quality treatment and aftercare for young drug addicts between the ages of 12 and 23.

via About the Blogger – Big Good Thing.

This morning, my friend Jessica, (Momma’s Gone City) talks about visiting her sponsored child in Guatemala. It made me think about how small the world is and how we as mothers are somehow all connected by life and its challenges.

First, I want to thank all of these “friends” who share their lives with me through social media. I appreciate their words and the way they share their feelings. I feel somehow connected by an “invisible string” of humanity to each one of them.

September is “Childhood Cancer Awareness Month” and it is my hope that someday we will be able to conquer this disease but for now we can at least help by supporting their fight any way we can.

Every September, America renews our commitment to curing childhood cancer and offers our support to the brave young people who are fighting this disease. Thousands are diagnosed with pediatric cancer each year, and it remains the leading cause of death by disease for American children under 15. For those children and their families, and in memory of every young person lost to cancer, we unite behind improved treatment, advanced research, and brighter futures for young people everywhere.http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/presidential-proclamation-national-childhood-cancer-awareness-month-2013