Archive for January, 2008
January 25, 2008 at 9:31 am
· Filed under Family, Healthy Lifestyle, Media & Marketing, Play, Popular culture ·Tagged children, media, obesity, online games, Play
As I read my daily papers, The Wall St. Journal and USA Today, I cut articles that might be of interest to Parental Wisdom members. There is a pattern emerging where experts are trying to figure out what is going wrong with kids today. Three recent articles shed some light are where they are headed:
• In the January 14th edition of USA Today an article entitled ‘A lifetime of danger in childhood obesity’ paints a bleak picture of the medical issues that could result in overweight children and then explain how parents can create a healthful environment.
• USA Today on January 15th tells us of a ‘new direction’ on the part of PBS to create an online subscription based education website aimed at 3 to 6 year-olds.
• The January 17th edition of the Wall St. Journal asks ‘what’s gotten into kids these days’ and wonders why three-year-olds are being expelled at such an alarming rate.
Finally during a Parental Wisdom tele-seminar held this week on peaceful parenting, a caller asked what she could do to calm down her five-year-old at school because the teacher said he wasn’t sitting still. The teacher suggested the mom consider signing the boy up for a soccer team. The mom is already stressed about just returning to work and trying to keep it all together. Just what she needs, another to-do added to her already over-scheduled to-do list.
The solution to these seemingly unrelated problems is easy. Lighten up and let kids play. I mean real play, not online play, or signing them up with teams at such a young age they spend more time in the field picking their noses rather than listening to yet another round of instructions from adults running their lives. Involve them in your lives and the work that you need to do. Relationship building isn’t forced.
• Talk to your children when food shopping about healthy choices
• Have dinner together every night (or as often as possible) and talk about your day
• Give children chores such as setting or clearing the table
• Shoot baskets – no team shirts needed
Behavior problems will disappear, healthy living and family fun will be a way of life.
Is it this easy? Try it and prove me wrong. I would love to hear back from you.
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January 22, 2008 at 8:27 am
· Filed under Media & Marketing, Parenting 101, Popular culture, Safety ·Tagged center for missing children, children, internet preditors, media, myspace, Safety
I was speaking with the mom of an eight-year-old girl. Her daughter wanted a friend to come over and the mom thought it would be a good idea to take the girls out to the park to play. The other mom’s response, “No, it isn’t safe.” The irony is that the 2nd girl has a TV in her bedroom with cable, a cell phone and a computer with Internet access. What that mom hasn’t realized is that she has opened the front door of her home to the entire unsupervised outside world.
Under pressure, MySpace.com announced that it will take further steps to protect children from adult content and possible predators on the site. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that MySpace agreed not only to third-party monitoring but also to working on age verification technology.
I was curious about how this works so I downloaded a white paper on this topic to learn more. If you’re interested visit IDologoy.
The bottom line as always parents, the best protection our children have is us in their lives.
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January 18, 2008 at 10:35 pm
· Filed under Empathy, Self Esteem, Teens ·Tagged respect, Teens
An article in The Patriot-News reminded me of a situation from a few years ago. We went to a movie theatre and just before the movie started, the door opened. The manager looked in, scanned the crowd and found a small group of adolescent kids who were eating popcorn and sipping soda, just like everyone else. The manager glared at them and yelled, “If you do anything, I’ll throw you out!”
They weren’t doing anything. I don’t know if some other incident happened earlier or another time, but at that moment, they were well-behaved.
I thought the manager was disrespectful and wondering how kids learn respect if they’re treated that way. Don’t get me wrong, there are adolescents and teens that behave badly, but stereotyping is wrong and unfair.
Let’s teach by example.
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January 12, 2008 at 9:25 pm
· Filed under Parenting 101, Play, Teens
I’m grateful that our son Michael has shared his interest in music with us. In addition to the obvious benefits of learning something new with your child, I realized we can all learn a lot from musicians.
Passion
It is never work if you love what you do. Musicians don’t call it practice, they call it play. The more you play, the better you get.
Respect
Musicians appreciate and respect each other’s work. They encourage solos in performing and always share creative ideas.
No discrimination of any kind
Watch a concert by Eric Clapton and you’ll see him performing with B.B. King and John Mayer; always giving guest performers the limelight. He proves that you can learn from those around you, young and old.
There is always a new song to sing
Music is infinite, and we all have something to offer, and a new way to play it. Finding ways to harmonize our uniqueness with the uniqueness of others can be very rewarding.
As we try to teach our children life lessons, these are lessons we can all benefit from.
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January 9, 2008 at 8:46 pm
· Filed under Parenting 101, Teens
Jane Hambleton of Fort Dodge, Iowa has dubbed herself “the meanest mom on the planet.” Despite her harsh personnel criticism, she has people cheering, and I’m one of them.
I would suspect that if you questioned educators, coaches, emergency room nurses, school counselors, and police officers they would stand up and cheer for the mom who put an ad in the paper and sold her 19-year-old son’s car after she found alcohol in
It appears that parents of teens choose a camp. They are either as President Ronald Regan suggests, from the ‘trust, but verify’ school of thought, or the ‘blissfully ignorant’ camp, or from that river in Egypt, ’selective denial.’
Under age drinking doesn’t make sense at all – period.
Jane Hambleton decided to be a parent at the sake of friendship. Kudos to you!
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January 3, 2008 at 10:01 pm
· Filed under Babies, Parenting 101, Popular culture
It is quite fashionable these days to have a baby. Better than a handbag or Chihuahua, babies are the new ‘it’ accessory.
Those of us who are professional parents (non-celebrities) always knew that. The difference is that when our babies become toddlers and eventually teens, we never loose interest in the fashion moment.
The next time a celebrity sits on Oprah’s couch and gushes about their baby, just be confident in the thought that your little star will always be shining even if your baby’s name doesn’t result in any Google hits.
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January 1, 2008 at 10:42 am
· Filed under About Parental Wisdom, Family, Time
The New Year gives us a gift – a new way of looking at things.
The stores that just weeks ago were overflowing with merchandise, are now clear of anything red or green, and now offer ways to better organize and clean.
More than anything, the New Year gives us a new outlook; some people set goals and objectives, others believe it is a waste of time. What we all should do is take a moment to think about all that we have and what we can be grateful for.
• The people in our lives
• Good health
• Opportunity
• Another year to build memories
Happy New Year, and wishing you a healthy, happy and memorable 2008!
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