Parenting | My Youth

Sibling Rivalry in Multiples

Spending time with each child can be difficult, especially if you are a working parent. If you have twins or triplets, it can further complicate the issue of spending time with each child as an individual. Most people will tend to see twins or multiples, especially identical ones, as being a single unit and not individual children. It is, therefore, especially important that the parents treat each child as an individual, particularly within the multiples.

They may look and even sometimes act alike, but they are individuals. Though multiples do often have a stronger and unique bond that is different than many other siblings, there will still be rivalry, and it may even be compounded if the multiples are identical. They lose the individuality of being the only person to look a certain way; there will always be a mirror image without a mirror, which can mean they will need to work harder to stand out and define their own individuality from the group. Though they look alike, inside they are different and unique. One may be a social butterfly and the twin is a tomboy. Adapt your expectations and individual time to each child’s personality and skills.

This does not mean that you cannot take all your children to a movie together or out for dinner. Time as a family and together is also important in a healthy family. The good news is that the bond between twins or multiples is unique and often closer than other sibling relationships, so even if your family experiences the pangs of sibling rivalry while the children grow and learn who they are as individuals, they will likely still be close.

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: Parent, Sibling, Twin

The Single Working Mother and a Teenage Son

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If you’re in the situation of being a single mom with a teenage son, you’ve probably experienced some good times and some challenging times. Being responsible for financially supporting the family while raising a teenage son can be overwhelming. You want to be there for him and guide him through this important time of his life, but you are busy. LRG clothes, rap music and Nike sneakers may be some things you see and hear in the few minutes that you and your son spend together each day. It can be stressful to work all day to pay the bills and come home at night to cook and clean before doing it all again the next day.

The Challenges of the Single Mom

Single parenthood is never easy. It’s even that much harder when you’re under financial stress. You want to buy your son the LRG clothes and the rap CDs to see the joy on his face when he wears his favorite clothes and listens to music that moves him. You might put in those extra hours at work just to have the extra dollars to spend on your son.

Quality Time with Your Teenage Son

These are the years you won’t get back with your son. Before you know it, he will be off to college or in his own apartment with his own significant other. Make the most of each free moment. Get up 15 minutes earlier each day to have breakfast together. Make Sunday nights your family dinner night and chat away. Value each moment of free time you spend together.

Filed Under: Parenting, Working Parents Tagged With: Adolescence, Hip hop music, Nike

Your Child and Drug Addiction

The issue of drug addiction that countless parents all over the globe silently suffer from. But in this case, they are not the sufferers, their children are. For a parent that has a child that also doubles as a drug addict, that does not translate to the end of the world. There are things that can be done to help the child and eradicate the problem.

Before you even think of taking any move, be sure that your child knows the gravity of his or her condition. This is because when your ward or child takes responsibility, the therapy or help rendered is made more effective as the addict will be incorporated as an active participant and not a passive observer.

Once this has been done, the next step will be to seek for the necessary medical or psychological attention. This should only be done with trusted healthcare professionals and not quacks or riff raffs. In some extreme cases, your child may have to be admitted for proper rehabilitation and treatment, which may take a long time.

Irrespective of the length of time, you have to offer your support and encouragement to child at all times. Hurling abuses or curses at the child for being wayward and strong-headed will only worsen the situation. For parents that are not in this situation in the sense that they do not have heroin or coke addicts as children, that does not mean that nothing must be done. It is your job as a parent to educate your children on the dangers inherent in drug abuse. Let them express themselves; ask questions while you do all the explanations –in addition to watching out for bad friends as well.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Addiction, Substance abuse, Substance dependence

Working From Home

In a planet plagued with jobs and positions that do not pay well, it is the dream of many struggling parents all over the globe to work from the comfort of their bedrooms, earn mouth-watering bucks and be their own boss. The good thing is that this is the 21st century and stuffs like these are no longer figments of the imagination. It is possible and you can work from home.

Even though the Internet is good, you can work from home without Net although it will help a lot. You can set up a travel agency and use your apartment or residence as the office. Once you set up the ‘office’, your clients can transact and do business with you in the comfort of your room.

Still on home businesses, sewing is another fantastic option. Instead of coughing out the money that is not there to rent a shop, you can convert your porch into a sewing arena spewing out the latest designs and styles. To move at the speed of light and make unbelievable income, all you need is a computer connected to the Internet. While online, there are countless jobs that you can take up and do from your kitchen and make cool money. Such online businesses are becoming more widespread by the day and you can virtually snap up any at the moment you decide to do so.

However, before you can work online, you need to have a service to offer and clients that will buy them. Once you do that, working from home will cease to be a mirage in the desert –it will be reality, but always ensure that you treat your clients in the best of manners.

Filed Under: Parenting, Working Parents Tagged With: Business, Home Office, Telecommuting

Your Child and Money

In our modern world, one of the most serious problems that billions of humans have to combat with on a daily basis is that of poverty. Lack and want can be very distressing and frustrating, especially in extreme circumstances. Thus, many parents take the necessary moves to ensure that their offsprings do not fall victims of squalor in the future. They take measures to educate their children about money.

Although it may sound exotic, you can also inculcate it right under your own roof by teaching your kids about money. One of the most important lessons that you have to let your children adopt is knowing the value and worth of money. This is not done by splashing huge sums on fancy toys or electronics but by teaching them how to save money, set up their own enterprises, watch them grow and make profits in the process. This will also let them appreciate the importance of hard work and merit.

Apart from teaching them the importance of saving and investing, other things that you must let your children desist from is corruption and self-aggrandizement. History has shown that wealth accumulated in illegitimate ways ultimately bring shame and ridicule upon the individual. You can even draw their attention to the various events and political developments happening all over the globe and let them derive a lesson or two.

Furthermore, let them know the disadvantages of wasteful spending, flamboyance and extravagance. Instead, you can teach them about the boundless merits and benefits of cheerful giving and philanthropy. It must be stressed that as a responsible parent, it is your duty to teach them sound financial principles. This, amongst other things allow them prepare for a better future.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Child, Education, Money, Parent

When Your Child is Gifted

It is the dream and wish of every parent to have that perfect child, one that will always be a source of pride, joy and affection. Well, sometimes you even get more than a perfect child –you get a gifted one. A child born with gifts should not be confused with a talented child. The basic difference between the two is that a talented child has been able to hone his or her gifts to a level where it can be tangibly practised and appreciated.

When your child is gifted, it means that there is a special quality, trait or habit that stands him or her apart from the peers. Gifts can come in various modifications and forms. It can be skills in music, vocabulary (language), spelling, fine arts, singing, crafts, calculations, public speaking and so many others.

Once you observe that your child has an inherent gift or incredible skill for a particular activity, the first step that you have to do is to build up encouragement in the young offspring. This is even more important in a society where gifted or talented individuals are not appreciated. Yon need to infuse your child with confidence and belief in himself or herself irrespective of the reception by the society.

Apart from building up confidence in your child, it is also important that you find a coach or tutor for the special gift that your child has been blessed with. The reasons for these are numerous. In the absence of practice and regular training, a child may lose the gift or special skill. However, with a special coach or teacher, the gift will be developed to the highest level possible, as a saying goes, practice makes perfect. The concentration and focus derived from regular training will be immense benefit to the child. If there are competitions, tournaments or quizzes, ensure that your gifted child is registered.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Gift, Gifted education, Intellectual giftedness

Single Parents and Kids

The job of parenting is a tedious one and those that engage in it will eagerly agree to this submission. The same thing applies even when there is a father and a mother. Thus, you can picture the scenario in which there is a single parent that has to cater for the kids. One may be a single parent for many reasons, and some of these reasons include the demise of the other partner, divorce and some weird individuals decide to be single parents out of their own volition.

Irrespective of the reasons behind your own case of single parenthood, one thing that you can be sure of is the fact that you will also experience the rigor of parenthood. But luckily enough, there are measures that have been put in place to make life easier.

If you are a single mom and you also have a career in the office, you can simplify your program by securing the services of a nurse or day care owners to take care of your kids while you eke out a living. In a situation where you have neighbors that can do this for you, that will be great. But, it is important for you to carve out some time out of your very busy schedule and spend with them. Staying closer to your children instead of leaving everything to the nannies will help you know more of your children’s needs thus allowing you to attend promptly to them.

A single parent has to have a strong and positive character in order to cope with the numerous challenges of life, especially in relation to parenthood. You also have to possess patience, tact and perseverance while raising those kids.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Day care, Family, parents, Single-parent

Coping With Teenagers

As a parent, one of the most troublesome and stressful jobs that you can take is to raise your own children. Over the years, you bring them up in the best of manners and cater for them to the best of your ability. However, when the children are in their teenage years, you have another set of challenges to face. Teenagers are not easy to deal with, and this is true even if they are your offsprings.

What makes living with teenagers strenuous is the fact that they feel they are grown and try to assert their newly-found ‘independence’. This they do in various styles and forms. Some may decide to stop eating a meal they have been consuming for years while some of others take the more radical route of defiance.

As a parent, it is tempting to get angry and blow hot. However, this only complicates the whole issue. To cope and live harmoniously with your teenage children, you need to see the world from their own perspective. You will agree that the way a man in his 40s will look at the world will be vastly different from the way his daughter of fifteen would. Thus, it is important that you understand their pattern of thinking instead of asserting your authority angrily at every opportunity. You need to listen to them, reason with them and converse with them.

However, in as much as you may want to strike up a nice rapport, that does not mean that you have to give them too much latitude. You need to rein them in and even discipline them when necessary. Thus, it is all about balance and equilibrium. You have to give them space when needed or confined in a corner, it all depends on their circumstances. But, irrespective of the decision you make, it is important that you listen to their voices as well.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Adolescence, Child, Family, Parent

The Family Constellation

According to Dr. Adler’s theory on Human Social Development, the order our children are born in is one of the factors that affects our children’s growth and development. Dr. Adler attributes personality and development to five roots that impact us in our growing years. These roots are: health and appearance; socioeconomic position of the family; parental attitudes; gender role; and of course the family constellation (his term referring to birth order).

The oldest child tends to be the most responsible, because they are usually involved in helping take care of their younger siblings. Middle children receive the least attention, making them tend to have a “whatever” attitude towards many things in life. The smallest child in the family is always and forever the baby and tends to be spoiled.

We need to take these “norms” into account when we are raising our children, and especially in our expectations of our children. It isn’t realistic to expect the family’s baby, who has always had others to do things for her, to be as responsible as her oldest sister, who has taken care of her. Nor is it realistic to expect the middle child to take the same interest in family activities as the baby will.

All the same, by being aware of these tendencies we can both work to control them and utilize them to benefit our families. The utilizing these tendencies is the easy part and in fact will pretty much happen all by itself. On the other hand, trying to bring balance into our children’s lives and not allow these tendencies to get out of hand can be extremely challenging, requiring contestant diligence on our parts.

Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t try to eliminate these natural tendencies, they are part of our children’s lives, whether we want them to be or not. At the same time, we don’t want to mistreat a child, be it only verbally, by not appreciating them for who they are.

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: BirthOrder, Child, Family

Parents Can Save Plenty

Some people have this sadly mistaken notion that only single people who do not have kids can possibly save significant amounts of money. A lot of parents have been pushed near the edge of financial insolvency, through job losses, wage freezes and rising interest rates on mortgages which were marketed in shady ways to people who just did not know any better. Even if you are not being paid like a rock star or an executive, and even if you have not seen a raise since Bush administration (either of them), you can still save your money if you put your mind to it. Of course, it will take some effort, but most worthwhile things are a little tough. Are you tough enough to handle them?

First off, how are your home and auto loans doing? A lot of people got their loans back when rates were higher. If you recall, a few years ago it just about took divine intervention to get any kind of loan, even if your credit was top notch. If you do have good credit, a mortgage refinance and a car refinance may be just the one-two combo you need to get back in the ring and start going on the offense for a change. Nobody likes being backed into a corner — so take the fight to the future, and keep what you work so hard to earn.

Another way you can save some money is through the use of coupons. Now granted, the generic stuff is usually cheaper if you just use the coupons like a newbie (or as the kids call it, a “noob”) would do. If you are patient enough to notice that particular items tend to go on sale at particular times (the pattern known as the sales cycle), you can save a bundle over time, especially when you combine these savings with the coupons you use. With patience, there is abundance.

Filed Under: Budget, Parenting Tagged With: Loan, Mortgage loan, Save