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Tips for Working Parents of School-Age Kids

July 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

DALLAS - JUNE 15: Khalid Johnson, age 8, asks...

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It can be challenging for working parents to balance career obligations with spending quality time with their kids. Working parents may also have concerns about their children’s safety if the kids must be home alone when they come home from school.

There are things you can do to help streamline yours and your children’s routines as well as ensure their security when you are not there.

One simple tip is to require your kids to call you at work once they get home from school. You should teach your children not to give out personal information to strangers over the phone.

It’s a good idea to have a family policy with respect to having friends over — especially important for parents of tweens and teens! For children of all ages, talk to them about what they should do if someone stops by unannounced. If you hire a sitter, be sure they know what the rules are for your household.

In order to keep your home running smoothly, try having a family meeting each week. Tasks that can be completed in a family meeting include meal planning, assigning chores and resolving any issues that may have arisen during the previous week. You can also set time for the family to relax by having a movie night with popcorn and www.direct.tv movies and shows.

Many of today’s busy families have calendars that are chock-full of activities. If you are a working parent whose job limits the amount of time spent with your kids, be wary of overscheduling the kids. It’s important for kids to be involved in extracurricular activities, but be sure that some unscheduled time is set aside for you all to spend time together as a family.

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Single Parents and Kids

March 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

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: , , ,

Coping With Teenagers

March 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

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.

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The Family Constellation

February 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

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.

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Make the Most of Your Time Together

February 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A generation ago, it was common that mom stayed at home, so she was there to hold the family together. Now, with both parents working outside the home in most cases families face a new challenge, that of having enough time together as a family in order to keep the family together as a family. It takes special effort to insure that everyone stays connected together.

One of the things that are required to make this work is an understanding of just how important your family is. Millions of children across the country are suffering because of the disintegration of the family. I’m not talking about single parent homes, I’m talking about homes where everyone lives under the same roof, but is so busy that their interaction with each other consists of the absolute minimum level of communication.

Faced with this problem what most families need to do is re-evaluate their priorities, and eliminate activities that don’t benefit the family as a whole. Friday night bowling league isn’t as important as your family, so might need to be sacrificed in order to do some activity together.

Sitting in front of the television doesn’t qualify as time together, either. Television has to be the loneliest activity known to mankind. You can be in a room filled with people, all watching some mindless program on television and have as much interaction and communication as if you were sitting in the room all by yourself.

When scheduling pressures make time together minimal, that time must be well spent. Activities which require communication, participation and interaction are an essential part of the expressions of love which we all need to survive. Our children need to tell us about their day, play a game with mom and dad and even wrestle on the living room floor. That’s making good use of your time together. While those activities may not seem important to you as an adult; to your child, they are the glue that holds you all together.

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Readiness, Expectation and the Importance of Family Planning

January 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Having a family is a wonderful thing, but there is a lot more to it than simply having children and making sure they’re clothed and fed. Planning for a family is a process that begins even before the date of conception. If anything, family planning is as much a state of mental preparation as it is a state of financial and cognitive readiness.

If knowledge is power, the best kind of parents are those most able and equipped for the task at hand. Of course, parenting is more than what you read in textbooks, but that doesn’t mean the books don’t have important things to say.

When considering planning for your family, keep these things in mind.

Financial Stability

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, be sure of your financial situation. Assess your income, chart your expenses, and see if your budget can allow you to fund a child’s life. You want to be happy and you want your future family to be happy. Money doesn’t necessarily equal happiness, but solvency can put you in a place of comfort and preparedness.

Access Information

Plug yourself in to family planning resources. Websites like planningfamily.com are a good place to gather tips for every stage of the family planning process. Often times, websites like these and others will have coupons, suggestions, and advice from experts and people who have been in the same place as you. Conception, pregnancy and child raising doesn’t have to be a mystery.

Build a Support System

Connect with a supportive, real-life community. Many people find it easier to go through the family planning process with other people dealing with the same stages. Community organizations like family planning centers and young childhood groups, as well as online communities, are great resources for new and expecting parents.

Finally, relax and know that you’re not alone. Millions of people have been there before you, and millions will come after you, too. You’ll do great.

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Successful businessman and a great parent at the same time!

December 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Parenting and business are two acts of diverse nature but they both have a link between them. Parenting is a matter of intensive care and love which you give to your child. The period of a child from his/her early days till teenage is very important as child needs intense care and love. The act of parenting is like molding your child and you can mold your child in a positive or negative way. This totally depends on you! If you want your child to be a good human being in future, you need to give your child proper care, time and love.

Parenting is a tough thing and it becomes more difficult when you are busy in some hectic routine like business or any other work, which demands lot of your time. Most of the parents who are also engaged in business do not find much time for paying attention to their children as well. If you are a parent and a busy businessman at the same time then you don’t need to worry because we will provide you with some good suggestions here.

First of all, you need to know that parenting is an act that demands preference and priority for your children. You need to learn that your top preference should be your children and you must squeeze out some extra time for them. But how can you extract time from your hectic business routines? This is also simple; you can share the load of your business by hiring some staff that may help you to manage your business. This may cost some money but will give you advantage of having extra time for your children.

For sharing the load of your business, you may also take the services of some business management companies like Scottsdale Property Management. Such companies provide you with some precious and good business managing techniques which can help you in giving quality time to your children and family.

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How to Choose a Daycare For Your Child

December 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Millington, Tenn. (Jan. 14, 2005) - The Morale...
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Many families need two incomes in order to make ends meet, or have those little luxuries in life. When both parents work, children that are not old enough to go to school will need to go to a daycare. There are so many different types of daycares available, from large chain owned facilities to home daycares, and from organized school like schedules, to a relaxed baby-sitter type of environment.

Determine if you’d prefer your child to be in a home daycare, or a large facility. There are many pros and cons to each type of daycare setting, so you will want to choose the type of daycare that you like best for your family.

Determine Amount of Daycare Needed
Think about how long the child will need to be in daycare as this will affect the overall cost. Will you be working full-time or part-time? Will you need early morning care, or perhaps you work a bit later in the evening and need to have child care later than the average daycare hours.

Create or Update Budget
Sit down and prepare a budget if you do not already have one. You need to find out exactly how much money you have available to spend on daycare costs. Home daycares typically cost a lot less than larger daycare center.

Research Daycare Providers
Go online and search for home daycares and daycare centers near you or your work. Read their websites and find out their rates and hours of operation. Make sure they are licensed. Then narrow down your list to the ones that meet your needs ..

Interview Daycare Providers
Your final step is to visit your top choices. Ask lots of questions. Check out the cleanliness of the center and watch how the teachers interact with the children. Also pay attention to teacher/student ratios. Then, simply choose the place that fits all your needs and that you are most comfortable with sending your child to.

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Balancing Act

December 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Being a parent can be one of the most rewarding jobs, but it can also be one of the most difficult. It is easy to lose yourself, literally, in your new role. Your children and partner are important, but so are you. Losing yourself can lead to depression and a sense of dissatisfaction. This can be especially true if you go from working to being a stay at home parent. The transition can be difficult, even if you chose to do it. There are many ways to be a good partner and parent and still maintain your individuality and personal identity.

Schedule time with your partner. The relationship with a partner also changes when children come along, and nurturing the adult relationship is equally important. Quantity is not as important as quality. Date night is a popular choice for parents. Get a babysitter for a couple hours and go out to dinner, or even a walk in the park, just the two of you.

Spending time with friends or on a favorite hobby can help you maintain a sense of self. This can be done without a babysitter. Join a playgroup. This will help your child build social skills and make friends, but it also benefits the parents, who can have adult conversations with other people who have things in common.

When the baby is napping, instead of doing the dishes and laundry, take time for yourself. Take a long bath, read a book, work on your scrapbook, knitting, or anything that you enjoy. The dishes and laundry will still be there in an hour, but you will feel refreshed and more able to tackle all the work and cuddle or play with your child with more energy and enthusiasm if you have recharged and had some personal time.

The main point is that you are still an individual, with your own needs, and finding a balance between all your roles is important.

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