3 Reasons To Not Pay Kids For House Chores
by admin on Feb.13, 2012, under Positive Parenting
Paying your kids for helping around the house may seem reasonable at first glance, but think about it – you may get paid for your job, but do you get paid for all the laundry, cooking, cleaning and yard work you do? I don’t think so!
You do those things because you are part of the family. It’s part of keeping the family functioning.
If you’ve been paying kids for chores, here are the 3 reasons why you may want to reconsider that:
1. It sends the wrong message!
Here’s what Daniel Pink, author of The New York Times best seller, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, has to say about the subject:
“(Paying kids for chores) sends kids a clear (and clearly wrong) message: In the absence of a payment, no self-respecting child would willingly set the table, empty the garbage, or make her own bed. It converts a moral and familial obligation into just another commercial transaction and teaches that the only reason to do a less-than-desirable task for your family is in exchange for payment.”
Wow, that’s not the message we want to send! We want kids to contribute because they are important, capable members of our family and everyone has to contribute – toddlers to teens.
2. It fosters an attitude of entitlement.
When kids get paid to make basic contributions around the house, it reinforces that everything revolves around the child and that his personal needs are more important than the overall needs of the family.
Our goal is to foster an attitude of family teamwork. If you live in our house, then everyone contributes. When we pay kids to help out we undermine teamwork, and we contribute to the entitlement epidemic.
3. They’re always looking for a raise!
At first, your child may be motivated to do her family jobs for a quarter. In a few years, she’s demanding a dollar for the same jobs. Eventually, she has absolutely no interest no matter what you pay.
Don’t worry. You can still get kids to do their chores without paying them using much more effective Positive Parenting Solutions strategies.
We do want kids to learn the value of money and the importance of saving, giving charitably and wise spending. However, those important lessons can be taught with an allowance, which isn’t tied to chores.
How To Throw A Sleep Over Party
by admin on Dec.10, 2011, under Toys & Games
Has your child ever been invited to a sleepover party at a relative’s home? Everyone packs up all of their stuff and trucks along to someone’s house for a night of fun. Many kids may be scared or worried about staying the night in an unfamiliar environment, but the right girls slumber bag or boys sleeping bag can make all the difference. You want your kids to be comfortable away from home and feel a sense of safety and security. Just like children sleep with a stuffed animal, their custom made boys sleeping bags or girls slumber bags can make them feel like a little piece of home is with them. If planning a sleepover for your child, you should take into consideration purchasing one of these.
Finding the perfect custom made boys sleeping bags or girls slumber bags doesn’t have to a difficult process especially with so many designs, sizes and options available today. Once your child is all set with a custom made great boys sleeping bags or girls slumber bags and has a great time staying over friend’s houses, they will be begging you to have an overnight party of their own.
The following are some great tips and suggestions for throwing a sleepover party at dusk that your little one and all their friends will never forget!
1. One of the most important things to remember is to give yourself enough time to prepare. Preparation is key to having a successful event and happy children. You should try and plan out the menu far in advance that way you aren’t scrambling around the day before trying to order or prepare food. Some great suggestions are pizza, pasta, hotdogs, hamburgers or Chinese food. Kids love anything messy and greasy. Also, sweets, cakes and candy are an integral part as well. Popcorn for movie time is also a must. Just make sure everyone is careful not to spill on the custom made girls slumber bags or the boys sleeping bags.
2. Set the date and time of arrival and departure. Let the parents know the details for the evening and be sure to ask parents about food allergies. Contact numbers for parents should be available just in case someone wants to go home early or becomes ill. Also, detailed and directions in the invitation also help prevent people getting lost and being late.
3. Supervision is a must. You are responsible for many kids that will need to be watched and cared for like your own.
4. You should plan a full itinerary for the evening. This prevents any choruses of “I’m bored” from starting. One fun thing is staying up late watching movies. Pull a couple out beforehand and then let them select the one they would like to watch. Craft activities are also a blast, just make sure there is adult supervision as some could be dangerous or particularly messy. Board games are a good activity as well. Twister is always a favorite at gatherings and requires skill and balance while trying not to laugh at the humorous positions people get twisted into. Once it’s lights out, little ones can tell stories or read them to another. Make a no scary story rule and you will prevent crying and a bunch of frightened ones hiding in custom made boys sleeping bags or girls slumber bags.
Are Chiropractic Services Safe For Kids?
by admin on Nov.12, 2011, under Chiropractic care
Absolutely. A child of any age is safe in the capable hands of a well-trained chiropractor. Most practitioners actually recommend a spinal adjustment for infants shortly following childbirth, as many childhood diseases and abnormalities stem from the stressful and traumatic experience of being pushed and pulled through the birth canal. These disk displacements, though they seem trivial, actually have major effects on the child’s development and health. Consider this real-life example:
A 5-year-old boy had a condition which left him with no control over his bowels. His doctors were baffled because his digestive system was working perfectly and yet he frequently soiled himself at school and in public because he couldn’t feel the need to go to the bathroom. As a last effort, his parents sought the help of a chiropractor, who, during the first adjustment, realigned a seriously misplaced vertebrae just above his tailbone. Later that day, while walking around at the local mall, the little boy looked up to his mother with a look of confusion and concern. He expressed that he felt pressure in his bottom, and wasn’t sure what it was or what to do about it. Immediately, his mother took him to the bathroom, where he made his first controlled bowel movement. The chiropractor and pediatrician concluded together that the vertebrae must have been displaced during childbirth, pinching the nearby nerves and cutting off the senses that signal the urge to defecate. Since nothing appeared to be wrong externally, the child’s parents, through no fault of their own, failed to realize that it was a neurological gap in communication.
Cases like these are not uncommon, especially with the adventurous nature of the subjects at hand. Many kids don’t report back and neck injuries to their parents because they don’t want to confess to whatever mischief led to the injury. Regular chiropractic care is highly recommended for children of all ages to help prevent pain and disorders later in life.
Start Early, Aim High
by admin on Sep.13, 2011, under Early Childhood Education, Kids Learning
Igniting the fire for a love of learning is something every parent hopes to accomplish and a task best completed long before a child reaches kindergarten. But, it takes a village, and it’s time to assess who is in yours.
Summer break is over this month for millions of American students heading back to classrooms to continue learning skills that will prepare them for the future. For centuries in the African-American community, we have promulgated the importance – more accurately the necessity – of education, believing that obtaining one will lead to future success. True, but only if we start early enough to aim high.
Statistics show that early childhood education is arguably a tool that determines if a child is going to have academic success, mediocrity or failure in grades K-12 and, by extension, on into their undergraduate experience.
At its core, early childhood education is about children receiving exposure to directed language acquisition, critical thinking, literacy and mathematical skills during the oh-so-important preschool developmental stage. But, america’s public education system is, at its point, ill-equipped to provide the level of government support that low-income families need to ensure that every child is walking into kindergarten prepared. The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), which conducted one of the most comprehensive early education strides, reported that the economic recession exacerbated america’s woes. Total state funding for pre-K decreased by nearly $30 million if not for money provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Several cultural and economic realities ensure very early on that poor children will receive far less stimuli that prepare them for school. Research tells us that 3-year-old children typically have a vocabulary of 1,000 to 5,000 words and they may recognize and process more than that through learning. Children coming from privileged homes or families with parents in professional careers, often have a more extensive vocabulary – more than 15 thousand words by kindergarten. Enrollment in structured early childhood programs versus a babysitting environment can help compensate for any lack of exposure.
“The propensity of our technologically savvy society is to spend time texting and talking on phones rather than engaging in face-to-face exchanges. The lack of verbal skills, written skills and problem-solving skills tends to start early and persists through adolescence.” Early childhood education provides an opportunity for children to be in literary-rich environments and to have someone scaffold their approaches to their thinking and processing skills. It provides platforms for socialization, molding good citizenship and an early sense of social justice. Literacy is transformative.
Teens Bulimia: Parents Involvement Is Crucial For Treatment
by admin on Aug.02, 2011, under Kids Health
Mobilizing parents to help an adolescent overcome bulimia nervosa can double the percentage of teens who are able to abstain from binge eating and purging after 6 months, according to the first randomized, controlled study of bulimia in teens to be completed in the United States. The study was published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
Researchers fro university of Chicago Medical Center showed that almost 40% of participants in family-based treatment had stopped binging and purging, compared with only 18% of those who received supportive psychotherapy (which focuses on issues underlying the eating disorder), the standard therapy. 6 months after medical treatment, almost 30% of participants who received family-based treatment were still abstinent, compared with only 10% of participants who received supportive psychotherapy.
“Parents are in a unique position to help their adolescents,” says study author Daniel Le Grange, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and director of Eating Disorder Program at the University of Chicago. “Yet treatment typically excludes them from the process. Now we have the evidence that we need to bring parents back in.”
The study involved 80 adolescents, ages 12 to 19, with a diagnosis of bulimia neurosa (typically characterized by binge eating and purging) or a strict definition of partial bulimia neurosa. 41 patients were randomly assigned to family-based treatment and 39 patients were randomly assigned to supportive psychotherapy. Patients from each group made 20 visits to the clinic over a 6-month period.
In a family-based treatment, parents, and at times even siblings, attend clinic sessions with the patient. Parents play an active follow-up role at home, encouraging their adolescents to eat as normally as possible, then monitoring them during and after the meals to make sure they eat and are not tempted to purge.
“For years parents have been left out of the treatment process,” Le Grange saya, noting that they often feel guilty about intervening. “But what parent would step aside and play a minimal role in treatment if their child was diagnosed with cancer? Nor should they if a child has an eating disorder. Eating disorders pose serious health problems and health hazards.”
Although the family-based approach produced superior results, the medical research team is uncertain whether it was the family involvement or the focus on eating behavior found in family-based treatment that was responsible for the improved outcomes.
“We still have work to do on understanding and treating eating disorders,” Le Grange says. “While we are happy for how well this approach has done, obviously abstinence rates between 30% to 40% leave considerable room for improvement.”
