There is an old saying regarding children: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Whoever coined this phrase didn’t know much about children. Children often do not “do as we say.” We are the role models regarding how our children learn to treat themselves and others. We are the role models regarding whether or not our children learn to take personal responsibility for themselves - physically, emotionally, financially, relationally, spiritually, and organizationally.

Do you avoid responsibility for your own feelings with substances, activities, or with shaming and blaming behavior toward yourself or others? Are you always late and is your desk a mess? Do you eat poorly and lack exercise? Are you always in major credit card debt? Do you lack a relationship with a spiritual source of love and guidance?

If you want your children to be on time, then you need to be on time. If you want your children to be healthy and fit, then you need to be healthy and fit. If you want your children to be honest, then you need to be honest. If you want to raise happy and peaceful children, then you need to role model how to be happy and peaceful. If you want your children to have high self-esteem, then you need to learn to treat yourself and them with kindness and caring. If you treat your children with caring and respect, but your children experience you shaming yourself and treating yourself as if your feelings and needs are not important, there is a good chance they will learn to disrespect themselves as well.

For example, Martin grew up in a family where both of his parents were high achievers and made tons of money. But his mother was a highly judgmental woman and his father was always unhappy and worried about something. Is it any surprise that Martin does well financially, yet is constantly judging himself and others and is often agitated over minor things?

Angie grew up with a mother who was totally devoted to her. In Angie’s mind, her mother was the ideal mother - kind, compassionate, and always ready to listen to Angie and help her with her problems. Her hardworking father was also a kind and caring person. Yet Angie has a hard time taking loving care of herself. She ignores responsibility for her own feelings, does not feed herself well, is often judgmental toward herself, and has a hard time getting things done. She is constantly seeking out a man to fill her up and make her feel worthy. How did this happen with such loving parents?

While Angie’s parents were loving to her, they were not loving to themselves. Angie’s mother used food to avoid her feelings, and was always giving herself up to please others. In addition, she could never quite get organized and was always late. Angie’s father spent his life working hard and using the TV to avoid his feelings. Neither of Angie’s parents role modeled personal responsibility for their physical and emotional health. Angie was shaped far more by how they treated themselves than how they treated her. In fact, because they treated her so lovingly and treated themselves so unlovingly, Angie grew up believing that it was others’ responsibility to love her and fill her, rather than her own responsibility. She grew up being needy and demanding, rather than personally responsible.

Do you want your children to be like you? As a parent, it is very important to take a look at what you are role modeling for your children - not only regarding how you treat others, but how you treat yourself. If there are certain values that you want your children to have when they grow up, they are far more likely to have your values if they deeply respect you. And they will not respect you if you do not treat yourself with respect. It is highly important, if you want your children to be happy, healthy, and personally responsible, to be a role model of happiness, health and personal responsibility.

margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone Sessions Available.

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With a very few notable exceptions, TV programming in the last decade… or three… has been relatively lame. Huh? You disagree? Let’s not forget “Supertrain,” or “Meet the Parents,” “Am I Hot,” “When Animals Attack,” or any of the brilliant sludge created and perpetrated by Fox.

But - ask any child of the 60’s about Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeannie, The Andy Griffith Show, or any of the dozens of other programs we were weaned on, and you’ll see an instant smile and wink of recognition.

Why doesn’t today’s TV programming bring out the best in us the way the classics do?

My belief? TV reflects the times, and those were far more innocent times. Much of it was before the Kennedy assasinations, all of it was before Watergate, and as a people, we still believed in fairy tales.

I know that may sound cynical to some, but TV now has a harsh, friendly and often mean edge to it, while TV-Land still celebrates an age of innocence that I think most of us might still yearn to return to. After all, what HONEST parent will admit to allowing their kids to watch anything in prime time any more?

vidbidness@gmail.com

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When a child wets the bed they worry. Children tend to become dry during the day more easily than at night. During the day they are awake and aware of their feelings and can go to the toilet normally. However, at night, when they are asleep, the usual feelings of a full bladder aren’t sufficiently strong to wake them. The result is a wet bed. Or, young children have to continue wearing diapers at night.

Fairly soon they realise this is not normal. They wonder why they don’t need a diaper during the day, but do need one at night. They might also talk to siblings or friends and discover that they don’t need a night-time diaper. This will only compound their worries.

Throughout childhood, your son or daughter is trying to establish their identity; they are trying to find out who they are. They also want to make sure they ‘fit in’, that they are just like everyone else and that they are not abnormal. As soon as they discover that wetting the bed is not usual, they worry.

Your child might not say they are worried, but they will be. What this means is that you need to do everything you can to reduce the potential for concern. That means treating the bed wetting occasions as normal, no trouble. Don’t make a big thing out of them. The more you make a fuss, the more the child thinks they are unusual, out of the ordinary. And when that happens, they are more likely to continue wetting the bed.

Also, it’s important not to punish the child. One survey found that 21% of all children who wet the bed are punished for doing so. But the child has no idea why the punishment is taking place. They are doing something natural - urinating - and they can’t connect the punishment to any crime. This can lead to all sorts of difficulties for the child, including social ones. Punishment is also counterproductive, lengthening the time it takes to achieve night time dryness.

Instead of punishment, children who wet the bed need support, guidance and encouragement. Positive reinforcement of the good times - when they have a dry night - is much more likely to succeed in the long term.

The problem for most parents is that the best methods of dealing with bed wetting also take a long time. The child also gets frustrated at the delay in achieving a dry night. That’s whey encouragement and a positive home and attitude are essential in helping children come to terms with the difficulties they face.

The more you talk about bed wetting and make them feel abnormal, the worse the situation will become. The more you treat each bed wetting incident as a normal everyday occurrence, the quicker the dry nights will arrive.

More hints and tips on dealing with bed wetting can be found at: http://www.bed-wetting-info.co.uk

graham@bed-wetting-info.co.uk

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Whenever parents discuss how to deal with bed wetting, the topic of alarms inevitably gets raised. Bed wetting alarms can be useful devices, but in spite of the popularity with which they get discussed, they should not really be considered a first line option. Bed wetting alarms are highly useful, but they are probably only worthwhile once you have tried a few other methods.

Children all develop at different rates. A child who hasn’t been able to master staying dry at night, may well be able to do some other task that a ‘dry’ child cannot do. Never forget, if your child wets the bed, they are almost certain to be better than other children at some other developmental achievement. All children are different.

That’s why patience is the best option for dealing with bed wetting. In most children the condition goes away naturally; the child grows up. That’s why bed wetting alarms are not always necessary. Not because they don’t work (they do) but because you will be spending money unnecessarily. Bed wetting alarms that get children to be dry at night may be helpful, but if your child was going to be dry anyway (as most children will be), you could well have wasted your money.

The reason why bed wetting alarms are such a popular topic for discussion amongst parents who have children who wet the bed is because these alarms work. They produce results; but don’t be in too much of a hurry to get those results.

So, when should you consider an alarm? If several months of positive encouragement to be dry as well as patience and a friendly household haven’t shown some improvements, then you may need an alarm.

The kind of alarm you choose needs to be right for your child. So don’t just go and buy the first one you see. The alarm needs to be comfortable for the child - after all they are going to have to use it. Also, your child needs to be motivated to use the alarm. If they don’t want to us it, it won’t work for them. So simple things like the color can affect motivation. What it looks like, the kind of noise the buzzer makes and so on, can all have an impact on your child, so you should pay attention to these factors. Never buy an alarm without your child. See it as their alarm, rather than yours.

These alarms work by detecting moisture. When your child starts urinating, the alarm senses the first drop of wetness and sounds a buzzer. For some children, the buzzer will wake them and they will then be able to go to the bathroom to finish off urinating. For other children, the alarm will not wake them - but it will wake you. You can then gently wake your child and take them to the bathroom. The idea behind these alarms is that your child begins to associate the feelings of a full bladder with the noise of the alarm and waking. Eventually, the alarm can be taken away and they should be able to wake themselves normally.

Alarms can certainly help with bed wetting. But they will only do so with the full participation of your child. Otherwise you will be wasting your money. You could also be spending money unnecessarily if you rush to by an alarm when nature would have taken its course if you were more patient.

More information on dealing with bed wetting can be found at: http://www.bed-wetting-info.co.uk

graham@bed-wetting-info.co.uk

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So now you’ve got all these wonderful fresh vegetables growing in your garden how do you get the kids to eat them? We should be eating 5-9 servings of fruit and vegetables a day. Many adults don’t get the full servings required and you know the kids are getting a fraction of that.

If you’ve got problems getting vegetables into the kids, try a few of these strategies…

Vegetable Fudges

I know it sounds really bad, but it’s really good! It tastes like a veggie free zone, so if you really feel like you have to sneak it into family and friends, do it with dessert!

Different vegetables and fruits can be used in this recipe to vary it. You can add apple; chocolate; carrot; beetroot. Try your own varieties and see what happens.

The base recipe is this:

3 heaped tablespoons of butter
2 cups sugar
1 x 400g can condensed milk

Prepare a greased square slice pan or dish. Heat the butter and sugar very gently and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add half a cup of finely shredded fruit or vegetable, then add the condensed milk.

Stir constantly and keep the heat low or your mixture will burn. After about 20 minutes your mixture will be bubbling throughout. If you want to add chocolate at this stage, you can. Six squares of cooking chocolate should be about right. Once it’s completely blended throughout, pour into your dish and let it cool.

Cut into squares and enjoy!

Don’t despair, just keep trying. You know that you’re serving the best tasting vegetables on the planet when you grow them yourself organically. One fine day, your children will reminisce about that…

Judy Williams (http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com) aspires to become a fulltime earth mother goddess. This site acts as a primer for all vegetable gardening aspects covering topics like how to build a garden, nurture seedlings, container gardening and composting.

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Children are notoriously bad at drinking enough liquids. They are so busy playing they sometimes ‘forget’ to drink. Sometimes, children seem like camels - able to go for ages without having a drink. Obviously, when they are thirsty they will rush indoors for a drink. But often they look for sugary, caffeine-laden drinks which are great for quenching thirst, but do little for the body’s fluid levels.

That’s because the caffeine in many drinks leads to extra urination. The result is that more liquid goes out of the body than is taken in. And therein lies a problem. Your child’s body has inbuilt mechanisms to maintain the liquid levels. A lack of liquid intake, combined with the effects of caffeine in fluid output, means your child’s body requires more liquids to maintain the right balance. In other words, their body starts to demand more liquid.

That demand for extra liquids usually starts at the worst possible time - early evening. Your child is home from school or from a day playing with friends and they suddenly want a drink. They gulp down whatever you give them and demand more - and more. This is because their hydration levels are low and their body’s self defense mechanisms have kicked in to ensure that they don’t become dehydrated.

However, the body always takes in more than it actually needs - just to be on the safe side. So that excess has to go somewhere. It is taken out by the kidneys, converted into urine and placed in the bladder for urination. But this can take a few hours to occur. The result is that your child’s bladder has often not completed filling until after they have gone to bed.

If they have a poorly developed sense of bladder fullness while asleep, they will simply wet the bed. Many children wet the bed not because they drink too much, but because they don’t drink enough!

If a child drinks plenty of water during the day, they need less during the evening. Also, because their body has had time during the day to regulate it’s water levels, there is less need for urinating at night. Hence if a child drinks more during the day, the likelihood of bed wetting is reduced. Preventing your child from drinking too much liquid is actually working against you; it makes bed wetting more likely.

The problem for many parents is encouraging children to drink enough water during the day. As ever, changing your child’s habits starts with changing your own. Start drinking more water yourself - it won’t do you any harm! Your child will see you doing this and will not see water drinking as unusual.

Also, make sure you provide your child with water whenever they go out. Put a bottle of water in their bag and encourage them to drink it. Equally, raise the issue with school, suggesting that children should be encouraged to drink more. You don’t need to mention your child’s bedwetting - indeed you shouldn’t as it will embarrass your child. However, if you can get your child’s school to encourage more daytime drinking of water you’ll be helping the overall health of the whole school - as well as reducing bedwetting in your own child.

More information on dealing with bed wetting can be found at http://www.bed-wetting-info.co.uk

graham@bed-wetting-info.co.uk

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Are you an expectant parent anxiously waiting for that little package of joy? Yet, you and your spouse are still looking for that perfect name? Well…fret no more! The list of the top 100 baby names may be the answer to your prayers.

Searching for your baby’s name is loads of fun, whether you’re seeking a name for your soon-to-be baby boy or baby girl, wondering about the popularity of your own first name, or just curious about what names in the top 100 are currently hot.

What is particularly interesting is tracking the popularity of baby names over the decades. In looking through baby name lists from 1880 to the present, some amusing patterns emerge, particularly in regards to baby names for girls.

For example, in Victorian times, Biblical names such as Mary, Sarah and Ruth were very popular for baby girls. There were also many baby names that are now considered very old-fashioned like Martha, Alice, Bertha and Minnie.

>From the 1920s to the 1950s certain baby names rose in popularity. These included names such as Susan, Debbie, Patricia, and Linda. All of these baby names have since waned, to be replaced, by the 1980s, with fancier names such as Jennifer, Jessica and Nicole.

However, according to the new top 100 baby names, there’s been a lot of renewed interest in the more “old-fashioned” names like Hannah, Abigail and Ethan, plus many Biblical names such as Sarah, Rachel, Joshua, Jacob, and Samuel. There’s also been a surge in nontraditional baby names including Madison, Ashley and Brianna for baby girls, and Brandon and Logan for baby boys.

When naming a baby there are, of course, many other points to consider besides how popular or unique a name is. Here are some helpful tips that you can use with your spouse and immediate family in choosing a name for the new baby and to make the process fun:

1. Baby names need to go nicely with the sound of your last name. Also, pick a first name and a middle name that go together well. (So maybe not something like Erasmus Beelzebub Jones!)

2. When your family finds a name you all like, observe the initials to be sure that you don’t give your new baby a name with initials that will make people laugh or cause teasing by his or her peers. (For example: Pamela Iris Greer, which equals P.I.G. !)

3. You might not want a baby name that is so unusual that the other kids will make fun of your child in school which could result in low self esteem. So please do not be selfish when choosing a name.

4. You also might not want a baby name that is so trendy that it will sound funny by the time the baby is ten years old. (For example… Sunshine.)

5. Be careful not to pick a name that’s really cute for an adorable little baby but will sound silly when your little one grows up. (For example, Dimples or Cutie Pie.)

6. Avoid baby names that might produce insulting nicknames when people shorten them. (So maybe not Smellonius, or Smelly for short !)

7. You and your family might not want a name that is so hard to spell or to pronounce that people will always get it wrong and therefore, your poor son or daughter will have to go through their enire life correcting people.

8. You and your family might want to pick baby names in honor of favorite relatives or ancestors, or special names that show your family’s ethnic roots. You may even want to borrow a name from one of your favorite celebrities or sports athelete.

9. Study the top 100 baby names and choose one that has a special meaning that you like - maybe something that means “strong” or “kind” or “brave”.

10. Look at your own family names and see if using any name combinations create unusual baby names you like. Ask other family members for their suggestions, even invite your friends to give you their opinions. Does a relative have names you like? Do be careful if the names are already used. Ask other family members to be sure your favorite unusual baby names are not given to relatives. It can become confusing in families when two people have the same names.

Have fun and enjoy viewing the top 100 baby names when choosing your child’s names. Enjoy and celebrate the moment. You will know it was worth every minute spent looking for that baby boy or baby girl name…a name that will identify them for their lifetime.

christy@online-shopping-101.com

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Buying baby gear can be a frustrating experience for new parents who want to have the best for the baby without breaking their budget. You need to buy baby furniture, such as a crib or bassinet, a change table, high-chair, and a playpen. Parents also like to purchase a baby swing and a stroller for taking the baby for a walk. A cheaper alternative to a stroller is a baby sling where you can carry the baby comfortably and still keep him/her nestled close to you.

Other supplies that you need include baby clothes. When you are buying for the new baby, just remember that although an outfit may look cute, the baby needs to feel comfortable in it. Babies grow a lot in the first few months, so it is really a waste of money to buy a lot of brand-new outfits in newborn sizes. You are better off buying in the 3 - 6 month range at first. You will find that the baby will quickly outgrow even these. You also have to look at the material to make sure it won’t shrink after the first wash. Also buying gender neutral clothes that suit either a boy or a girl is a good choice. Chances are great, the baby will grow out of it long before it is worn out so you can pack it away for the next baby.

You have to decide whether you will start with a rocking bassinet or a full size crib. There are many bassinets combined with a playpen so this will save you money. Some bassinets convert into a change table and most of them are portable, making them great for travel. A crib is necessary for when the baby gets older, but for a newborn a bassinet is a good choice to make. Note: You can read a more complete article on this topic right here: http://www.greatbabygear.com/bassinet.html

You also have to look at bottles pacifiers, toys and later on a high chair. All of these come in many makes and models, but before you buy make sure that they are rated according to safety standards.

Even with all this, you won’t be allowed to take the baby home from the hospital without a car seat installed in the back seat. For this you need to look at ones that convert from rear to forward facing and that you can use a booster seat when the child gets older.

In all cases what you end up choosing to buy needs to be safe and healthy for your child and convenient and comfortable to use all without draining the bank account. With smart shopping choices guided by experienced advice, this is easy enough to accomplish.

About The Author

Eric & Lisa Koshinsky make it easy for you to get clear, unbiased information so you can make informed purchases of baby gear. Visit http://www.greatbabygear.com today for info on everything from baby strollers to baby monitors.

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http://www.parents-mag.com/kids-teens/Ten-Hottest-Careers-2320/ http://www.parents-mag.com/kids-teens/Ten-Hottest-Careers-2320/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:00:00 +0000 admin Kids & Teens Ten Hottest Careers
 by: Alexandria Haber

What do you want to be when you grow up? If you are still trying to figure out which career path you want to follow, examine the following list of occupations currently considered the ten hottest careers:

1. Elementary school teachers
2. Accountants and auditors
3. Computer systems analysts
4. Secondary school teachers
5. Computer software engineers
6. Special education teachers
7. Computer programmers
8. Network and computer systems administrators
9. Preschool teachers
10. Dental hygienists

These ten hot careers are expected to have the highest demand for new recruits over the next eight years.

Born to teach?

If you love meeting new people and enjoy interacting with a wide range of personalities, teaching may be the right career choice for you. Four of the ten hottest careers are in the teaching profession. It doesn’t matter if you prefer to work with younger or older students because teachers are needed in every age range and category. If you love a challenge, consider working with special needs children or adults and become a special education teacher. Special education teachers are in very high demand and are one of the top five career choices available out of the ten hottest careers.

Computer savvy?

Considering that five of the ten hottest careers are computer related, if you have a knack for logging on and are interested in increasing and expanding your computer skills, a career in computers may very well be the right choice for you.

Take some time to analyze the ten hottest careers profiled on this page and consider all of the choices carefully. Knowing that there is a high and growing demand for qualified people in each of these occupations may help you decide to pursue one of these jobs.

info@comparedegrees.com

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