Parents Magazine just published it’s December 2014 issue. I love this magazine because it offers parents some helpful parenting advice, fun and educational activities, and real-life stories from real-life parents. While the magazine always has great stuff to benefit parents, most parents don’t always have the time to sit down and read the entire thing from cover to cover to benefit from what the magazine has to share. So, here are the highlights from this issue, the “what I think you should know” parts.
Christmas Cookie Play Date Having difficulty finding time to balance prepping your Christmas treats, spending time with your children and planning some socialization outside of the house? Parents Magazine suggests that you schedule a cookie decorating play date for the kids. You can get caught up on your baking, and the kids will have fun decorating with their friends. While you might care how your goodies turn out, remember to let your kids show their creativity by decorating the cookies the way they want to, whether others can recognize what they’ve created or not!
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Kid Results from a study at the University of Colorado Boulder indicated that children who spend more time playing, instead of going to scheduled events like lessons and practices, showed a better ability to manage their emotions and actions. This study supports the idea that children should not be scheduled to complete specific tasks all day, but doesn’t mean that parents should eliminate scheduling all together.
Children do benefit from structure, so still schedule out a child’s day according to the tasks that will be completed at that time, (breakfast, art, music, etc.) but just make sure to include plenty of free play breaks. And remember that giving a child a choice during any of the “structured times” allows parents and teachers the opportunity to teach a skill that the child needs while also allowing the child to have a say in how that skill will be learned.
Vision Reality Check The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends that children receive vision screenings during every well child checkup from birth to three years of age, once per year from age 3 to 5, and every two years after that.
Picky Eaters If your child refuses to eat a specific meal, like breakfast, don’t sweat it according to Jill Castle, R.D.N. As long as your child is willing to eat foods from the basic food groups, don’t worry over what kind of food your child is eating at each meal, as long as she is eating something. She states that there is nothing wrong with eating supper’s leftovers for breakfast, as long as these leftovers contain foods from the basic food groups.
Trampoline Injuries 95% of trampoline injuries result in a bone fracture. These are not good odds people. Perhaps the trampoline isn’t the best purchase to make for your children.
The Key to Family Harmony This article was wonderful and had too many great points for me to summarize. I highly recommend you read it. It’s a pretty quick read and has great advice for how to minimize sibling rivalry and help your children know with every one of your actions that they are loved and appreciated. Click here for the full article.
Experimenting with Babies This section of the issue showed some simple activities that parents can do with their babies to test out some research theories. Don’t worry, they aren’t doing any creepy scientific experiments. Instead, the theories explain how most babies will react to hearing or seeing something age appropriate, but that most parents might not be doing with their babies because they think their baby is too young. The best part is that parents would most likely be surprised to know what their baby is capable of at such an early age. The key point from this section is that reading, talking, singing and showing pictures to baby is helpful to baby’s development, and you’d be surprised how much they are capable of.
Taking Charge This section shows parents how they can motivate their bossy children to use that skill in a more productive manner. The author, Heather Morgan Shott, suggests that you remember that you are in charge of what you do, and warns not to fall into the trap to let your child control what you do, what you wear, and where you go. Actually, she suggests that your child not be allowed to make these choices for anyone, except himself when appropriate. She encourages parents to give expectations when their child tries to push others around, including parents, and to make sure to follow up on those expectations.
So, when your child returns from preschool and demands a juice box from the refrigerator, even though he knows how to get it himself, she suggests that if a parent wants to get the juice box for him, they can, but to set the expectation that, “I’ll get it this time; you get it next time.” And then of course, next time he has to get it.
Making Mistakes This article addressed how parents can help their children to handle mistakes or failures in life, like striking out when the baseball game is on the line. In this article, Karen Cicero suggests that parents don’t focus on swooping in with a pep talk when failure happens, but instead let the child know about the parent’s own mistakes in life, or those of another important person in the child’s life.
She also suggests that parents prepare children to better handle failure by avoiding praises like “good job” and instead focusing on effort, like “I’m impressed by how many hours you have been practicing.” She cites an interesting study that showed that 5th grade students who were praised for their effort scored significantly higher on an 8th grade achievement test than did 5th graders who had mostly been praised for their intelligence level.
Finally, Cicero suggests that parents help their children to learn from the experience by talking about it, and talking about failures as one of life’s inevitable experiences for everyone.
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