Parenting

• What Every Parent Must Know About Babysitters!

  Selecting a babysitter is an important decision that requires a great amount of caution. Here are 5 things you should consider when choosing a babysitter.

• Let’s Bake A Tradition

  The holidays often bring to mind the image of baking sugar cookies, cut into all sorts of holiday shapes, and decorated with sprinkles. It’s a fun holiday tradition you can start with your preschoolers, or even your older children. They will have long lasting memories of baking in the kitchen with you. So, put on your aprons, and let’s get started.

• Homemaking School for Children

  With it being summer vacation for the kids, a lot of us may be experiencing a messier house than usual. A solution to this would be to give the kids daily chores or, what I like to call it, homemaking school. Homemaking school will not only help the house stay tidier, but will also give your kids valuable lessons in housecleaning and responsibility that they will need now and later in life.

• A Decision to Stay Home

  I worked at an office job up until my son was two struggling with the guilt and yearning of wanting to be home to raise him full time. I was lucky enough to have my grandmother watching him, but I still would rather be home raising him myself. I felt my son and I were both missing out on things that would never happen again such as his first step or mommy kissing boo-boos.

• The Four Parenting Styles

  Love and limits are terms that describe a parents discipline orientation. Parents who are oriented toward a “relational discipline” are said to use love as their primary style of parenting. Parents who use “action discipline” are said to use limits as their primary style of parenting.

• Knowing Right from Wrong

  How do we teach our children about right and wrong? Where do they learn compassion, kindness, and other important morals? Are there practical ways for parents to shape their child’s characters? These are some of the questions we will be looking at in the next few weeks. For now, let’s take a look at the moral development of children.

• Seven Steps to Criticize Your Kids

  How do you give your child feedback without sound mean or nasty? How do you tell them how to improve without them getting defensive or angry? Is it possible to criticize your child in a constructive manner? There is such a way and it is not a secret. Most parents learned how to parent from their own parents. And what they learned about communicating to children was probably inadequate. No fault of our parents really, they just passed on what they learned to us.

• Slip Sliding Away

  I’m not the wisest person in the world nor the smartest, but there is one thing I do know – life is forever changing and time stands still for no one. Everyone and everything is in a constant state of flux. What we have one day, may not be there the next. It’s important to realize this so we may make the most of what we have at any given moment. To do otherwise risks our never again having the same opportunities or experiences.