Parenting
Does Your Back-to-School Checklist Include Vaccination?
Extreme Heat
Heat and Infants and Children
Infants and young children rely on others to keep them cool and hydrated when it’s hot outside. In this article, we provide tips for protecting your children and other family members from extreme heat.
Keep kids cool and hydrated
- Never leave infants or children in a parked car, even if the windows are open.
- Dress infants and children in loose, lightweight, light-colored clothing.
- Make sure they’re drinking plenty of fluids. Stay away from really cold drinks or drinks with too much sugar.
- Follow additional tips on how to prevent heat-related illness.
Never leave kids in a parked car
- Even when it feels cool outside, cars can heat up to dangerous temperatures very quickly.
- Leaving a window open is not enough- temperatures inside the car can rise almost 20 degrees Fahrenheit within the first 10 minutes, even with a window cracked open.
- Children who are left unattended in parked cars are at greatest risk for heat stroke, and possibly death.
Tips for traveling with children
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- Never leave infants or children in a parked car, even if the windows are cracked open.
- To remind yourself that a child is in the car, keep a stuffed animal in the car seat. When the child is buckled in, place the stuffed animal in the front with the driver.
- When leaving your car, check to be sure everyone is out of the car. Do not overlook any children who have fallen asleep in the car.
Learn how to spot heat-related illness
Seek medical care immediately if your child has symptoms of heat-related illness.
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Open in new tab Does Birth Order Matter?
There is a great deal of real but not particularly scientific evidence that birth order has a great influence on who we turn out to be as adults. If you understand how birth order affects a child, you will be better able to understand and effectively parent your children. You might even understand yourself a bit better.
Now, it’s important to note that people don’t just neatly fit into categories of any kind, and they don’t all fit neatly into birth order categories. The following observations are generalities and not specifics, but still, they might be helpful.
First Children:
Typical first children in a family assume responsibility. They are rule-keepers/enforcers, and they are organized, as well as driven, bossy, approval-seeking, self-critical high-achievers. There’s a mixture of good and bad if I ever saw one!
Way back in 1874, Francis Galton studied and published a report about the lives of 180 eminent scientists of the day. He discovered that 48% of them were first children. During the 20th century, more first-born children were Nobel Prize winners, composers, presidents of countries, astronauts, and prominent personalities. First-born children usually score higher on standardized IQ tests than middle children or youngest children in the birth order.
Middle Children:
My mother said that middle children had “middle child-itis.” She was a middle child, and she always said her mother said, “You two older kids do this and you two younger kids do that,” and she was caught both ways. Middle kids are usually adaptable. They make great friends and spouses.
Youngest Children:
The “baby-of-the-family” is inventive and often more aggressive. Children who are the last born in a family are very often irresponsible and rebellious. They more often feel “picked on” and inadequate. However, last-borns are also more creative. They are risk-takers. They usually have a great sense of humor and have outgoing personalities.
Drowning Dangers for Kids
A Key Piece of the Puzzle: Vaccinations
As a parent, you work hard to keep your baby healthy, by giving lots of
love… providing healthy foods.
Keeping little hands, feet, and faces clean. Getting plenty of physical activity, and
vaccination. Nothing protects babies better from 14 serious diseases by age two.
That’s why doctors recommend and parents choose the safe, proven protection of
vaccination. Vaccination, a key piece of the puzzle.
For more reasons to vaccinate, talk to your child’s doctor, or go to www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents.
Actively Listening to your Child
Communicating with our children can be a difficult task at times. We feel like they’re not listening to us; they feel like we’re not listening to them. Good listening and communications skills are essential to successful parenting. Your child’s feelings, views, and opinions have worth, and you should make sure you take the time to sit down and listen openly and discuss them honestly.
It seems to be a natural tendency to react rather than to respond. We pass judgment based on our own feelings and experiences. However, responding means being receptive to our child’s feelings and emotions and allowing them to express themselves openly and honestly without fear of repercussion from us. By reacting, we send our child the message that their feelings and opinions are invalid. However, by responding and asking questions about why the child feels that way, it opens a dialog that allows them to discuss their feelings further and allows you a better understanding of where they’re coming from. Responding also gives you an opportunity to work out a solution or a plan of action with your child that perhaps they would not have come up with on their own. Your child will also appreciate the fact that maybe you do indeed understand how they feel. 
It’s crucial in these situations to give your child your full and undivided attention. Put down your phone, stop doing dishes, or turn off the television so you can hear the full situation and make eye contact with your child. Keep calm, be inquisitive, and afterward offer potential solutions to the problem.
Don’t discourage your child from feeling upset, angry, or frustrated. Our initial instinct may be to say or do something to steer our child away from it, but this can be a detrimental tactic. Again, listen to your child, ask questions to find out why they are feeling that way, and then offer potential solutions to alleviate the bad feeling.
Just as we do, our children have feelings and experience difficult situations. By actively listening and participating with our child as they talk about it, it demonstrates to them that we do care, we want to help, and we have similar experiences of our own that they can learn from and provide as a reference. Remember, respond – don’t react.
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Positive Parenting
Let’s face it…parenting is not always easy. Sometimes it seems a next to impossible task to consistently get your child to be nice to others, share, follow a consistent schedule and adhere to simple requests and instructions. Losing your temper, resorting to yelling and controlling behaviors can become the all too common norm and fall back parenting behaviors.
There is a better approach. Positive Parenting (also referred to as positive discipline) means gently, positively guiding your children to help them develop better behaviors. Positive Parenting is a better approach than the “because I told you to do it” authoritarian approach to parenting.
Positive parenting helps develop positive behaviors, better communication between parent and child, closer relationships, mental health and overall happiness.
Amy McCready, a parenting educator, and positive parenting expert shares many positive parenting solutions parents can use when facing common parenting situations – getting your child to sleep, eliminating swearing, sibling bullying, controlling chaos and many other topics. Amy McCready shares some great solutions in these videos.
You may also want to visit Amy’s website and YouTube channel for additional tips and resources.
https://www.youtube.com/user/AmyMcCready/videos
Planning the Family Vacation – Dream or Disaster
As sunny days and blue skies replace the cold, dreary days of winter, we often begin to dream of summer and a family vacation. The options for great family vacations vary from travel far from home to just staying home and enjoying a “staycation.” Either can be great and enjoyable for everyone in the family or without planning turn into a disaster. In the webinar recording below, HealthyChildren.org shares ten tips for planning and having a great family escape.
As you view the webinar, make some notes and a To Do list to ensure your family vacation is great!
Enriching Your Children’s Conscience
All parents want their children to have a life guided by good values. A child’s conscience and value system develop at an early age. As parents, what can you do to help them? Here are five ways you can enrich their conscience and help them to develop a value system that will guide them through life.
- Provide good examples. What you say and do every day reflects what you think about the world. If you say good stuff, your children will do the same and see the world in a positive light. Children are great imitators. It is important for you to say and do the right things in all situations – be patient, be kind, show others respect, do the right thing even in difficult circumstances.
- Listen when your children talk. Sometimes your children ask questions that sound silly to adults, like “Mom, where does the sun sleep when the night comes?” Listen to them and answer seriously, “The sun does not sleep. It shines in other places in the world.” By listening, children will feel that they get respect from their parents. Feeling respected, and being treated respectfully teaches children to treat others with respect.
- Show happiness. Reflect and share happiness, positive energy and thoughts with your children. If you are happy, they are happy too. By doing this, your children will learn to have a positive attitude and enjoy life.
- Introduce them to nature. Tell them that all things happen in the world are connected to each other and that there’s a reason for it. For example, water is needed to irrigate plants and plants are a food source for other living creatures. Help them to understand their place and role in the world and how to protect nature and its creatures – animals and humans.
- Be flexible with your rules. Children need structure and rules. However, as children age and develop, allow them to play a role in setting the rules. Moreover, under your close supervision, they need to be allowed to make some of their own decisions. Discuss possible outcomes of each decision; this helps them to learn reasoning skills which leads to better decision making in various situations.
Again, remember that children are good imitators. They are looking to you for guidance – their attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors will often reflect those illustrated by their parents. Make sure your actions are what you hope to see in your children.
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