Should there be stronger regulations of American day care?
Trusting your child with someone else is one of the hardest things that a parent has to do—and in the United States, it’s harder still, because American day care is a mess. About 8.2 million kids—about 40 percent of children under five—spend at least part of their week in the care of somebody other than a parent. Most of them are in centers, although a sizable minority attend home day cares like the one run by Jessica Tata. In other countries, such services are subsidized and well-regulated. In the United States, despite the fact that work and family life has changed profoundly in recent decades, we lack anything resembling an actual child care system. Excellent day cares are available, of course, if you have the money to pay for them and the luck to secure a spot. But the overall quality is wildly uneven and barely monitored, and at the lower end, it’s Dickensian.— The Hell of American Day Care
Parents: Stop Hovering Over Your College-Bound Kids
College administrators say they’re coping with a growing crop of Peters, freshmen suffering the aftereffects of having been raised by overinvolved parents. These moms and dads may see their tendency to hover and help at every step as loving and protective. But the urge to ensure a child’s success by calling teachers to complain about assignments or grades, selecting all activities, and even completing tough homework assignments is apt to lead to failure once independence is required.
When Protecting Baby Becomes an Obsession: Ritualistic behaviors common to moms with postpartum OCD
Many new mothers feel a bit anxious about caring for their infant. But sometimes that concern develops into an obsession over all the things that can go wrong.
Experts call that condition postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder. It can drive women to take extreme steps to prevent their fears from coming true, such as endlessly washing the infant to stave off germs to the point where the baby develops sores, or refusing to hold the baby out of fear of dropping him.
4 Tips to Keep Your Teen Safe on Facebook
3. Don’t embarrass them: “Parents need to understand that social networking in today’s world is how kids experiment with their own identity. It’s a normal developmental stage,” she says. “I think parents should try to refrain from commenting, because you may set up a dynamic where your kid will block you [on Facebook], and you might not know about it.”
Tots Who Are 'Late Talkers' Typically Turn Out Fine: Study
“Our findings suggest that parents should not be overly concerned that late-talking at age 2 years will result in enduring language and psychological difficulties for the child. There is good evidence that most late-talking children will catch up to the language skills of other children,” said Whitehouse. “The best thing that parents can do is provide a rich language-learning environment for their children,” he added. “This means getting down on the floor and playing with their child, talking with them, reading to them, interacting with them at their level.”
Flexible Schedule Helps Keep New Moms in the Workplace
“When confronted by one or more job demands, a flexible schedule provides working moms with alternatives for meeting those demands while caring for their newborns. When working moms are better able to control their work environment and adapt, work-related stress is less likely to become a family issue,” study author Dawn S. Carlson, a professor of management at Baylor University, said in a university news release.
Don't Let Your Kids Ruin Your Retirement Fund
1. Budget for any support you plan to provide. LeFavor knew he and his wife wanted to pay for their sons’ college educations, so they planned for that expense in advance. “It was already built into the budget. I had thought about it from the time I got married, and before we had kids. We put aside money for later,” he says.
The Smart Way to Pay Kids an Allowance: Research suggests that traditional payment methods might do more harm than good
According to Mandell’s review of decades of research, children who have to ask their parents for money each time they need it, whether it’s for clothes or lunch, tend to fare better with money later in life. Perhaps because they are forced to think about what money is being used for, he says. “The kids who have to ask for the money have higher financial literacy than those who get allowances,” says Mandell.
