Two weeks ago I began blogging for giggle on their giggle gurus blog. The blog is titled Sweet Dreams, and as you may well have guessed, the topic is sleep. This blog is in great company with some other fantastic blogs authored by a great network of experts in other arenas, such as child development, organization, healthy eating and creating a green nursery. Please head on over and check them out.
Recently I was very lucky to sit down with a group of NYC fathers and their little ones to discuss positive discipline at appleseeds in Chelsea. NYC dads is a Meetup group that has been expanding wildly and is now 200+ families strong, and growing! We talked about the difficulties surrounding discipline and knowing the “right” way to handle each and every situation (think playground politics). Being a parent awakens many thoughts/feelings/memories from our own childhoods that often need to be worked through. If we aren’t prepared for this, the who journey can feel overwhelming and needlessly difficult. It was such a joy to be able to talk with a group of fathers who were interested in being proactive with their kids and being the best teachers possible. Oh, and their tots were too cute for school! Thanks NYC Dads!!
I was reading my Daily Candy emails this morning and was reminded of tremendous need many impoverished mothers have: diapers for their babies. Help a Mother Out is an organization in San Francisco who collects diapers and distributes them to those in need.
Early in my career I worked for a non-profit program in the inner city of Milwaukee. There I worked with many teen mothers and saw firsthand how hard some people work to stretch a diaper or two…some for an entire day. It was heartbreaking to see, and with two little ones myself, I can’t imagine not being able to put a clean diaper on them whenever the need arises.
Fortunately, there are great people and organizations (such as Help a Mother Out) throughout the US, as well as virtual diaper drives who are collecting diapers to distribute to these very needy families. Spread some diaper cheer!
Jonah Lehrer wrote a piece in The New Yorker titled Don’t! that offers a beautiful explanation of an ongoing longitudinal study looking at delayed gratification and future success. This study, conducted by Walter Mischel, a Stanford professor, suggests that raw intelligence isn’t the most important variable when determining future success in life. In fact, what he suggests is that “intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework.” The key, it appears, to delaying gratification is teaching the brain to be distracted and shifting the focus of your attention. This, Mischel argues, allows children to find ways to make situations work for them. The good news is that delayed gratification is a skill we can teach our children. But what is so important is that it gets practiced throughout childhood.
According to Mischel, even the most mundane routines of childhood — such as not snacking before dinner, or saving up your allowance, or holding out until Christmas morning — are really sly exercises in cognitive training: we’re teaching ourselves how to think so that we can outsmart our desires.
I recognize that as parents one of the last things we ever want to think about when it comes to our children is someone touching them inappropriately, or worse. As a former counselor in a program for children and teen sexual abuse survivors, I remember the horror well. Jill Starishevsky, a mother and former prosecutor for victims of child abuse and sex crimes has published a children’s book, “My Body Belongs to Me” that allows us parents to have an age-appropriate conversation with our children about their bodies, boundaries and what to do when someone violates them (heaven forbid) – tell! In my experience, this is one of those subjects that we don’t want to think about, which means we often avoid talking about it and giving our children a clear message that this is wrong and should not be kept a secret. If ever there was a must-have book for our children, this would seem to be it. It is written for youngsters ages 3-10.
Pattie Fitzgerald, founder of Safely Ever After, a safety program for parents and kids, proclaims, “I have been teaching child safety classes for nearly ten years, and this is the first children’s book I’ve seen that really addresses the issues in a way that kids can understand and that doesn’t seem scary or heavy-handed.”
Wohoo! It’s time for more day light! I know this means one less hour of sleep on Saturday night, BUT it could mean little junior sleeps in an “extra” hour too! Here are my tips on handling this transition (which is MUCH easier than the fall time change).
1. Put your child to bed on Saturday night at the usual bedtime.
2. Change your clocks so they are one hour ahead.
3. Set your alarm to get you up at the usual wake up time and wake your child up to start the day (this means one less hour of sleep for your child). OR, for those early risers, let them sleep in and take this opportunity to get them on a slightly later schedule.
4. Put your child down for naps and bedtime according to the time on the clock.
I know, I know. Daylight savings time again. It always comes too soon. Fret not, these simple tips for babies (6 months and older) and toddlers will help you stay on track with your good sleep habits. Give your children a few days to settle in to the new time. After they adjust to the new clock, the only thing left to dread is the sun setting at 4 p.m. Ugh.
1. Put your child(ren) to bed on Saturday night (11/1) at the regular time.
2. Wake up with your child(ren) at the normal wake up time on Sunday morning (11/2).
3. Set your clocks back one hour. This is where you stretch.
4. Put your child(ren) down for the first nap at the regular time per the clock.** This will mean that s/he has been awake a full hour longer during this window and may need some help to stretch. Going outside and getting lots of sunlight and fresh air is a great way to keep kids awake when you’re stretching them.
5. Follow the clock for naps and bedtime from here forward. It can take a few days for your child to fully adjust, so be patient and consistent.
**Younger children may have a harder time stretching a full hour without becoming overtired. In this case it may be better to stretch them 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon or to stretch them slowly over several days.
Parents must know that while spanking may work in the very near term to stop a child from misbehaving, it ultimately backfires. For starters, spanking teaches your child that the bigger, stronger person in a disagreement always wins. And that in order to make your point, you must strike another person. The irony is that children are often spanked for hitting or kicking another child.
An article by Lisa Belkin in this morning’s New York Times Magazine Blog, “When Is Spanking Chid Abuse?” shares the findings of Alan E, Kazdin research. Mr. Kazdin is the Director of the Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic at Yale and reports that 63 percent of parents physically discipline their 1-to 2-year-olds. I find this statistic staggering and alarming. In a piece Mr Kazdin wrote for Slate, he says there’s “a strong natural tendency to escalate the frequency and severity of punishment.” Here is the part of what he says that I wish every parent would understand.
“The negative effects on children include increased aggression and noncompliance—the very misbehaviors that most often inspire parents to hit in the first place—as well as poor academic achievement, poor quality of parent-child relationships, and increased risk of a mental-health problem (depression or anxiety, for instance). High levels of corporal punishment are also associated with problems that crop up later in life, including diminished ability to control one’s impulses and poor physical-health outcomes (cancer, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease). Plus, there’s the effect of increasing parents’ aggression, and don’t forget the consistent finding that physical punishment is a weak strategy for permanently changing behavior.”
I have to believe that if parents really knew what was at risk with corporal punishment, they would work harder to seek an effective solution. Stay posted for a seminar on this very topic.
The New York Times Well Blog posted about a new research finding, published today in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, has found having a fan in baby’s room reduces the risk for SIDS by as much as 72 %! The proposed theory is that the fan prevents the baby from re-breathing in exhaled carbon dioxide. And while the fan doesn’t make the baby’s room cooler, it is important to keep the sleeping environment cool as this also reduces the risk for SIDS.
