Monday, June 8

PARENTING

How To Prepare Your Home For Life After Baby With Easy Setup Tips
PARENTING, TOP FOUR

How To Prepare Your Home For Life After Baby With Easy Setup Tips

For new parents, especially those bringing home a first baby, the early postpartum weeks can feel like a constant loop of healing, exhaustion, and overwhelm. When the home isn’t set up for postpartum home preparation, small tasks stack up fast and steal energy that should go toward rest and bonding. A recovery-friendly postpartum recovery environment helps daily life run with fewer decisions, fewer trips across the house, and fewer moments of frustration. Prioritizing home safety for newborns also reduces worry, so postpartum challenges don’t get amplified by preventable stress. Quick Summary: Postpartum Home Setup Priorities Stock the freezer with simple meals to reduce daily cooking after the baby arrives. Place laundry baskets where clothes pile up to make quick sor...
Designer Babies
PARENTING, TOP FOUR

Designer Babies

When human desires and wants are quantified as unalienable rights, then, ethics and morals become easily compromised, and a disaster often awaits. Designer babies will soon be the norm in reproductive healthcare, a reflection of desire passed off as an individual right. Soon, a couple will be able to walk in a reproductive healthcare facility and select all the features that they would prefer their child to have or not have. If permitted from clinical trials to practical applications, couples will have the freedom and right, depending on affordability, to decide the features that their child will have, in the process creating a child that they want. Therefore, based on their preference, a couple can decide to have a child with green eyes, less chances of becoming obese, high probabi...
Helping Make Society More Respectful And Equitable – Nurturing Dads Raise Emotionally Intelligent Kids
PARENTING, TOP FOUR

Helping Make Society More Respectful And Equitable – Nurturing Dads Raise Emotionally Intelligent Kids

When my oldest son, now nearly 13, was born in July of 2008, I thought I could easily balance my career and my desire to be far more engaged at home than my father and his generation were. I was wrong. Almost immediately, I noticed how social policies, schools and health care systems all make it difficult for dads to be highly involved and engaged at home. Contradictory expectations about work and family life abound. As a fatherhood researcher with four kids of my own, I am convinced that fathers are transformative figures for children, families and communities. But a man’s mere presence, paycheck and willingness to punish misbehaving children is not nearly enough. Many of the benefits of fathering for children come from dads being nurturing, loving and engaged in all aspects of p...
For LGBTQ Parents That Want To Help Schools Fight Stigma And Ignorance – Here Are 7 Tips To Help
PARENTING, TOP FOUR

For LGBTQ Parents That Want To Help Schools Fight Stigma And Ignorance – Here Are 7 Tips To Help

Many parents want to ensure that their kids are in classrooms where they and their families are respected and embraced. However, as a psychologist and researcher who has studied LGBTQ parents’ relationships with schools for over a decade, I have found that LGBTQ parents often have specific concerns when it comes to inclusion and acceptance. “[We have] always been very upfront that we are a family with two moms,” reported one parent in my research. “If the [school] was going to have an issue, we wanted to get the vibe early so we could find an alternative so our child didn’t have to suffer due to their closed-mindedness.” LGBTQ parents who live in less gay-friendly communities are more likely to describe feelings of mistreatment by their children’s schools. Such experiences may prompt par...
Be The Dad You Wish You Had
PARENTING, TOP FOUR

Be The Dad You Wish You Had

In my office are several items that reflect the great joy I find in my family; among them are two special items. One is a little figurine presented to me years ago on Father's Day by one of my children. It bears this message: "World's Greatest Dad." The second item, a plaque given by another of my children on another Father's Day, reads: "A father is someone you look up to no matter how tall you are." This gift brought a timely measure of encouragement, coming the year my oldest son surpassed me in height. (That's when I decided, subconsciously of course, to beat him in girth. And I did.) These particular paternal possessions are very important to me for a reason I want to share with you here. I know, all too well, that I am not the "world's greatest dad." Still, the hyperbole expresse...
Tips For Young Fathers
PARENTING

Tips For Young Fathers

Hopefully, if you are reading this, you are a man between the ages of 18 and 25 that is about to become a father. In this article, I will elaborate on three helpful tips for becoming a young father. Spend as much time as possible with the child, become financially independent, and constantly be focusing on your future. When you are a young man about to become a father, your family and friends get scared for you and they might say hurtful words. You need to block out all the negativity and take in all the positivity. Think about how you are about to have a mini you, how you can teach your child so many wonderful things, and how you get to watch them grow into their own person. Your number one goal is spending as much time as you can with your child. One of my favorite sayings is "you get...
Creative Ways Parents Can Boost Everyday Mental Wellness For Kids
MENTAL HEALTH, PARENTING

Creative Ways Parents Can Boost Everyday Mental Wellness For Kids

Creative Ways Parents Can Boost Everyday Mental Wellness For Kids For busy parents and caregivers juggling work, school demands, and household logistics, mental health in parenting can start to feel like one more item on an already-full list. The daily tension is real: children’s emotions show up loudly and unpredictably, while adults are expected to stay calm, consistent, and available. Yet everyday emotional support is one of the simplest ways parents supporting mental wellness can protect children’s emotional health and steady the whole home. Small, repeatable moments of connection can shape family wellbeing. Understanding Mental and Emotional Wellness at Home Mental and emotional wellness in parenting means noticing your own feelings, handling stress in healthy ways, and modelin...
Social Media Turns Online Arguments Between Teens Into Real-World Violence
PARENTING

Social Media Turns Online Arguments Between Teens Into Real-World Violence

The deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 exposed the power of social media to influence real-world behavior and incite violence. But many adolescents, who spend more time on social media than all other age groups, have known this for years. “On social media, when you argue, something so small can turn into something so big so fast,” said Justin, a 17-year-old living in Hartford, Connecticut, during one of my research focus groups. (The participants’ names have been changed in this article to protect their identities.) For the last three years, I have studied how and why social media triggers and accelerates offline violence. In my research, conducted in partnership with Hartford-based peace initiative COMPASS Youth Collaborative, we interviewed dozens of young peopl...
How Parents And Society Can Prevent Juvenile Crimes
PARENTING

How Parents And Society Can Prevent Juvenile Crimes

Today, juvenile crime has increased in a tremendous rate and this has lot to do with our society. Kids are more exposed to violence and negativity which restricts from having positive mindset. The positivity of a child can only be developed when parents play an active role. Parents' participation in preventing delinquent behaviors It is the parents who have most control over children's behavior. A report shows that families who are enthusiasts in spending more time together can certainly come up with positive outcomes and can even prevent delinquency prevention. A survey conducted by Columbia University has come up with a conclusion that children having their dinner with families' everyday are less likely to get involved into any illegal substances. Usually, it has been observed that...
No Electronics Needed: Unplug And Connect With These Home Activities
PARENTING

No Electronics Needed: Unplug And Connect With These Home Activities

The National Association for the Education of Young Children’s ongoing advice for guardians and parents is to have daily “connect time” with children. “Schedule time for doing an activity of your child’s choosing. Be sure to follow through and complete the activity without any distractions. Try not to text, answer calls, scroll through social media or watch television,” NAEYC asserts. Even though some American children are still schooling at home since COVID-19, fun, non-electronic-oriented activities can be incorporated to occupy non-schooling times. And while after-school sports may have dominated a child’s interests, engaging and entertaining options include both creative and age-old ideas, according to the Child Life team at UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center in Worcest...