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There are those little girls who sneer “You can’t play with me today” with disdain in their voices. And there are those little girls with aching hearts who hear those words and shrink back from their peers, unsure of what just happened. Mean girls are infiltrating our daughter’s classes, clubs, and neighborhoods, and they are often led by their parents. Girls learn and display these behaviors as young as preschool ages and they are often the direct result of negative parenting strategies being used.

These subtle acts of bullying – formally known as relational aggression – are mean behaviors that target individuals or social groups. It is the gossip that is spread, the kids who face social exclusion, and the negative control that is perpetrated. And it is beginning in preschool with our girls and growing with them as they move into high school and beyond.

New research shows that relational aggression behaviors form in the early years, in children as young as 3 to 5 years of age. In younger children the aggression is quite direct, with little girls saying things like “I don’t want you coming to my house” or “Your hair is greasy and it smells, so I don’t want to sit next to you.” As harsh as these words are, the pain mean girls can cause as they get older gets deeper, because sadly, they get better at manipulating the situations and disguising their mean streaks. 

Who are the mean girls?

• They are socially savvy and adept at making friends – when they want to do so.
• They can be popular, often because they are intimidating and other girls don’t want to dare to cross them.
• They can be manipulating.
• They know how to sting with words with as much pain as a punch delivers.
• They can be the preschooler next door. Research shows that girls even as young as 3 can use peer pressure to get their ways.
• They often learn these tactics from their mothers and fathers.
• Research shows that mean girls are more likely to have parents who use psychological control and manipulative tactics in discipline. These parents also use negative forms of communication, such as avoiding eye contact, laying guilt trips, and withdrawing their acts and words of love in order to elicit the behavior they want in their children.

Why are mean girls dangerous?

Relational aggression is not as obvious as the boy who throws a punch on the playground or the girl who kicks a rival classmate. It is emotional and psychological bullying, and it can be just as damaging as physically aggressive behaviors. Sometimes relational aggression can be even more damaging as it is not recognized as much as other negative behaviors, but it still has long lasting effects.

Research shows that girls who are picked on as children by other girls can suffer anxiety and depression and that it can stay with them for years to come, even into adulthood. Maybe this explains why I still remember one particular mean girl from my childhood, who could cut through your confidence with words laced in thorns.

Advances in technology also make it easier for mean girls to perpetrate their harsh words and actions. The covertness and subtle ways they have mastered as manipulators is even more powerful when it comes from behind the veiled curtain of the internet, where everything is not as it seems.

How can parents help their daughters face mean girls?

• Keep an open line of communication so that your daughter can talk with you about her experiences.
• Teach your daughter different ways to approach mean girls – ignoring the words and behaviors, countering those behaviors with resiliency, and aligning themselves with positive friends.
• Teach your daughter to take back her own identity. Mean girls often hurt others in order to control a reaction or a situation, so if the reaction is lost, the motivation for hurting is also removed.
• Let your daughter know if she doesn’t know how to handle the situation that you are there to help her.
• Encourage your child to participate in activities where you know there isn’t a history of relational aggression.

Researcher Dianna Murray-Close is working on an initiative that would bring education to classrooms to counteract relational aggression. She feels that the key is to changing the context of the situations. Mean girls are much less likely to be mean if their social payback is removed. It needs to be uncool to use relational aggression, and kids need to feel empowered to walk away from it with confidence instead of in fear. Parents also need to learn more about how their own interactions with their children can inadvertently teach them to be mean, and we need to move away from a place where this is viewed as tough and cool.

The other evening I saw a sweet, outgoing young girl be slapped with the spirit of a mean girl. The kind who says, “You can’t play with me” without any real reason why. My heart ached, as I recalled that mean girl from my own girlhood. The older I get, however, I realize what I hope this sweet young girl will soon too see – those mean girls are the friends you won’t miss, and the pain they cause you is more about how horrible they are feeling on the inside than about what they really think of you.

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Have you ever walked down the toy aisle and felt swallowed by the colors, brands, and gadgets? After parenting for more than 20 cumulative toddler and preschool years (gulp) and now shopping for toys for nieces and nephews, there are 7 types of toys I reach for when adding to the toy box collection (and none of them require batteries).

1. Blocks – Wooden, plastic, interlocking, or even rubber, blocks are timeless toys. Even extremely young children benefit from these types of toys, and many sizes and models available are safe from choking hazards. Just check for content (paint, finishes, etc.) if the child in your life will be spending just as much time chewing on them as building with them. Kids can use them for experimentation with balance, coordination, and building. If you’re giving blocks as gifts you don’t have to worry about matching sets, either, as blocks of varying sizes and styles will give more options for building creativity.

2. Puppets – There is something magical that happens when a child slides her hands into a puppet or pulls the strings that move the limbs of the marionette. Puppets become extensions of the imaginations of children. Through puppetry children develop better understandings of characters – supplying voices and actions that match characteristics. Puppetry also helps children develop storytelling capabilities, which are important pre-reading skills.

• A simple sock can be a great first puppet.
• Paper lunch bags are easy foundations for kids to create their own characters.
• Finger puppets require little coordination and are often inexpensive.
• Kids can decorate cardboard boxes and create their own puppet theatres.
• Take your kids to watch puppet shows.
• Look into community education classes that offer puppetry. Even our younger children learned from a ventriloquist and puppeteer how to bounce puppets along to music.

3. Puzzles – These toys may be old school, but puzzles are amazing learning toys that offer opportunities for children to understand spatial relationships and develop hand eye coordination. Puzzles also teach children about relationships – parts of whole pictures, pattern recognitions, and subtle color changes are all parts of puzzles.

• 3-D puzzle toys like shape sorters and stackers are great beginner puzzles for toddlers.
• Wooden and durable plastic puzzles have longer shelf life for the wear and tear toddlers can put them through so are more worth the investment.
• As toddlers grow into preschoolers they can develop dexterity by creating their own puzzles. Give kids magazine pictures, calendar photos, or the backs of cereal boxes and let them cut them out in various shapes to make their own puzzles.

4. Cups, buckets, funnels, and scoopers – Basically – the contents of your kitchen cupboard! I have never purchased as many sets of measuring cups and spoons as I did when my kids were toddlers. These can go from the bathtub to the sandbox to a dish bin of rice or beans. When kids get to experiment with these things they are able to develop the very beginning of their measuring skills.

• Save the measuring scoops that come in packaged food – they make great mini-measuring cups for little hands.
• When you wash the dishes bring the stool over and let your little one experiment with the water in the sink by running it through funnels.
• Keep a sand bucket full of scoops and funnels for the sandbox and beach. Larger scoops also make great snow-fort making tools.

5. Balls – So many times you just don’t see little girls playing with soccer balls or footballs, and they are missing out on the fun and easy ways that balls can help develop motor skills. Rubber beach balls, tennis balls, soccer balls, and whiffle balls are just some of the different kinds that can give your child hours of fun.

• Play soft toss catch with your toddler.
• Use buckets or bins for throwing aim and empty boxes for kicking goals.
• Use balls and empty milk or juice jugs for living room bowling.
• We love conversation balls that help draw our boys into important conversations while they are playing.

6. Musical instruments – And by this I use the term musical loosely, as for many toddlers and preschoolers they are just noise makers. Noisemakers, nonetheless, are great ways for kids to experiment with sound. Simple plastic flutes, kazoos, harmonicas, maracas, triangles, and drumming sticks are inexpensive ways to provide your kids with musical outlets.

• Empty paper-towel holders filled with beans or rice and sealed with heavy duty tape make great rainmakers.
• Give your kids empty shoe boxes and a stack of rubber bands in various widths and circumfrances and have them make their own guitars. They will find that the tighter the rubber band, the higher the pitch.
• Coffee cans with lids make instant and effective drums.

7. Anything with wheels – Wagons, cars, trucks, and trains are all toy box essentials. They teach children about travel, motion and friction, and imaginative play.

• Make ramps with anything available.
• Experiment with friction – does the train work best on the carpet, tiling, or bath towel?
• Provide giant floor maps and have children “drive” to visit various cities or countries – a geography lesson in disguise.

Sure – we could buy our children new toys every week and probably not exhaust the options on the store shelves. However, as anyone who has watched a child open a gift on Christmas has probably seen, sometimes the boxes are just as much fun to play with as the contents. When we surround our kids with options for creative and active play, instead of passive toys that do the work for them, we can save a few bucks in the toy store and give our kids hours of mind-growing fun. The best toys for toddlers and preschoolers are the ones that don’t require batteries – just imagination and tiny fingers and toes for operating.

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Raising Children with Dignity

Tags: dignity, honor, integrity, parenting styles, parenting with dignity

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Changing dirty diapers, wiping mashed bananas from the walls, and crawling along the cracker-dusted floor like a crocodile with your preschooler probably doesn’t seem very dignified. But consider a different idea of what it means to parent with dignity, and how that approach can positive impact your children’s lives. The dictionary defines dignity as “the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed.” How does dignity impact the lives of us as parents? For me personally it means:

• I strive to be worthy of mothering my children. I want to raise children who feel worthy of love and respect and give those things to others.
• I am honored to be a mother. I want to use that honor to instill a sense of honor in my children so that they honor others, themselves, and their faith.
• I hold my children with esteem. I want them to treat others with esteemed regard.

Neither the recent tirade of a daughter who complained in great detail on a social media page about her parents and her life or the reaction of her father who shot her laptop and posted that video and his own rant online seem to contain much dignity. But these things rarely come to a breaking point over one instance, and emphasize the idea that dignified parenting needs to begin when our children are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, instead of waiting until they explode with an online rant on their social media pages.

A book by Mac Bledsoe entitled Parenting with Dignity: The Early Years, intends to give parents the tools they need to build the foundation for a lifetime of families filled worthiness, honor, and esteem for each other. The ideas behind the book is simple in words, but for some reason much harder for parents today to put into action.

• There are no shortcuts in parenting. If you want to develop specific characteristics and behaviors in your children, you must be willing to make the efforts and take the time to teach them.
• “You do not build smooth roads, you teach them to negotiate rough terrain.”
• You have to be proactive and develop a parenting plan, and stop just reacting to your child’s behaviors.

Bledsoe writes that these important parenting methods are best supported by 5 rules for parents of children ages 2-6 years of age (but which are valuable to all parents).

1. Tell your kids what you want them to do! Explain the desired behaviors in ways your kids can understand and demonstrate for them what you mean.
2. Criticize the behavior, not the person. Correcting children is a necessary component of parenting, but it is important to distinguish between admonishing the act and demeaning the child.
3. Don’t assume they learned it: repeat it! Make sure that you give your children time to practice – everything from tying shoes to getting dressed in the morning.
4. What they say to themselves is what counts. Bledsoe reiterates this point by writing “Self-motivation is the only true motivation.” Empowering our children to be positive thinkers will give them the strength to be patient and persevere when faced with challenges.
5. Send a constant message of love. Love comes in many forms, and our children all have their own needs and preferences for receiving love. We can love our children with words, actions (like playing their favorite game with them), by listening to them, and by being present in their everyday lives.

Images of the parent who shot his daughter’s laptop and ranted about her online keep flashing through my mind. I get the frustration, I understand the emotions, but I can’t reconcile the approach with the net result. Just like spanking, the immediate result of “shock discipline” might be reached, but the long-term implications are rarely positive.

I guess in a strange way I can thank that California father for sharing his discipline worldwide for it reaffirmed for me that while our children make mistakes, our reactions to those mistakes are so much more important. I want to parent with dignity. It is not always easy, especially as I venture down the tumultuous teenage road, but it is worth it.

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The Lessons a Laptop Shooting Parent Can Teach Us

Have you heard about the one where the father shoots up the computer like a cowboy shoots up a saloon? While it might seem like a Wild West justice system, a father from California is either being hailed a hero for teaching his daughter a lesson or a criminal for verbally abusing and threatening his teenage daughter. And just like the Wild West days where it sometimes seemed hard to tell if the punishment fit the crime and where guns were used as mouthpieces, the video this father posted on YouTube is sparking a debate about parenting teenagers in what seems to me to be cowboy parenting.

The background to the video is a rebellious 15 year old who wrote a disrespectful letter about her parents and shared it online. The cowboy, err – father, responded by posting a rebuttal that ended with him shooting her laptop with a handgun. Listening to the contents of the letter written by the teen made me cringe. I have my own daughter near that age and I would be heartbroken and infuriated at the same time if she had those feelings and made them known to the world in an effort to drive the pain home. I also know that my own teenage daughter would be forever changed if I took the same actions as that father, and not for the better.

I understand the frustration that can build when children just don’t seem to understand, and I share the sentiment that children today seem to carry an air of entitlement, selfishness, and resentment that wasn’t as prevalent in past decades. However, I also have to wonder: what are the dangers of cowboy parenting?

What is cowboy parenting?

Maybe it was the cowboy hat or the dwindling smoke of his cigarette, or even just that I watched too many westerns with my father as a child or heard stories of my great-great uncle riding as a real cowboy, but this video conjures up everything that to me epitomizes cowboy parenting.

• Cowboys had to be tough to survive. So do parents of teenagers.
• Cowboys often used force to get their way. So do some parents.
• Cowboys could be unpredictable. Again…parents.
• Cowboys created and lived by their own rules, often on the fringe of acceptance.
• Cowboys lived by a code of honor that demanded respect, gave it sparingly, and relied on actions instead of words.

Cowboy parenting is having a clear end goal (instead of driving the cattle to market, it is raising the children to adulthood), and using rugged approaches to reach the goal, often with disregard for following social rules but with an air of superiority and might. I don’t want to offend any cowboys here with my stereotyping – like I said – I’m going off of childhood westerns and family history stories. It is simply the image I keep getting in my mind when I think of dramatic parenting types such as that of the laptop assassin.

What does cowboy parenting teach children?

We don’t know for certain what events led to this situation, and there were most likely many precipitating actions and reactions that led to the public display. This child might very well have learned to never again post public rants online or disrespect her parents’ rules and guidelines. The other possibilities are the ones that ones that worry me as a parent. Several themes keep coming to mind when I ask myself the question of what this father’s reaction might have taught his child.

• React to an unloving action by “one-upping” that action.
• Mocking people we love is effective and acceptable to prove our point.
• Solve problems with might, force, and aggression.
• Publically humiliate others in order to get their attention and achieve results.

What other alternatives are there to the tough love of cowboy parenting?

While we don’t know for certain what other methods have been tried in the past, this father did speak of grounding and removing technology privileges (which obviously didn’t do the trick). It is easy to be an armchair quarterback and pass judgments from the sidelines, but this particular incident has touched a nerve among parents and children. Like so many other parents, I have tried to put myself in this father’s position and ask myself would could have been done better.

He claims the problem is she is selfish, which might very well be the case. Take the laptop and the child and have her deliver it to a child who needs one for school but doesn’t have parents to buy one for her. Give the laptop to a child with a parent in the military so that he or she can Skype with a mom or dad who serves overseas. The list of possible ways for the daughter to lose her laptop but give to someone else goes on and on. By giving the daughter a different perspective he could have had the same end result of no laptop in the house, but with an entirely different message.

He was understandably upset about his daughter’s lack of respect of the adults in her life. Respect is not taught by demanding it with tough love. True respect is earned through loving actions, and yes – discipline can be a loving action when used in effective ways.

He was upset about her public humiliation of him, so he proved his point by doing the same in return to her – an eye for an eye – and he more than succeeded his point. The entire world was never aware of her initial rant, but we are all privy to the disagreement now. If you want to teach children how to treat others, leading by example will far outsmart stooping to their levels for true and honest long-term results.

What is the cost of cowboy parenting?

This California daughter might not ever post another status update in her life, or publically humiliate her parents online. She is a teenager, though, and she will most likely make more mistakes, conceivably much worse than airing a selfish complaint letter on a social media site. What happens if she experiments with and starts using drugs? Becomes pregnant? Crashes her mom’s new car? Gets in trouble at school? Commits a crime?

The list of possible teenager mistakes, trials, and misjudgments is long and full of emotion and turmoil. If you as a parent have just set the bar for an online rant as the one in this case, how are you going to discipline your child and redirect her on a better path if you are acting as a cowboy parent? Maybe it is time to put the gun in the holster, get off the horse, and have a long sip of water from the well. Parenting teens is exhaustingly tough. We need to do it with a cool head, a kind heart, and a goal to teach our children to be better. It begins with our actions – not theirs.

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Don’t Choose a Doctor for Your Children

Tags: child’s health, children’s health, choosing a doctor, choosing a pediactrician, healthy kids, medical health

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Anyone who looks at my family’s medical records might think I have a fear of commitment – there are 6 of us and between us we see 4 different doctors, and we’ve “tried on” several more besides. When my children were infants and toddlers I made the call as to who their pediatricians or family doctors were, but as they get older I want them to learn how to manage their own health. They can’t do that if I am making all of the decisions for them and then suddenly setting them free when they turn 18. By encouraging them to find a doctor of their own choosing I want them to learn how to do two specific things:

Learn how to manage their own health as much as possible.

Be comfortable with the physician who provides their care.

Healthcare is such a personal  and integral part of a person’s life. My OB/GYN has seen more parts of me than anyone else, has delivered all of my children, and is someone with whom I feel completely safe and trust with my medical health – but I chose him – no one else chose him for me. Our children have their own personalities and their own ideas about who they feel secure with and why. Some of them might prefer a sense of humor, others might want someone who is never late. Encouraging our children to recognize their own needs and find a way to pursue them extends much beyond their medical health.

How to Help Your Child Choose a Doctor

I’m not saying you should let your child have complete and final call, and you end up driving 2 hours each way to appointments that aren’t covered by insurance. You still get to be the guiding hand, but in a way that allows for your child’s individual needs to be met.

• Begin by having a conversation with your child about why it is important to trust and feel comfortable with a medical caregiver – whether it is a natural path caregiver or pediatrician who studied at 3 elite hospitals. Your child can be the most physically healthy person around, but we can’t predict the health needs of our children. There may come a point in time where your child does need medical care and it is very helpful if your child already feels secure with the person providing the care.
• Talk with your child about what is important to her when it comes to her medical caregiver. My daughter has a female family practice provider, while my oldest son chose a male pediatrician. Gender wasn’t the only thing influencing their decisions. My son – who plays almost any and every sport – has a doctor who specialized in sports medicine.
• Read and review the bios of potential physicians or caregivers with your child. Many hospitals and clinics have these online or in brochures.
• Ask if your clinic has “meet-n-greet” appointments where you have 10 minutes with the doctor just so that your child can meet him or her and go over general questions. Some clinics do this free of charge, or have very inexpensive fees.
• Don’t feel locked into your choice, especially if your insurance allows you to change practitioners.

How to Help Your Kids Take Charge of Their Own Medical Health

When your children are ill are you the kind of parent who gives all of the details to the doctor – providing all of that important information like how much food they are able to eat, what their temperatures have been, and how much they are or aren’t sleeping? I used to be that parent – when my kids couldn’t do it for themselves. Now I see that encouraging my kids to take the lead on their doctor visits not only helps the doctors make better diagnoses, but it teaches my children how to be responsible for their own medical health. My kids know which medications and items they are allergic to and when their last physicals were, but they are also learning how to truly communicate with their medical caregivers.

Before entering the visit, I remind my kids that I want them to do the talking – sharing what their concerns are and describing them to the doctor as completely as possible. It isn’t a time for shrugging shoulders as a response in true teenage fashion.

Sometimes doctors get so used to just asking parents what is going on that they direct them only to the parents. I have found when I enter the exam room with my child that if I look at my child when the doctor asks a question, he can read from my body language that my child can and should be the one to answer.

For my older children I ask if they want me in the exam room or not with them during their visits. As teenagers they are getting old enough to make those decisions and have that privacy.

Even though I encourage my children to take responsibility for their own healthcare, I still reserve the right to fill in some missing blanks and ask my own questions of the doctor. My 10 year old son is about as subtle as you can get, so when I took him in for his last doctor visit he told the doctor “I have a cough that won’t go away.” While that was very true, he failed to mention that the reason (and maybe because I didn’t tell him) I made the appointment was because he told me he didn’t have the energy to go sledding with his friends, something he would normally rush to do. As soon as I told the doctor that key piece of information, she knew it was more than just a cold and paid more attention to his symptoms – which were actually from pneumonia.

We so often want to wrap our children up in security and keep them safe and healthy (bubble wrap comes to mind), but we when do this we can overlook their needs to learn how to become more responsible for their medical health, a lifelong skill that can truly be life changing.

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Is Spanking Harmful?

Tags: discipline, health risks of spanking, punishment, spanking

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New Study Shows Spanking is Not Child’s Play

For the last few decades the debate about whether or not parents should utilize corporal punishment such as spanking has heated up over the emotional implications that it can bring. An intriguing new scientific report that has just been released indicates that not only are there emotional risks associated with spanking, but there are very real medical risks as well.

Analysis done by Canadian researchers of more than 80 studies shows that “Spanking children can cause long-term developmental change and may even lower a child’s IQ…”. The report from the Canadian Medical Association Journal addresses what authors feel has been an under-examined and ignored portion of the discipline debate – the medical implications that spanking can cause for children.

The results of this recent study are these. Physical punishment:

• makes children more physically aggressive.
• makes children more antisocial.
• contributes to cognitive impairment.
• contributes to developmental hurdles.
• reduces the brain’s grey matter – a negative outcome significant and relevant to IQ testing.
• Increases the likelihood of future substance abuse.
• Increases the likelihood of future issues with depression.
• Has no documented future benefits.

The point that authors of this study keep trying to point to is that when there are other medical issues and discoveries made, such as the benefits of taking certain vitamins or risks of consuming certain medications, society readily accepts these findings as fact and makes better, more informed choices. However, even in light of all of this research many societies all over the world still generally accept spanking as a legitimate form of discipline (although it is illegal in 32 countries).

Alternatives to Spanking

It seems that the old adage isn’t necessarily – “When you know better, you do better.” In this instance it seems that a little bit more than knowledge needs to be gained. Parents need tools for healthier forms of discipline.

When parents were raised in homes where spanking was a possible discipline method, chances increase that they will turn to that same method. Instead of just using the tools of the past, however, parents need to make a commitment for positive change.

Begin by understanding why you choose to spank. Some parents justify it as a quick action that gets immediate results, especially in situations where the child doesn’t seem to grasp his parent’s urgency. The choice is always the parents’, though, and blaming the actions of the children instead of the reactions of the parents doesn’t put the focus where it belongs. All children misbehave. The focus needs to be on how parents choose to handle their reactions.

Make a commitment to only touch your child in loving, respectful ways. When my husband and I first became parents we talked about how we only wanted to respond to our children how we hoped that they would learn to respond to others, and that didn’t include spanking or physical aggression.

Teach yourself some new methods for relaxation and focus, such as counting, removing yourself from the situation if necessary, folding your hands as if in prayer (maybe not a bad idea at this point!), deep breathing, and quickly reminding yourself of at least one special thing about your child. It is hard to resort to spanking if you are remembering his first birthday party.

• For those little ones 18 months and younger, redirection and positive reinforcement of good behaviors is the best deterrent of negative behaviors.
• Toddlers still respond to redirection, but clear and stern verbal instructions can be added into the mix. It is important to be consistent, as this is the age when your toddler will push those buttons as hard and as often as possible to test the waters of independence.
• The early elementary years offer important opportunities for positive communication, clear rules and boundaries, and clear and consistent consequences. It is also a good time to let some of those consequences be discovered by your child, as independent learning is often the best teacher.
• In the tween and teen years we are back to the waters of independence, only with taller and smarter children. Discipline during these ages needs to be as unemotional as possible so that you don’t create a tense situation or build up walls between you and your child. Learn to choose your battles carefully and find ways to respect the individuality of your kids. The more you do this, the less often you might feel no other option than spanking.

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Old-School Apprenticeships Help Children Learn in Modern World

It might sound really old fashioned, but apprenticeships are coming back in style, just like retro tees for women and Zubaz (ahh – the memories) for guys. And these aren’t the apprenticeships of old where you lease out your children as soon as they turn 13 so that they can learn a trade you think will be valuable to them and your entire family. Modern apprenticeships take the passion and abilities of children and combine those with phenomenal real world opportunities to learn from masters of crafts, trades, and higher thinking.

When my kids want to learn more about changing the oil in the truck, they go to Dad, but if they want to find out how to make an amazing cheesecake from scratch, they come to me. If they want to learn how to throw a better sinker at the plate, we tell them we can’t help them. But then we go, like we did with our son, and find a professional who can help. The kids have learned what so many adults have unfortunately pushed out of the way to make room for the more convenient brick and mortar ways of learning: hands-on learning and exploration with guidance by experts is one of the most effective ways to develop skills and to help people find their own true paths.

Modern Apprenticeships

I recently heard about The Institute for Educational Advancement, a non-profit based in California, which takes exceptionally gifted children and matches them with apprenticeships that match the students’ particular passions. These aren’t your run of the mill programs, either, as we are talking about high school students who might become an apprentice in anything from liver stem cell maintenance research, to aerosol pollution issues, to a state’s Supreme Court. As the studies are rigorous and intense, they are only designed for the very upper percent of the most academically successful students.

While programs like those offered through The Institute for Education Advancement might seem intimidating or unavailable for many students, even those above average ones, this type of program highlights a very valuable and underused approach in modern education. Apprenticeship is one of the most powerful ways our children can get a true feeling for the day-to-day operations and expectations of a career. The apprenticeship doesn’t have to last for years like those of the past – the ones arranged by The Institute for Education Advancement are only weeks in duration, but they are intense and give a perspective that just can’t be found while sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture.

If we don’t have access to elite apprenticeship programs like these, how can we as parents help prepare our children to pursue their passions, especially when those might be in areas where we have no personal or relevant experience?

Find mentors in your children’s fields of interest. In the handbook Parenting Teens, by Dr. Clifford L. Johnson, chapter 3 begins with “Your teenager needs a mentor. It doesn’t matter whether your child is a 4.0 student or a failing student, a mentor can help him or her be more successful.” I have found that many professionals are more than happy to lead children in these specific, goal oriented type approaches. If you are seeking for mentors for your kids, consider the following:

Look for possible mentors in your neighborhood, church, and among your friends. You can even call universities and businesses and ask if they have people who are willing to work with youth on goal oriented learning experiences through mentoring. Our daughter’s dog training class leader is also a veterinarian (the life goal of my daughter), so my daughter asked her if she can come and observe her during work. Not only was my daughter welcomed into the clinic, but she got to participate in certain portions as well. 

Be up front with the possible mentor (or better yet, have your child be up front). Let that person know that his career, hobby, or other pursuits are of great interest and your child is really interested in learning as much as possible him.

Help your child set goals specifically pertaining to that mentor. If the mentor is an expert in sewing and your child wants to learn how to sew a quilt, make that the end goal and talk with the mentor about all of the steps in between that will be necessary in order to reach this goal. This gives your child and the mentor the opportunity to assess the situation and make a plan.

Try to make visits with the mentor more than just a one shot deal. It takes time to build a relationship where both your child feels comfortable and where the mentor feels engaged enough to let your child see the “not so fun” aspects and make some mistakes.

Look for mentors and experts in unusual places. Right now my boys are excited about yo-yos – they fling through my house with lightning speed and have caused a few injuries. I can barely get the toy to move up and down, so when my boys want to learn more tricks, they turn to experts they have found online. They watch videos, ask questions of the experts, and have plans to attend a demonstration/competition where they can meet in person with these experts.

Have you ever watched the television show The Apprentice – that one with business mogul Donald Trump firing all but the last competitor? We need something like that for our youth – a way in which kids can experience real world job situations and learn on the fly. Apprenticeships might be old-school, but they can probably give our kids benefits that just can’t be found in school. If you had been exposed to your career path in this way, would you have chosen the same direction?

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15 Easy Valentines to Give Your Kids

Tags: gifts for your kids, Valentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day gifts, Valentine’s Day gifts for your kids, valentines

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The first man to ever give me a Valentine was my father. It was a small statue of a little girl that read Dear God, Thanks for Fridays!, and Dad presented it to me as I sat working on homework in my room after school one Valentine’s Day. Now, my dad was not a habitual knick-knack giver and Valentine’s Day had never been a time in my family of traditions like this, so when he appeared out of nowhere and simply said “Happy Valentine’s Day – I love you” it was as if he had handed me a moonbeam engraved with my name.

Even though it is touted as a holiday for sweethearts, Valentine’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to show your children how much they mean to you and just how much they are loved. They don’t have to be extravagant or lavish gifts. They just need to come from your heart and speak to your children’s hearts.

• Use cookie cutters to make heart shaped foods for your kids – pancakes, sandwiches, tortillas, or anything you can cut and serve with love.
• Give your child a homemade coupon (or even a whole coupon booklet!). This way you can tailor your gift to your individual child. You might include things like
• Stay up Late Tonight
• Skip One Chore Today
• Choose the Family Movie to Watch
• Extra Bedtime Story
• Please Make My Favorite Dessert
• Write specific things you love about your child on small slips of paper, fold them, and fill a jar with your love for your child. Give the jar to your child and let him read one each morning or fill up his heart and read them all at once.
• Surprise your child by picking her up from school and taking her on a special outing to her favorite park.
• Get out your child’s baby book and show him baby pictures of himself while you tell him about the day he was born and everything you loved about that day.
• Make a treasure hunt for your child where the clues lead her to a special Valentine card, treat, or special token of your love.
• Create old fashioned homemade Valentine cards with your child and deliver them to neighbors or nursing home residents.
• Surprise your child by putting his favorite treat in his backpack or lunchbox, or leave it on his nightstand to find in the morning.
• Make a list with your child of all the things you love to do together, then pick one or more and choose a day on the calendar to go do these things. It will give you and your child a fun event to look forward to and remind you of the special love moms and dads have for their kids.
• Teach your child something new – how to ice skate, knit, or find the best tree for climbing. When we give our children teaching time we are giving them loving actions that will stay with them.
• Say a prayer for your child, and have them listen to you. So many times we might pray for our kids’ safety or well-being, but we might utter the words under our breath or only in our minds. When we pray out loud for our children we are opening our hearts to them.
• Take a t-shirt and use fabric paint to write “I Have the Best Son” on it and wear it proudly (not all teens think this is the best idea!).
• Get cozy flannel or cotton prints that reflect your child’s favorite things – I chose one with guitars on it for my string pick’n son – and make a homemade pillowcase. You can just fold 1.5 yards of fabric and sew to fit.
• Make paper heart chains, grab some balloons, and decorate your dining room with your child for a special Valentine’s Day meal for the family. Have little ones create homemade placemats by personalizing pieces of pink construction paper with pictures that show what your child loves about each person. Laminate them if possible for reusable keepsakes.
• Give your child an unexpected gift like my dad did. Your child may not scream with excitement or drop to her knees in thanks, but chances are she will always remember it and treasure it – just like I do.

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If you watch mainstream television, you might think that marriage is more like a side dish for families – where the stability of a marital relationship is an “extra” for the health, success, and future of our children. However, as I stood in church today I was again reminded that marriage is more like the main course in our families, and that our children need us to do everything we can to create healthy, nurturing marriages – for their sakes. During the service anyone who had been married at our church was invited to stand in a brief moment of recognition for all of the lives that had been joined within those walls. As I stood, recalling my own marriage there almost 17 years ago, I saw an elderly couple ahead of me whisper to each other, smile, and gesture at all of the people standing around them. I wondered what their whispers were saying; wondered what their knowing smiles meant.

This isn’t a referendum on single, divorced, or cohabitating parents, and it is not a religious agenda in disguise. Whether you believe that marriage is a sacred comittment, a socially acceptable promise, or an outdated social invention, the effects married parents can have on their children are real. It is about the research supported facts about marriage and roles it plays in our children’s lives. The good, the bad, and the average marriages.

How Does Cohabitation Affect Children?

This is a look at marriages, and what they mean for our children, especially in light of the changing trends in family structures in society. One of those trends is that of cohabitation – either biological parents living together outside of marriage and raising children or one parent living with either a boyfriend or girlfriend and raising children.

Cohabitation now accounts for a larger percentage of family structures than does single parenting. While approximately 20% of children live with single parents, 24% of children live with cohabitating parents (more than 4 out of 10). Cohabitation is not new, but the idea of it is becoming more mainstream and accepted. As it does so, the effects of this family structure are becoming clearer. Cohabitation does not provide children with the same security and stability as having married parents does, and it can increase the likelihood of unhealthy outcomes.

You might think that cohabitating adults offer a better scenario than single parents, where there is more energy, time, attention, and resources available for the children. However, research shows that across all three main areas of abuse – physical, sexual, and emotional – parents with cohabitating partners have children who are at most risk for abuse, far outweighing single parent households. Cohabitating couples with a child together are also twice as likely to separate before their child is 12 when compared with married couples.

How Does Family Structure Affect Children?

Children thrive in stable, nurturing environments. Research shows that across multitudes of levels, children who live in a home where there is a healthy, marital relationship between parents experience the most benefits. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, these children are:

• More likely to attend college
• More likely to succeed academically
• Physically and emotionally healthier
• Less likely to attempt or commit suicide
• Less likely to demonstrate behavioral problems in school
• Less likely to be a victim of physical or sexual abuse
• Less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol
• More likely to have better relationships with their own parents
• Less likely to become divorced in their adult lives
• Less likely to become a pregnant teen or teen parent
• Less likely to be sexually active as a teen
• Less likely to contract an STD
• Less likely to be raised in poverty

Increasingly kids are raised in what some refer to as “complex households” (where children live with non-biological caregivers, step-siblings and parents, and non-family members). Family life in complex households impacts the futures of children. The more transitions there are for children, such as cohabitating parents breaking up and forming new adult relationships, the more likely those children are to experience negative issues such as school failures and drug abuse. They are also more likely to have poor relationships with their family members and experience health problems.

Unhealthy Marriage vs. Healthy Single Parent

There are those instances where parents together as married adults are not more effective or nurturing than they are as single parents. I have seen marriages fall apart and children appear to be healthier and happier, especially when there is an abusive relationship involved. Being married does not guarantee healthy children. Working to create a healthy marriage appears to be the key – and I stress working – as in constant work-in-progress. Authors of Why Marriage Matters wrote that “Marriages that are unhealthy do not have the same benefits as the average marriage.” But what in the world is an average marriage?

If you have ever read 10 Lessons to Transform Your Marriage, by John and Julie Gottman, you might get a sense of an average marriage. There is strife, discord, love, and commitment all rolled into that one relationship. Some couples argue over every little thing, and others hold it all in and wait for the big explosion, while others yet seem to have mastered communication skills. In average marriages there are disagreements, arguments, painful emotions, unrecognized feelings, and apathy. While it doesn’t sound like a recipe for a warm and nurturing relationship, we have to look a little deeper.

If I have a disagreement with my husband and find a resolution, we teach our children perseverance and respect in relationships.

If I support my husband’s interests (even when they are far from my own – like hunting), I teach my children that differences don’t have to separate.

If I go on date night even when I feel like I would rather curl up in my pajamies (yep – that’s our word) after a horrendously busy week, I teach my children that we need to put priorities on relationships instead of things. (And then I’m always glad I went on date night.)

If I cry and my husband comforts me (even when he has no idea why I am crying), it teaches my children what a healthy, respectful relationship looks like.

If I give up on my marriage when the times are tough – because they will be at one time or another – I teach my children that our beliefs about commitment, relationships, and each other aren’t what they thought. That is one lesson I am not ready to teach them. So as I stood there in church today, looking at the elderly couple ahead of me, I prayed for the strength and wisdom that is needed to keep my marriage healthy and happy – perhaps average some days – but always an extraordinary gift for my kids.

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There are many gifts we would love to be able to give our children, but self-esteem is one of those we can’t just wrap up with a bow and hand over to them. We have to create environments where their self-esteem can grow and flourish. I guess why they call it “self”-esteem.

It was saddening the other day to hear a young girl at the library tell her mom, “I stink at this. I never get the right answers and I’m too stupid to figure it out.” I couldn’t help but wonder how this young girl got to the point where she saw herself in such low terms. And then I heard the mom reply, “It’s OK honey. Not everyone can be smart at everything. You don’t need to finish it right now.” The “it” appeared to be homework, and the answer to my wondering was right before me. Kids think less of themselves when we reaffirm their worries and give them permission to fail – even when we are trying to be supportive.

What is Self-Esteem?

There is a great definition I once found in this little, inconspicuous spiral-bound book called, Your Child and Self-Esteem – Helping Children Respect Themselves and Others. “Self-esteem is the consequence of how we cope, what we believe, how we were raised, and most importantly – how we live.”

Self-esteem is about more than kids just feeling good about themselves. It is about them actively being good – to themselves and the world around them. It is the difference between being egotistical and being self and community-aware. Children who have positive self-esteem are more likely to be able to use their talents, abilities, and resources to fulfill their own goals and contribute to their surroundings. Their families, communities, schools, and employers all benefit, for even though self-esteem is an individual concept, it is what gives kids the skills to overcome obstacles and persevere.

How Can I Help My Child Build Self-Esteem?

There are expectations all around our children, from floods of almost unachievable body images in the media, to academic pressures, to family dysfunctions that lead to emotional stressors. All of these impact self-esteem.

The Parent Club Handbook develops what it refers to as a three step process for helping children build self-esteem.

1. Parents work to create an environment where physical, emotional, and intellectual needs are met with safe and loving reactions, and where kids have plenty of opportunities for challenges and success.
2. A child must be allowed to try and fail – all on his or her own.
3. Parents need to encourage their children’s efforts and love them when those efforts fail (especially when those efforts fail).

Much of what this handbook proposes falls in line with unconditional parenting, and some of it probably makes Alfie Kohn cringe, especially the parts about praising and rewarding efforts. Even though I find myself somewhere in the middle of these parenting philosophies, there are definitely merits to the strategies that the Parent Club Handbook suggests we employ to help our children build self-esteem. Among these includes a great discussion about the connection between the relationship between self-esteem and our self-control.

The more conflict there is between our morals and our behaviors, the more our self-esteem decreases.

The handbook suggests the mirror test. Stand in front of a mirror and ask, “Do my choices and how I treat others reflect my values?” For kids this exercise can be simplified into, “Am I acting like a person I would feel good about and want to spend time with?” The morals and values we demonstrate for and teach our children about impact their self-esteem.

It is so vitally important that our kids learn to love themselves, and they learn to do that when we give them their first lesson in unconditional love – that between a parent and a child. As our children grow, we can do several things to give them the tools for healthy self-esteem.

Give them our time. Time to read together, listen to their silly stories, and support their interests show them that we value them and they are worth value.

Help them find their passions. Once they are passionate about something, give them tools to further pursue their passions. Don’t worry if their passions are not your own – this isn’t about your claim to football fame or your want to raise an artist.

Find their love language – how they best express and receive your love. For some kids it is physical touch, and for others it is by spending extra quality time with you.

Forgive your children and ask for their forgiveness when you do wrong.

Let them fail. We can’t raise children who are strong enough to overcome obstacles if we just lower the bar. Their self-esteem will actually improve when they figure out for themselves how to fix or solve a problem.

Find ways for your child to contribute to your family. This might be through sharing a passion for cooking and making Saturday breakfast with you, or a green thumb and the desire to grow some veggies for the family. Family contributions make us feel connected – something kids yearn for as they grow.

Find ways for your child to contribute to the community. When we feel we are a part of something bigger, we see beyond ourselves and truly develop a “whole” perspective.

Listen to your child. Even when you have a million things running through your brain and on your plate, take the time to listen to their stories and questions. You will show them that they are worth the time – because they really are.

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