Parents.com has published Easy Ways to Make Your Backyard More Fun
Some take some work to accomplish, but others are super easy. Why not take a look as see some fun hot weather outdoor play ideas?
Check out their Activity Finder for many, many ideas!
I just read a really disturbing article in Great Schools.org. Great Schools is a very reputable site concerned with giving kids the best possible start in life. I would really like every parent to read this and heed the warning! Here are the highlights:
You may download a pdf version of the complete article here: Is There a TV in Your Child’s Bedroom?
Are you afraid your child isn’t normal? Just about every parent has this fear at one time or another. The media reports huge increases in autism rates. There are more and more children being diagnosed with mental disorders like bipolar disorder. Then there’s the preschool and kindergarten teachers telling parents their boys are hyperactive. So what is a parent to do?
I’m going to give you some common sense considerations to help you decide if there is need for intervention.
1. When looking at the benchmarks for development, is your child young or past the average age for that skill? For example, a baby usually learns to sit unsupported between 4 and 9 months. If your baby is not sitting unsupported at 6 months, this is not a sign of possible developmental delay. If however, he is 10 months and still not sitting well, then you should let your pediatrician know and seek further evaluations. Also, if your baby was premature or has had serious medical conditions in the first months of life, he may lag behind developmentally for as long a year and not be considered delayed.
I am concerned about baby and children’s sleep as it relates to their behavior and intellectual development. Since we all want smarter, healthier children, sleep is far more important than what milk we feed them or which vitamin is touted to give them the edge.
I read some articles based on the UK Millennium Cohort Study. They are studying 11,000 children born in 2000 and will follow them through adulthood. There were some interesting facts to emerge from the study.
The children were evaluated at 9 months, 3, 5, and 7 years with parental questionnaires and in-home studies. The questions about the children’s sleep related to whether they had a regular bedtime and whether they slept before 9 pm. They did not report how many hours their children slept, however.
The results of standardized tests in math, reading and spatial abilities when they were 7 years old showed a definite difference between children with a regular bedtime and those with none. Children with consistent bedtimes throughout their early years showed better performance across all subject areas, while children with irregular bedtimes had lower test scores on all subjects.
We know from other studies that the brain is subject to change — especially when it’s laying down nerve tracks and making new connections in early childhood. The key to keeping the brain in this adaptable state is sleep. Reduced or disrupted sleep, especially if it occurs at key times in development, could have important impacts throughout life.
The link between lack of sleep and a child’s behavior often isn’t as obvious as with adults. We can mistake lots of energy for being well-rested. Instead of being sluggish and grumpy like an adult, kids often become hyper or have extremes in their behavior when they don’t get enough sleep.
Although there are an average number of hours babies and children should sleep, each child has their own optimum. You may have to experiment to find the best pattern for your child.
Some ways to see if your child should sleep earlier or longer can be seen by their behavior. If your child’s eyes start looking droopy or glazed over, you should probably be putting him to bed. Fighting to stay awake past that slow down will usually result in hyperactivity or misbehavior and a much harder time settling down to sleep. Then when your child wakes in the morning after enough sleep he or she will wake easily and be ready to get dressed and eat and get on with the day. If your child keeps trying to go back to sleep or resists getting dressed or eating, they may need more sleep.
Sleep deprivation adds up over time, so an hour less per night is like a night without sleep by the end of the week. Symptoms of insufficient sleep can lead to decreased attentiveness, decreased short-term memory, inconsistent performance, and delayed response time.
So here are the average number of hours of sleep for different ages:
Babies up to 6 months need 16-20 hours, roughly divided equally between night and day.
6-12 months need 3 hours in the day and 9-11 hours at night.
Preschoolers to 12 years need 10-12 hours at night.
I know for some of you, you see this as an impossible dream. But with science and experience to back it up, we should be doing all we can to make enough good sleep for our children one of our goals. Think about solutions that will give your children more uninterrupted sleep. If you make some changes that work, I’d like to hear from you: Diane
I recently read a post called, “How to Raise a Pagan Kid in a Christian Home” and his follow up, “Five Keys to Guiding Your Kid to a Faith that Lasts.”
I was challenged and that started me thinking. So, I’m going to share some quotes from his posts and add some comments of my own. In the months ahead, I’ll share more ideas for ways to help your children have their own strong faith.
Barrett Johnson, the author of the posts said,
“Too many times, (Christian) parents have it as their goal to make their kids good and moral. It is as if the entire purpose of their family’s spiritual life is to shape their children into law-abiding citizens who stay out of trouble. The only problem with this goal is that it runs in stark contrast to what the Bible teaches. The gospel is not about making bad people moral, but about making dead people alive. If we teach morality without the transforming power of the gospel and the necessity of a life fully surrendered to God’s will, then we are raising moral pagans.”
Veggie Tales creator, Phil Vischer, said in an interview,
“I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality. . .
“And that was such a huge shift for me from the American Christian ideal. We’re drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore. Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god.”
Challenging, isn’t it? Praying for our children, teaching them to say grace at the table and at bedtime, and taking them to Sunday School won’t be enough to make them Christian. Just saying the sinner’s prayer isn’t enough without also helping them become disciples of Jesus.
Actually, there is no absolute, sure-fire way to guarantee your children will become disciples of Jesus. Think about Adam and Eve. They had the perfect environment and the perfect Father, yet they chose to disobey God’s one rule. Our children are growing up in a very broken world with much less than perfect parents. Add to that mix the inherited bent to sin and it is no wonder they are sinners in need of the salvation only Jesus provides.
Barrett ends his first post with this.
“What we need is kids who fully grasp the reality that they have nothing to offer, but who intimately know a God who has everything they need.”
His Five Keys are these:
Clarify Your Parenting Goals
Have a Biblical Theology of Life-change
Help Your Kids to Fall in Love with Jesus
Operate With an Accurate View of the Gospel
Teach Your Kids to Daily Submit Themselves to God
This article cannot be long enough to cover all of these. Please read his blog post, Five Keys to Guiding Your Kid to a Faith that Lasts and begin thinking about ways you can help your children know, love, and obey Jesus instead of becoming moral pagans. I will continue in the next few months with other thoughts on this topic.