Health, Fashion, Parenting and Women Related Issues

Children shouldn’t snack while they’re out trick-or-treating. They should wait until they get home and parents have had a chance to inspect the goodies. To help prevent children from munching, give them a snack or light meal before they go—don’t send them out on an empty stomach.

Tell children not to accept—and, especially, not to eat—anything that isn’t commercially wrapped.

When children bring their treats home, discard any homemade candy or baked goods. Parents of young children should also remove any choking hazards such as gum, peanuts, hard candies or small toys.

Inspect commercially wrapped treats for signs of tampering, such as an unusual appearance or discoloration, tiny pinholes, or tears in wrappers. Throw away anything that looks suspicious.

If juice or cider is served to children at Halloween parties, make sure it is pasteurized or otherwise treated to destroy harmful bacteria. Juice or cider that has not been treated will say so on the label.

Although it can take a tremendous amount of self-discipline to avoid taking the bait on days when your child seems determined to trap you in a power struggle, it’s important to do just that and keep your cool. Here’s what you stand to lose if you freak out:

Your credibility as a parent. If you become angry and your child was deliberately seeking that kind of reaction from you, you lose some of your credibility as a parent and tip the power balance in your child’s favor.

Your effectiveness as a parent. You may find yourself giving in to your child to make up for losing your cool. These sorts of flip-flops are confusing to a child and make you a much less effective parent.

Your decision-making abilities. Getting trapped in a power struggle impairs your judgment and makes it difficult for you to make well-reasoned parenting decisions. You may find that you are so busy reacting to your child’s recent behavior that you find it difficult to plan your next parenting move.

Your enjoyment of parenting. You may find yourself feeling increasingly disconnected from your child and increasingly disenchanted with your parenting responsibilities. No one likes to feel as if they are being manipulated, parents included. If you feel like your child has managed to wrestle away some of the power and control that is rightfully yours as a parent, you may be angry at yourself for allowing that to happen and resentful toward your child for gaining the upper hand—something that can put you on the fast-track to parent burnout.

It’s totally normal for you and your partner to have different ways of eating, dressing or watching TV. But one thing you need to do the same way is parent. Here are a few tips to help you co-parent successfully.

Accept the inevitability of parenting disagreements. You and your partner are unlikely to see eye-to-eye on every conceivable parenting issue. After all, you’re two entirely different people. Although you’ll probably find that most of your parenting conflicts are relatively easy to resolve—for example, for the sheer sake of marital harmony, you may be able to live with the fact that your partner lets the kids eat chocolate chip cookies for breakfast occasionally—other conflicts may be a bit trickier to resolve, particularly if those differences come down to a fundamental difference in parenting styles. In this case, some heavy-duty backroom negotiations may be in order so that you can present a united front to the kids.

Keep it private. If you and your partner have some fundamental differences of opinion on how certain types of parenting situations should be handled, try to work out those differences in private. If you find that you disagree more than you agree, you may want to consider taking a parenting course together or working with a marriage and family counselor to try to identify some parenting common ground and to find out if some unrelated issues may be causing problems in your marital relationship. Remember to treat your partner with respect as you attempt to work through these difficulties. It’s important not to allow any marital problems the two of you may be experiencing to affect the quality of your parenting decisions. Read more

Making the transition from summer fun to the start of the school year can be difficult for children—and it isn’t exactly a piece of cake for adults, either.

Who wants to go from sleeping in late and playing all day to waking up early and dealing with the work and social pressures of school? Parents have to get back into the routine of helping kids with homework at night, preparing bagged lunches and keeping tabs on their children’s progress in school.

There are ways, however, for parents to ease the change in schedule and prepare themselves and their children for the challenges and (yes, even) the fun of the school year. Here are a few tips for making back-to-school time a bit easier for everyone:

Be prepared. A little preparation can really reduce your child’s anxiety about the unknowns of the new school year.

Spend time talking with your child about school and what might happen on the first day before classes begin. If you have a younger child, try reading books about school.

Bring your child to school in advance. Let them check out their new classroom, find their new locker and maybe even say hi to their new teacher.

Let your child know it’s OK to feel nervous when starting school. Remind them that teachers and other kids are nervous, too. Read more

Here are some things you will want to know if you have a highly intense child:

When it’s a good thing: A high-intensity child demands and receives the attention of adults. You never have to worry about his needs being overlooked because he will never allow that to happen. He’s good at looking out for No. 1.

When it’s not such a good thing: A high-intensity child’s theatrics can get a bit tiresome at times: He refuses to go to bed because his favorite pillow case in in the laundry.

Bringing out the best in your highly intense Child: Patience in the extreme is required when you’re parenting a high-intensity child—not just because you need it in order to avoid blowing your top, but because you want to model this particular virtue for your child. (High-intensity kids tends to be a little bit lacking in the patience department.)