Parenting Your Teenager: 4 Dangerous Myths
July 31, 2010
MYTH: All teens have to rebel, and the teen years will be miserable years for a family.
REALITY: Teens do have to separate from their parents and families. That’s good - otherwise kids would be living at home when they are 35.
They do, however, have to earn the privilege of being in charge.
MYTH: Once teens rebel, you have lost them forever.
REALITY: This is the fear of every parent, but it doesn’t happen in most cases. As the proverb says, “Raise up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.”
Two very important factors are implied here:
1) At some point, it is likely they could “depart” from what you have taught, and
2) they will come back to it.
This notion is elaborated on in Miller Newton’s book “Adolescence: Surviving the Perilous Journey.” Miller calls this notion Withdrawal - Isolation - Re-emergence. His view is that all adolescents withdraw, and some will go so far as to isolate themselves. They will, however, re-emerge at some point. Part of the parents’ job then is to maintain the connection so a relationship can exist when they re-emerge.
Parenting Your Teenager: 7 Tips for Back to School Success
July 30, 2010
Blink. That’s all we did, blink, and summer is ending and a new school year is beginning.
Parents have mixed emotions. Relief that the kids are going back and dread that another school year, and the battles that come with it, is right around the corner.
Here are tips for a successful school year for students and parents.
Tips for Students
Get a good start. If you start out behind, you dig a hole that you will spend the rest of the year digging out of, if at all.
Get a good finish. Even more important than getting a good start is getting a good finish. Keep doing the positive things you began the year and semester doing. Follow through and finish well.
Duck the personality conflicts. Sometime in your school life, you will run into a teacher with whom you do not get along. Instead of blaming your poor performance on “the teacher doesn’t like me,” take it as a challenge to learn how to succeed even when someone in authority does not like you. It’s good training for the real world.
Parenting Your Teenager: How to Build Trust
July 29, 2010
“Mom, can I go to the mall with my friend Jenny?'’
“No, not after you came home late last night.'’
“Well, everyone else gets to.'’
“I don’t care what everybody else gets to do; you can’t.'’
“You just don’t trust me.'’
“You’ve got to earn it.'’
“I have.'’
“No, you haven’t.'’
“Have, too.'’
“Have not.'’
SLAM! Etc.
If the above conversation sounds familiar, you’re probably the parent of a teen-ager.
I especially like the “everybody else gets to do it'’ line. My parents’ response was, “If everyone else stood on their heads in the middle of the street at 3 a.m. in their underwear, would you?'’ I probably would have.
I never understood what all that meant, but I do know that raising teen-agers can be an extremely challenging task. I have tremendous respect for the parents of the teens I work with in my practice.
Now don’t get me wrong. Most teen-agers are OK people. The vast majority seem to stay out of the juvenile-justice system and eventually become adults.
It’s just that most of the teen-agers I’ve worked with are 16 going on 26 and 16 going on 6, all at the same time.
Baby Girl Clip Art
July 28, 2010
The online baby girl clip art images help you to design attractive invitation cards and e-greetings easily. The World Wide Web is a great storehouse of information on any subject matter (we too are aiming to contributing to this store). Nowadays, many websites (both paid and free) host baby girl clip art images, baby boy clip art images as well as baby shower clip art images.
Clip art, as its name suggests, is a form of graphic art that makes use of pre-existing images. These drawings / images are either copied or physically cut from existing works in the printed format on a particular topic. The sources of these pictures are either books that have entered the public domain or books specifically published for such use. Logos, mascots, identity and business cards, invitations, letterheads, etc., can be made by cutting or copying the clip art pictures. Clip art facilitates the availability of a pool of generic art that can be used and reused by non-artists.
Baby girl clip art images are the cheapest and most viable options for enriching your content of baby shower invitation cards and greetings. With the right software, any picture or image may be converted into clipart. Baby clip art free is a great way to enhance any presentation as it provides colorful and attractive images exactly in tune with the content presented.
Where Is Your Homework, Lisa?
July 28, 2010
Is Homework Really That Important?
Dear Friends,
I no longer teach in public schools, but for what seems like 100 years, I did. During my long career, I did the best I knew how to do at the time, based on where I was in life, and what I had learned about teaching.
In parenting and teaching both, however, we sometimes learn things too late. If only I could go back, I would do many things differently. One thing I would handle differently would be homework.
Today, I?m going to address an issue that raises the hair on the heads of many people: Homework. Homework is so revered in our culture that to oppose it can almost result in being one declared a heretic.
I?m going to tell you about the proverbial straw that prompted me to end homework forever. (That is, except for optional homework I gave so that the kids whose parents wanted something to occupy their kids at home other than television had something constructive to do.)
One day, I heard ?.
?Help! Help my mommy! He’s beating her! And he took the baby! Help!?
Play Is Serious Business For Childrens’ Intelligence
July 27, 2010
Play Is Serious Business For Childrens’ Intelligence
by: Jon Weaver
Too many parents consider play as simply a means of diverting and distracting their children. Playthings are often seen as a means of keeping children happy, rewarding them, keeping them out of mischief, and giving parents free time.
Not often enough do parents think of play and toys as fundamental aspects of a child’s education, as a means through which children learn to understand the world around them, and as the primary method by which children acquire many basic skills.
Parents can help make their children’s play stimulating by doing three things.
First, they can adopt an attitude of conscious, deliberate planning in which play is regarded as one of the most important aspects of their children’s environment.
Second, they can see to it that their children are provided with the kinds of toys and playthings that will help develop the widest possible varieties of skills and abilities.
Third, they can assume a direct, participating role in their children’s play.
Accredited Life Experience Degrees ? Accelerate Your Progress Online
July 26, 2010
Chances are you are pursuing an online degree to reap benefits in the workplace. For this reason, you may be interested in accelerating your progress to get your degree faster. This article will explain seven ways to finish your degree faster. Keep in mind that you will work harder to finish faster and must be willing to make this commitment.
Check with an admissions counselor to see if you qualify for the Credit for Life Experience Program (CLEP). Experience in the business world can translate into college credits with this program. You will have to show documentation of your work experience. The school will verify this experience to determine how it fits into your degree program in terms of college credit. The credits you receive from this program can shorten the time you spend earning your degree. This program isn’t offered at all schools or for all degree programs.
The Proficiency Exam Program (PEP) is similar to CLEP. This program allows students to earn college credit for independent study or other training received without college credit. You may have learned the subject matter in another forum and not need to take the class. You will have to show documentation and pass an exam to qualify for credits with PEP.
Would You Hire This Teacher?
July 25, 2010
Imagine you were the principal of the school that your child would be attending. Imagine that you were authorized to pick out which teachers to hire.
Who would you pick? Let’s look at some of the applicants.
Would you hire someone to teach your children if she had not graduated from high school or college?
Would you want someone to teach your children who used four-letter words pulled directly out of the garbage dump?
Would you pick teachers who might drink, smoke pot, or use other illegal drugs in front of the students?
Would you hire teachers who would yell at the kids and called them filthy names?
Would you hire someone to teach if that person walked into the building with an attitude, mumbled responses to your questions, didn?t look you in the eye, and then made derogatory racial comments about some of the people she saw coming into the waiting room?
How would you feel about hiring teachers who hit, kicked or slapped your children?
Well, guess what folks! Those kids are teaching our children, and we don?t even have to pay them to teach. That’s right! Every day, those people are teaching children right here in south Georgia.
The Curse of the Easy A
July 24, 2010
The Curse of the Easy A
by: Chad Criswell
Many current music educators grew up in a time when being in an ensemble was solely about playing the music for the next concert. I personally cannot recall ever doing a worksheet or any real music theory work while in high school. It seemed that all I had to do to get an “A” was come to my lessons, play at the concerts, and otherwise stay out of trouble. Outside practice was expected but not enforced. I did not realize until many years later that this method of teaching had set me up for years of mediocrity and frustration.
The primary effect of giving a student an A for doing very little work produces much the same effect that we see in society where people become dependent on entitlement programs. Being given something for nothing slowly undermines a person’s motivation and softens their personal initiative. In the music classroom this translates into producing a stagnant musician that has no driving force to improve his or her musical abilities. For many years I suffered with wondering why the members of my ensemble wasn’t improving the way I felt they should. Finally I concluded that it was my fault for not pushing them hard enough. I had fallen back into my mentor’s footsteps and had been cranking out the easy A’s to my students regardless of what they truly deserved.
MORAL ARMORS Irrational Parenting, Part I
July 23, 2010
“If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did."”-Jack Handey
My view on parenting holds one key premise in mind: that every decent parent should assure that upon leaving the nest, their kids can fly! So herein lies a critique against the attributes which make this crucial moral obligation impossible.
The Wrong Decision.
Stupid men and stupid women are dysfunctional on their own. They are dysfunctional together. Their answer to fix everything? More people. Babies are the one gigantic liability people can assume in America without credit or common sense. At upwards of four-hundred thousand dollars to raise a child responsibly these days, if you didn’t take specific actions to earn and plan for that expense, you cannot afford it independently. Affording a kid is like affording a Ferrari. The stature for extravagance takes time to earn, and requires a tenacious discipline to reach that economic class. Being a responsible parent is no different.
