Actively Listening to your Child

Communicating with our children can be a difficult task at times. We feel like they're not listening to us; they feel like we're not listening to them. Good listening and communications skills are essential to successful parenting. Your child's feelings, views and opinions have worth, and you should make sure you take the time to sit down and listen openly and discuss them honestly. It seems to be a natural tendency to react rather than to respond. We pass judgment based on our own feelings and experiences. However, responding means being receptive to our child's feelings and emotions and allowing them to express themselves openly and honestly without fear of repercussion from us. By reacting, we send our child the message that their feelings and opinions are invalid. But by responding and asking questions about why the child feels that way, it opens a dialog that allows them to discuss their feelings further, and allows you a better understanding of where they're coming from. Responding also gives you an opportunity to work out a solution or a plan of action with your child that perhaps they would not have come up with on their own. Your child will also appreciate the fact that maybe you do indeed understand how they feel. It's crucial in these situations to give your child your full and undivided attention. Put down your newspaper, stop doing dishes, or turn off the television so you can hear the full situation and make eye contact with your child. Keep calm, be inquisitive, and afterwards offer potential solutions to the problem. Don't discourage your child from feeling upset, angry, or frustrated. Our initial instinct may be to say or do something to steer our child away from it, but this can be a detrimental tactic. Again, listen to your child, ask questions to find out why they are feeling that way, and then offer potential solutions to alleviate the bad feeling. Just as we do, our children have feelings and experience difficult situations. By actively listening and participating with our child as they talk about it, it demonstrates to them that we do care, we want to help and we have similar experiences of our own that they can draw from. Remember, respond - don't react.

Surge in Children Accidentally Eating Marijuana-Laced Foods

new study shows the relaxation of marijuana laws in Colorado has caused a significant spike in the number of young children treated for accidentally eating marijuana-laced cookies, candies, brownies and beverages.
"We have seen an increase in unintentional ingestions of marijuana by children since the modification of drugs laws in Colorado," said George Wang, MD, lead author of the study and clinical instructor in pediatrics at Children's Hospital Colorado and the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "We need to educate marijuana users, the community and medical professionals about the potential dangers."
The study, published Monday in the JAMA Pediatrics, compared the number of young children treated at the Children's Hospital Colorado emergency department for ingesting marijuana before and after the modification of Colorado's drug laws beginning in 2009.
A total of 1,378 patients under age 12 were evaluated for unintentional ingestions -- 790 before Sept. 30, 2009 and 588 after Oct. 1, 2009. The number of children treated for exposure to marijuana before Sept. 30 was zero. The number from Oct. 1 on was 14 with eight of those coming directly from consuming marijuana food products.
Wang, a fellow at the Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Center, said today's marijuana can be much stronger, and these products can contain higher concentrations of THC, the active ingredient in the drug. Some marijuana infused candy bars, for example, contain 300 milligrams of THC. Children who ingested the drug exhibited symptoms that included respiratory problems, extreme sleepiness, difficulty in walking and lethargy. Many underwent a battery of expensive tests to diagnose their problem because the history of exposure was not given, or medical professionals were not familiar with marijuana causing these symptoms.

Read More : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/
Website   : http://www.sciencedaily.com/

How to Deal with Competitive Parents

Competitive or comparing parents are those who not only keep boasting and bragging about their child's achievements, but also look down upon other kids and their parents. They further start commenting on their performances and humiliate them to the maximum. Not only this, they also keep bothering their own kids to maintain consistency in their performance and hold the top position always. They do not understand the meaning and importance of healthy child rearing. Such parents treat child raising as a kind of contest wherein the ways of upbringing are judged by the activities the kids perform and the stage of life at which they are able to perform them. It is not the correct way to judge child rearing, rather, there are different ways parents adopt to raise a child, and all of them are perfect in their own ways. No one method is greater or lesser effective than the other. It's just the need to understand the difference between bringing out the best in your child and being over-competitive. At times, out of over-expectation, the thin line between the two is crossed and it affects the progress of the child.

Ways to Deal with Over-competitive Parents

Being a fellow parent, teacher, or friend, you will encounter over-competitive people. What can you do to deal with such people? Actually one cannot do anything about over-competitive people. It might be an inborn trait of competitiveness in them which is impossible to remove. However, there are several ways you can adopt to avoid being in such negative and harmful company, and use correct techniques to deal with them even if you come in contact by chance. Take a look at the tips given below and follow them for maintaining a good parenting style.

Read more :
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/how-to-deal-with-competitive-parents.html