FIRST BASE GLOVES

Adjusting Your Child to Life in Child Care Centres

If you have just enrolled your child in a child care centre then you must have faced situations like watching your child crying loudly on the first day when you say good-bye. Some children are very excited for going to child care centres. The child care centre tries to decrease you and your child’s stress as much as possible for them.

Here are some tips that can help you to adjust your child in Child Care Centres:

Before sending your child into a childcare centre you should talk to your child in beforehand. You should make them aware about the centre they will be going and what they are going to do there.

Try to take your child to the carer and make them familiar with them before sending them to the child care centre. Your little-one might be having any doubts in his or her mind about the new atmosphere and might ask you some questions. Then try to make everything clear to them.

When you are going to leave your little-one to the caring centre, try to reach there at least before 15 minutes of the regular time. This can help your child to clinch into an activity. If your child adjusts in that activity and start having fun then it might be easy for you to leave from there.

You can even let your loved-one carry some of his or her favourite soft toys or any familiar object. This can help your child to adjust in the new atmosphere of the child care centre.

Always try not to rush while leaving your loved-one into an activity and give him or her enough time to settle there.

When you are leaving your child at the childcare centre then always take care about your own body language while seeing them off. Because your face expressions and emotions can affect them in adjusting to that new atmosphere.

While leaving your child try not to creep out of the door as it complicate the situation. Your child may feel insecure thinking they will never meet you again.

If you feel that your child has made his or her mind then you may ask someone else in your family to drop him at the child care centre.

If your child is facing some problem at the centre or with any of the child there then talk to the carer if they can help to solve that problem before the situation becomes worse.

When your child starts getting used to the new atmosphere of the child care centre avoid breaking the routine.

You have to be patient and must accept the fact it may take longer for your infant to adjust to the new care situation. Adjusting is different for different children.

You must keep this fact in your mind that sometimes the childcare service you have chosen for your child may not have been a right choice for your child. There might be some problem between you your child’s carer.

In the end, we conclude that with the tips mentioned above it will be easy for you to adjust your child in child care centres.…

Robbed of Childhood

That our children in the 21st Century have been robbed of their childhood is a fact that does not need belaboring. With the advent of the Internet, we kissed childhood for our kids a long and tearful goodbye! I do not think that parents in the 21st Century could ever give their children too much information. With the click of the mouse our innocent children can access more information than we could ever dream of giving them.

I believe that what we as parents need to do is to counter the information that our children are getting bombarded with on the Internet.

We need to spend more time with our children and take a greater interest in the knowledge that they are getting not only from the Internet but also from their peers. Children are accessing pornography off the Internet at a younger and younger age. What was rated ‘R’ when we were growing up is rated ‘PG’ today. Young children are watching brazenly, what would make their grand parents reach for their oxygen masks!

It is our duty as custodians of our children to monitor what our children are reading and watching on television as well as accessing on the Internet. No child likes to be monitored but who said parenting was a democracy?

When I was growing up I thought my parents were the worst dictators that I had ever met. Today I am so grateful that they took their role as parents seriously. Their first duty was never to please me but to help me. They taught me to make right choices whose consequences I would not regret later on in life. That principle should be no different today as our children are assaulted and bombarded with unfiltered information from television, the Internet and their peers.

Our children are getting too much information and it is robbing them of their childhood. The sad thing is that many times parents do not even come into the picture. While the parents are out chasing dollars so that they can keep up with the Jones’ their kids are 8yrs old going on 16, thanks to the Internet.…

Moral Training For a Healthy Imagination

It’s a little hard to determine, but we wonder–and often–what will bring us that extra pinch of life, peace, relief or joy, particularly when the world crowds us in. For instance, when Sunday approaches and then disappears from view as we enter our Mondays. Back to work it is for us! What happened to that time off?

We can all fall too easily for the life of ‘just keeping up’ as any true peace is eked out of us and we flop hopelessly in front of the television each night (or whatever else you do to relax) exhausted.

This life saps our imaginations. We live to keep up and there’s no room for the child within us–yes, we’re still kids at heart!–to reinvigorate or re-inspire themselves or us!

But moral training can help in at least two ways; firstly, as we train in moral living we free up time and opportunity to live more peacefully and congruently with the true nature of life, and secondly, we inspire within the imagination more pure “childlike” thoughts–of healthy, effective, positive play. Moral training (or living) is a space-giver.

There seems to be a belief in certain circles that our childhood has given way to adulthood and certainly on many levels this belief is a reality. But the essence of God is to give us back our imaginations, our creativity and our innovation–as the very drivers of fun in life; the very mechanism of success. He wants us to take life less seriously so far as we are personally concerned; but more serious we are to take issues of life pertaining to others.

Imaginations never go away. It’s true. In a moment we can be back to playing as a kid in an adult world (with accountability and responsibility and all that stuff!) and still be making a worthwhile contribution. Indeed, the perfect blend of adult and child brings the necessary mix of action in the world that’s non-threatening, open, alive, spontaneous and effective.

But, none of this happens without a good, healthy, vibrant imagination. It’s up to us to engender this; it won’t be external circumstances or another person on the face of the earth that’ll do it.

The way to this warehouse of imaginative power is through virtue–the moral store that we can buy from freely. It’s a decision to be honest, kinder, more loving and giving as much as ensuring we control our appetite for those enchanting things we naturally desire (and sometimes too much).

Google the ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ sometime.

Space and time are abstract concepts. Why be swallowed whole by the encroaching world when we can choose to escape it at the proper time using the right i.e. moral way?

This escape gains us time, energy, enthusiasm and perspective. And the best thing, it costs us no amount of guilt or shame. Escaping in immoral ways always involves either guilt or shame or both.

Get out in the open. Breathe the fresh air of the Spirit.

A� 2010 S. J. Wickham.…

Grandma’s Job is to Make Grandkids Eat

Back in 1997, I read a most interesting piece by Ann Gibbons, a correspondent for Science magazine, on why human females live so long after they stop reproducing. Based on studies of African hunter gatherers, it seems that the evolutionary purpose of why women live after menopause is to make sure their grandchildren eat.

Simply put, the reasoning goes that while younger (fertile) women are busy having or nursing their constant stream of young ones, the grandmothers, by stopping to have kids of their own, now have plenty of time to look after all their grandchildren to make sure they do okay. All of this makes evolutionary sense, as by looking after their grandkids, grandmas increase the survival and propagation of their own genes (yes, genes are “selfish”).

While most parents are well aware of the challenge of getting grandparents to stop feeding the kids, there is now actually a new study that shows just how having grandmas around can increase your kid’s risk for obesity.

The paper by Anna Pearce and colleagues from the UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK, published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity, looks at the relationship between formal and informal childcare on the risk of overweight and obesity in early years.

Data on a UK cohort of 12,354 kids from the UK Millennium Cohort Study was examined with a particular emphasis on infant feeding as a potential mediator between childcare in infancy and overweight at age three.

After controlling for confounders, children who were cared for in “informal” childcare between the age of 9 months and 3 years were 15% more likely to be overweight than those cared for only by a parent. This risk increased to 35% if the kids were in in full-time informal childcare.

At this point it may be important to point out that 75% of this “informal” childcare was in fact delivered by grandparents and I am guessing that this mainly involved Grandmas rather than Grandpas.

Interestingly, this risk of informal childcare was limited to children from more advantaged groups, i.e. kids whose mothers were from a managerial or professional background (25% higher risk) or had a degree (43% higher risk).

In contrast, there was no association between “formal” childcare and overweight. (Guess the daycare centre doesn’t really care about propagating grandma’s genes). Although the study does not directly show that grandmas feeding grandkids is the problem, the authors do speculate that indulgence of children and lack of physical exercise when kids are looked after by their grandparents may well be two possible explanations.

I have often said that grandparents can well be the ultimate “intimate saboteurs” when it comes to trying to control your kid’s weight. But I guess we can’t real blame Grandma for simply doing what’s in her nature.

I’d certainly love to hear from any grandmas out there or from those who think grandma’s endless supply of “treats” may be part of the problem. I am also intrigued by what readers may think about why this “grandma” effect was limited to kids with better educated moms.…