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April 13, 2008
This article came to my attention today through Google Alerts. I thought it might be of interest to many of my visitors. The URL for the original article can be found at the end. Young adult grandchildren living with grandparents not only helps grandchildren save on living expenses in today’s economy but it also provides help grandparents may need with day-to-day activities. The best part about grandparents and grandchildren living together is that it creates a greater bond between grandparents and grandchildren. This article includes tips on how to make it work. (more…)
February 1, 2008
The following are Valentine’s Day tips from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Please feel free to excerpt these tips or use them in their entirety for any print or broadcast story with appropriate attribution of source.(Also read Grandparents and Grandchildren Valentine Fun, A Great Grandparent - Grandchild - Valentine’s Day Gift, and Valentine Gifts for Grandchildren)
Use plenty of positive words with your grandchild. Try to avoid using sarcasm with your grandchild. They often don’t understand it, and if they do, it creates a negative interaction.
Respond promptly and lovingly to your grandchild’s physical and emotional needs and banish put-downs from your parenting vocabulary.
Make an extra effort to set a good example at home and in public. Use words like “I’m sorry,” “please,” and “thank you.”
When your grandchild is angry, argumentative or in a bad mood, give him a hug, cuddle, pat, secret sign or other gesture of affection he favors and talk with him about his feelings.
Use non-violent forms of discipline. Grandparents should institute both rewards and restrictions many years before adolescence to help prevent trouble during the teenage years. Allowing grandchildren of any age to constantly break important rules without being disciplined only encourages more rule violations.
Make plans to spend time alone with your young grandchild or teen doing something she enjoys.
Mark family game nights on your calendar so the entire family can be together. Put a different family member’s name under each date, and have that person choose which game will be played that evening.
Owning a pet can make children, especially those with chronic illnesses and disabilities, feel better by stimulating physical activity, enhancing their overall attitude, and offering constant companionship.
One of the best ways to familiarize your grandchild with good food choices is to encourage him to cook with you. Let him get involved in the entire process, from planning the menus to shopping for ingredients to the actual food preparation and its serving.
As your grandchild grows up, she’ll spend most of her time developing and refining a variety of skills and abilities in all areas of her life. You should help her as much as possible by encouraging her and providing the equipment and instruction she needs.
Your grandchild’s health depends significantly on the care and guidance you offer during his early years. By taking your grandchild to the doctor regularly for consultations, keeping him safe from accidents, providing a nutritious diet, and encouraging exercise throughout childhood, you help protect and strengthen his body.
Help your grandchild foster positive relationships with friends, siblings and members of the community.
One of your most important gifts as a grandparent is to help your grandchild develop self-esteem. Your grandchild needs your steady support and encouragement to discover his strengths. He needs you to believe in him as he learns to believe in himself. Loving him, spending time with him, listening to him and praising his accomplishments are all part of this process.
Don’t forget to say, “I love you” to your children and grandchildren of all ages!
American Academy of Pediatrics, 2/08
January 28, 2008
Attention grandparents raising grandchildren ages 12 and up! There’s a new TV show coming with a great concept. Within a few weeks time, beginning February 18 at 8 pm on NBC, each of 5 couples ages 18 – 20, will participate in a social experiment. The Baby Borrowers provides the young couples with the experience of parenting, even though it is on the fasttrack. The show has the couples caring for babies, toddlers, tweens, teens, and grandparents, too. This grandmother says, Thank you, NBC.
As a high school teacher who is also a parent and grandparent, I believe The Baby Borrowers TV show is finally a program that will actually help reinforce what parents, grandparents, and the high school health curriculum have been teaching for a long time. Teens often tune our words out, but seeing, hopefully, will be believing with the help of this show. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. This program should be required viewing. It should make a difference.
Unless they’ve lived with a baby in the house where they had to help with the care, most young people think becoming parents would be great. They are clueless as to the reality of what it entails. The Baby Borrowers gives them firsthand experiences of exhausting days and nights, disciplining, potty training, how it all affects the relationship, and more. Some of the show is sure to be humorous.
The Baby Borrowers premiers February 18 at 8 pm - make a point to watch it with your grandchildren. If you aren’t a grandparent raising grandchildren, you can still interact with them. Call your grandchildren when it is over and listen to their comments and concerns. This is a great opportunity for meaningful discussions and family quality time.
Don’t miss it!
Also read: Jamie Lynn Spears: Teen Pregnancy and Reality
January 17, 2008
January is a busy time for both teachers and high school students in New Jersey since it is the end of the first semester. Teachers are giving tests, preparing exams, and finalizing grades. Students should be turning in assignments and preparing for their exams.
As a teacher and grandparent, it was my intention to give advice on how grandparents can help teens prepare for exams. As you’ll see, I ended up on a completely different subject. I started with discussing the correlation between the ease of finding information on the internet and the steady decline of academic skills. Then one sentence led to another and I found myself on the topic of blogging and the development of important skills necessary for life long learning…hard to follow? Read on…
Bloggers often share their philosophical observations, opinions on social issues, and link favorite sites, often those that support a point being made. That means people are not only expanding their knowledge but also communicating through reading, thinking, and writing.
Each year I do see a decline in the amount of effort put forth by the average high school student. This isn’t just my opinion, it’s also that of other teachers with whom I’ve discussed it. There appears to be a connection between the increase in the amount of information on the internet and the decrease of their academic preparation and engagement.
The students have admitted to me that they look for the quickest and easiest way to do an assignment, often finding what they need online. Just as music, movies, games, and friends are readily available, so is information. There was a time when students met at the library to work on their assignments because that was where they needed to be to do the research. Now they meet online. Whereas students once needed to rely on their own skills to plan, research, evaluate and synthesize information then develop their own thesis and conclusion, now they just have to log on and someone somewhere has already done it for them…whether based on facts or sheer creativity…it’s out there in cyberspace.
What does this have to do with blogging? Blogging could be offered to students as a Language Arts elective to motivate them to improve their skills. Why? Let me explain.
First of all, teens are doing it at home… My Space…Facebook…and some, if they get the chance, are sneeking on at school. Since they are doing it, why not develop their skills around an activity they enjoy…without taking the enjoyment out.
Second, adults are doing it at work. Blogging is used as a communication tool within companies and schools, keeping colleagues informed and connected. It is also used as a marketing tool so that customers or clients can stay informed with new products, services, and upcoming events.
And, as many of us do, we enjoy blogging as a past-time, some even have the added benefit of earning an income from doing it. Not only is blogging a form of entertainment for the grandparents and grandchildren alike, it is the new Information Age skill. So my advice - after exams are over - let them safely blog…encourage them to choose a topic of interest…sign up with blogger.com, or another free blogging site where their peers hangout, and go from there…there’s lots of information on blogging out there!
December 26, 2007
If you have listened to the news during the past month, you couldn’t help but to pick up on the story that Britney Spears’ sixteen year old sister, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant. I was very surprised to hear my first grade granddaughter talking about her…not a subject I want her to learn about just yet! Ironically, she is known in her own right as the main character on Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101. Zoey is the first girl to attend an all boys’ boarding school, known for her “smarts and her spunk.” Luckily for Nickelodeon, Jamie Lynn has finished filming the fourth and final season of the show. Perhaps the pregnancy was planned around the show’s end? This brings publicity that is contradictory to the wholesome image that Nickelodeon strives to present for the younger (9 - 14) TV viewing audience. If you read about Jamie Lynn on Zoey 101’s cast bio, the image is the small-town girl next door. Well, she probably is as far as that goes.
Think MTV interviewed residents of Jamie Lynn’s hometown, Kentwood, Louisiana: Those who agreed to speak with us also seemed mixed on just what to make of Jamie Lynn’s situation. Some viewed her as just another teenage girl, while others noted that she has plenty of young fans who view her as a role model, and as such, she should’ve put more thought into her actions.
Her mother claims that she has been home every night by curfew time. Wake up, Mom! Kids don’t go by a time schedule - they do it when the opportunity arises. No pun intended. A conversation I overheard in the lobby of the high school where I teach: “Tammy and Jimmy are a couple. They’ve been having sex for two weeks. It’s official.” It wasn’t said in a whisper - it was stated out loud as I was walking past the young lady broadcasting the news to her friends.
Pregnancy rates among adolescent females have fallen steadily since 1990 (36%) until recently with a 3% increase. Statistics, though, show that teens coming from intact homes are less likely to get pregnant. In 2005, 18 percent of sexually active high school students reported using birth control pills at their most recent sexual intercourse compared to a slightly lower percent since 1993. The greatest decline in teen pregnancies has been within the African-American population. During this same period, there has been a marked improvement in the sex-ed health courses in high schools leading to a more informed teen population which, in turn, has resulted in lower teen pregnancies. It doesn’t mean they aren’t engaging in sex, just not having the numbers of babies of past decades.
Pre-teens are very impressionable and much more aware than when our children were their age. The role models they see portrayed in the media send the message that sexy is attractive for young girls. Even the dolls have short skirts and plunging necklines. Boys aren’t given the message that it takes more than sex to be a man. There isn’t a clear image defining the differences between love and sex. Some young people are engaging in sexual activities before they know what it is about, before they reach high school. By educating them while in the middle school years as to the health risks and consequences of unprotected sex, pregnancy risks for both the young girl and the child, the benefits of abstinence, and the options of birth control, teens will be prepared to make better informed decisions that will affect them for more than just the moment. They need a real dose of reality when it comes to projecting what their future may hold for them. More information can be found at the Women’s Health Channel.
Healthy People 2010, a federal initiative to improve health in the United States, has set a goal to reduce pregnancies among adolescent females ages 15-17 from 68 per 1,000 in 1996, to 43 per 1,000 by 2010. Related goals include “increasing the proportion of adolescents who abstain from sexual intercourse or use condoms if currently sexually active.”
Rumor has it that Nickelodeon will run with the opportunity to do a special on teen pregnancy. Perhaps this will help deter young ones from engaging in sex but only if it shows them as high school drop outs, struggling to make ends meet, taking care of a little one while trying to earn a living, having to accept welfare in order to provide food for the child, not being able to go out with friends and party, staying home and being her own babysitter on Saturday nights instead of getting paid to watch another’s children, or not being able to find a boyfriend because she already has a boyfriend. Also, they should include how it affects the children - socially, emotionally, and economically - what impact it has on society as a whole. That won’t be the picture if they focus on Jamie Lynn Spears. Maybe she’ll come out with her own maternity clothing line now -but, unfortunately, that’s not reality for 99% of the young, unwed mothers.
As grandparents raising grandchildren, great care needs to be taken to insure the children are provided the support, love and care that they would receive in an intact home so they don’t become part of the teen pregnancy statistics. Surveys show that daughters of unwed mothers tend to follow the same path. Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of school and live on welfare assistance. Sons of teen mothers are more likely to be in trouble with the law when they are teens. Sex education should not be just the school’s responsibility. The school can only educate the children for one period a day, one marking period a school year. For the rest of the time, they are our responsibility. Books are available that can help with how to approach the subject. If you don’t feel comfortable discussing the topic with your grandchild, find someone you trust.
Online Resources:
December 22, 2007
Traveling with the grandchildren, no matter what their ages, takes some pre-planning so that everyone can enjoy the vacation stress free most of the time…hopefully.
To help you with your pre-planning for the upcoming travel time with your grandchildren, here is a list of sites that will give you some great tips:
Enjoy your trip with the grandchildren!
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