Spanking - this is a highly debated issue. Some believe a good swap on the butt can’t do any damage. Some believe that the damage can be quite substantial.

The study is published in the September/October issue of Child Development is analyzing if the spanking one year olds can result in a more aggressive behavior as the children grow. The researches noticed that spanking is considered more appropriate in the low income families, then in high income, so 2,500 white, Mexican American and black children from low-income families were analyzed. The low income families have been chosen also because some behaviorists claim that if spanking is considered to be a cultural norm, it doesn’t have an effect on the level of aggression in a growing child.

Apparently, these behaviorists were proved wrong.

Read more…

My baby is catnapping. It’s driving me nuts: I spend 40 minutes getting him to fall asleep, and then he wakes up 20 minutes later! He wakes up with a broad smile, his arms and legs wiggle vigorously, so I reluctantly take him out of the bed… just to have a very cranky baby hanging on my shoulder until the rest of the nap. How come?

First of all, I refuse to try “cry it out approach”. It is harmful for baby’s development, his confidence, his future. You can see more here: “Crying it out” may damage baby’s brain.

I do. I really hate to say the word “NO!” Yet I don’t believe in anarchy - saying “yes” all the time is just as troublesome. Or even dangerous! How do you say yes to a kid, who is about to run over a busy intersection? How do you say “yes” to a toddler who is about to sample some household chemicals into his mouth? How could I say “yes” to my own two year old who got very upset that I did not allow him to cut my tablecloth with scissors?

As much we dislike it, we absolutely SHOULD talk to our kids about sex. Unless, of course, you prefer some Mr. Know-All enlighten your innocent little one on a school bus. Here you can find some suggestions and resources that I could find on this topic.

My friend just shared a fantastic story about her own kid:

My friend’s 7 year old, Jacob, comes home from school, rushes over to mom and screams excitedly: “Mom, where did I come from?”

Books

The most useful book in a world: “What Babies Say Before They Can Talk : The Nine Signals Infants Use to Express Their Feelings” by Paul Holinger, Kalia Doner, when your baby grows up a little “Playful Parenting” by Lawrence J. Cohen. You man also find these recommendations helpful: Toddler issues book recommendations, For older kids, siblings, etc: Positive Discipline Resources. General information about the first years of baby’s life: I constantly refer to What to expect of 1st years. I disagree with some of its points on punishment and letting the baby cry it out, so Dr. Sears “attachment parenting” approach seems more reasonable to me: The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two.

Now there is a scientific evidence, that concentrating on positive feedback with our little ones works better then pointing out their mistakes!

Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (’Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (’Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently.

10 Parenting Tips - Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Children
By Maureen Lawrence

Do you use phrases that edify and encourage your children?

Sometimes we don’t say things that edify or encourage our children.

Avoid using these ten parenting tip phrases to your children and you will starting on the road to raising more positive and self-confident children.

1 Just because I say so is not a good reason. Try to avoid using these words to your child.

Parenting tip

always have a reason why your child should or shouldn’t do something.

The secret? It’s a game. THE ONLY RULE IS: IF you get upset, you lose.

None of us wants our children to go through any encounters of bullying. Yet they will. I don’t think anybody can avoid it at one point or another, at some degree. Schools are offering “anti-bulling” programs, declaring “bully-free zone”, but they seem to fail on every account: except a satisfactory feeling feeling for the parents, of course. You just can’t stop bulling “from the top” - from the high authority. It is easy to find ways to torment, tease, humiliate or otherwise bully someone without attracting any attention from the teacher, even parent. And the worse is that kids who try to report such bulling, usually just get more bullied and hated.

A kid easily succeeds with another task that leaves his peers struggling. Parents, beaming with pride, praise the kid by telling him, that he is talented, he is gifted. Praise is good, right? Not necessarily. As a parent who believes that praise is a very important and integral part of learning, of building confidence, I can see more and more that some types of praise can do more damage then good. Have you noticed, how sometimes “talented and gifted” kid can shy away from a difficult assignment, whose grades can even suddenly drop and he can lose all the interest in school, in work, in new accomplishments? Is it the school being too tough? Or should we blame the way we were praising this kid, how we present their learning process to them, how their self-image effects their undertaking of difficult assignments?