Jewellery for kids are considered acceptable gifts, whether is precious jewellery or trendy accessories. These are great to give out during birthdays, graduations and Christmas. There are, however, a few considerations when planning on gifting jewellery to children.

One of it is to consider how age appropriate the jewellery is. For really younger kids who may still have the tendency to put everything in their mouths, charm bracelets, beaded accessories, or necklaces with lockets are instantly a no-no. There are, however, some baubles and bracelets that should look good and safe on toddlers and smaller children. Kids between the ages of 7-10 may enjoy something very colorful or have the trademark of their favorite characters. Older children may like something really trendy and hip, such as a fashionable childrens necklace made of cool materials, with fancy styles and bright, girly colors.

Take into account the materials used to create the jewellery. Some could be made of nickel and metal, as these are of low cost and, therefore, not much of a loss in case the kids become careless with it. But do consider if the material has lead in it, as this is potentially fatal to them. Kids may also have the tendency to get rashes and allergy from some accessories, so adults are supposed to take note of this. If there is a label, check for content first before buying. Or better yet ask the store about where the piece was made and what materials were used.

If you are giving children fine jewellery, teach them to be responsible for it and also advise them on how to take good care of something precious. Fine jewellery, in fact, must only be worn during special occasions, so do let the child know that this is the deal.

Gifting jewellery and accessories actually teaches these young girls to take care of their personal items better. It’s good training and at the same time a wonderful gift…because what girl doesn’t love jewellery?

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Tell your child that not all items on his list should be toys. Suggest non-material things to request – like a special one-on-one time with mom and dad or a fun picnic in your backyard.

Ask your child to write down the gifts she wants most. (ex. TOP 5 things I want for Christmas) Make sure her list contains some items he needs, such as new sneakers or new bag for school.

Try not to take your child through a toy store between now and Christmas- It’ll only feed his desire to be showered with playthings. (Like adults, we want to buy the things that we see in the mall but we have “self-control” unlike our kids.) But to take him for a stroll inside a bookstore; it will inspire him to ask for some books that he sees.

Make your Christmas different by teaching your child how to donate old toys, clothes etc. to charity. Let your child experience the true meaning of Christmas.

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Danish children’s furniture maker, minui, will unveil a new high chair product in September at the All Baby and Child Show in Las Vegas. The product extends the versatility of their already eco-friendly, modern, safe and great looking children’s seating system.

The new product, called the minui HandySitt Chair, works in tandem with the portable high chair acting as a ‘base’ for the home. Together, the multi-functional minui HandySitt seating system can be configured and used as a freestanding high chair, a compact and portable high chair for traveling or taking to restaurants, a seat for an older child (less than 5 yrs old) and a step ladder for adults to get to upper cabinets and for kids to help mom with meal prep

(Source) Press

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In one of the challenging and exciting duties a parent has to deal with has to be dressing up their kids for various occasions. Unlike adults, getting the right attire may require some extensive imagination as well as adhering towards how a child would be emphatic when it comes to wearing a new wardrobe. Included in this area are the type of shoes that they wear.

Compared to a boy, girls shoes would be more challenging. They are not as easy like providing them sneakers or leather shoes that boys can wear for any occasion. A girl needs specific shoes, whether these be sandals or the traditional closed shoes. The important thing about girls shoes is that they complement the dress or wardrobe a girl would have, something which some parents may point to as costly and critical.

However, all that is bound to change once they refer to school shoes. Boy or girl, the selection of shoes that they can wear has a limit. Dull as they may seem, school shoes normally have one thing in common black color. After that, the only variant has to be the shoe design which will come in various forms such as straps and shoe sole design.

Kids should have a say on what shoes to wear. Besides, a child has various tastes to which if they don’t feel comfortable wearing such shoes, chances are parents may be buying something worthless. Then again, there are parents who are persistent, insisting that their kids use them and try to “grow in them”. This happens a lot and before you know it, the kids are attached to this design from thereon.

Cost may have a bearing for girls shoes but not for school shoes. There is no such thing as a superior pair of school shoes. They may vary in brand but certainly not in style. Kids will have their say but sadly, they have to do a lot of convincing for their parents to give in to their demands.

Boys shoes may be less of a pain but for the parents who have girls, you can bet that they will need more than one pair of shoes to make sure that their child is dressed well for any occasion. It makes you wonder if a boy would be better than a girl. But this should not be the case if you are comparing a petty issue such as shoe buying.

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My mother had an expression: “You are as slow as molasses in January!”

Descriptive, isn’ t it?  That was about the speed my sister moved, and now that I’m a mom, I find it’s the speed at which at least 2 of my children move. 

Part of this has to do with getting ready in the mornings, when time is at a premium and the pokey child wanders from room to room or takes 20 minutes on the potty.  But part of it is just the speed at which they move from one place to another. 

What can you do to minimize family frustrations  when a pokey child is holding things up?

• Be patient!  Remember, kids don’t think or move at the same speed as adults, and their priorities aren’t the same.  Stopping to pick that dandelion is every bit as important to your child as getting your errands done before rush hour is to you.   And remember, no matter what it feels like at the time, they aren’t doing it on purpose because they know it bugs you!

• Allow for more time.  Yes, they do have to learn to do things in a timely way, and I’ll get to that, but the key word there is learn.  They don’t have it down yet.  It’s up to you to remember that they won’t be walking out the door without a pillowcase full of every DVD and stuffed animal they own.  Allow time for them to gather their things or to prepare themselves mentally for the next activity.  If things are too rushed in the morning, consider getting the children up 15 or 20 minutes earlier.  In our family, my husband gets them up at 6:30, they eat breakfast, then they climb into bed with me for 15 minutes of snuggling and quiet talking to start the day.  They could get up at 7:00, but that would create a rushed, stressful morning, and I would miss those close, cuddly moments. 

• Avoid distractions.  No television in the morning–or any other time you want to be focused!  Few kids can skillfully get themselves dressed as they are singing along with Cyberchase or Dora.  And it doesn’t do much good to say, “We’re leaving in five minutes so get your things together,” if they are lost in TV world.  Turn the TV off, then tell them to prepare to leave.

• Prepare ahead of time.  Pick out clothes and pack up backpacks the night before. Put them in clear view so there’s no running around yelling, “Where’s my backback?  Where are my shoes?”  You can prepare a child to leave the house ahead of time, too, simply by first packing up the things they’ll need, and then sitting them down with a video or activity until it’s time to leave.

• Take time when you have it.  If you’re just walking down the street, and you have no deadline, it won’t kill you to stop and look at the new clover that’s taking over your yard.  Your child thinks it’s pretty.  You may be goal-oriented (you’re walking TO the post office), but your child probably isn’t.  She’s just walking. 

• Make it clear that moving quickly is important before you start.  Simply let your child know that there is no time to dawdle today.  Ask for his help.  “I love to look at the worms on the sidewalk with you, but we have to get to the post office before it closes.  Will you help me walk fast?” 

• Gently but firmly remind your child that you must be obeyed.   You do get in a hurry, and you don’t always have time to explain.  And sometimes it’s a matter of safety; my middle daughter gets lost in daydreams and drifts off in the middle of parking lots, falling behind the rest of us and wandering in front of cars.  When I say, “Sabra, hurry UP!” I need her to hurry up.  I do not need her to keep drifting and ask, “Why?”  Sometimes there’s just no time.  If they fall down on that–which they will–it’s important to remind them once the crisis is over that sometimes you can’t explain right way.  Sometimes they just have to obey.

• Make manners a priority in your home.  Just as you emphasize please, thank you, and chewing with their mouths closed, remind your kids that it’s rude to keep people waiting.  A gentle but consistent emphasis on good manners over the course of their childhood will ultimately pay off.

We do have a lot to do, no doubt about it, and it seems there’s never enough time to do it in.  But just as you hurry your kids up, don’t forget to let them slow you down, too.

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The Sony Reader

I hang with writers, editors, and even a few publishers, and I hear it over and over. The market for traditional books is dwindling, and the market for alternatively published books is growing.

For writers, this sometimes means seeking publishing sources like self-publishing, if they are dead set on holding that book in their hands.  And we readers don’t care that much who published a book or how, as long as we can curl up with it at the end of a long day or sneak in a few pages over our lunch break. 

Kids are no different from adults that way.  I know a lot of kids who like to read, boys and girls, and I think the flap about kids not reading is no more true now than it ever was–in all times and places, some people are readers and some aren’t.  The difference in kids now and kids in any other cultural era is that kids now are much more electronically savvy.  They do not require a CD in order to have music, and they might not require a book in order to have text. 

In addition, kids just have so many devices in their hands already.  If they already have a cell phone in which they can read a book, it’s not that big a leap to an iphone or even a Kindle.  There are dozens of ebook libraries out there for kids to borrow books from, and many places from which you can buy them, or even get them free. 

We’re only partically wired at my house, and we all love to hold a book in our hand.  But it was recently brought home to us that having a familiarity with ebooks might not be such a bad thing.  My daughter went on a week-long mission trip with a group of teens, and brought a bag stuffed with a dozen books she couldn’t bear to leave home.  She got through them all, too.  But how much easier would it have been in terms of space and the things she had to haul around if she’d just had a phone or a PS2 with her favorite books downloaded right in?  It certainly would have been one less heavy bag to carry!

I don’t think traditional books will ever go away, but I think that like with so many things, we have to keep our eyes and minds open to new things.  And as parents, we have a responsibility to do that, so that we still have some oversight over what goes into our kids’ minds.

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There is a wealth of information both online and in journals about the effects of advertizing on children.  Really, it’s too much to put into a blog post; you could have a whole blog with daily posts dedicated to the topic of children and advertizing. 

But we do know that children absorb messages from the wider culture, and advertizers are the ones who put those messages into the wider culture.  Now, this isn’t all bad; how will consumers know what’s available if we don’t see it advertized?  People need to sell stuff and people need to buy stuff, and advertizing facilitates that relationship.

The scare stuff is when that relationship is built on exploitation of any group of people, but especially kids.  There are ads that exploit kids’ need to fit in, to feel secure, or to get positive attention.  There are ads that exploit gender or racial sterotypes, and kids just assume that anything they see on TV or in print is reliable.  Now, we adults know that’s not true, but kids accept the authority of what they see. 

Among the overwhelming amount of information and opinion on this topic, here are a few facts, gathered chiefly from the Love Your Body Day website.

•  
  • For children ages 6-17, the number one after-school activity is watching TV.

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  • Students spend about 900 hours in the classroom and 1,500 hours in front of the TV each year.

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  • Children who watch four or more hours of TV a day are less likely to read at grade level or play well with friend. Children who watch four or more hours of TV a day are more likely to believe claims made by advertisers.

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  • Saturday morning commercial TV advertisers bombard children with ads for sugary cereal, salty snacks, fast food and junk food.

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  • Before teens reach the legal drinking age they have watched 100,000 alcohol commercials.

Those are only a few of the alarming statistics you can find about kids and ads.  We don’t have to wrap our kids in cotton wool or lock them away from the world.  But we should take the time to talk to them about what they see and hear, so that they will learn to think critically about the advertizing that they abosrb. 

Remember, advertizers’ job is to sell stuff.  They are not interested in our children’s well-being…that’s our job.

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It is the modern age and for most people, the need to sacrifice is apparent. The same is the case when it comes to daily routines where parents have to report for work thus being forced to surrender kids to daycare centers. The problem is when a parent worries on how his or her child is doing. The TLC Learning Academy in Southaven may have a solution for that.

The TLC Learning Academy in Southaven should prove to be a fit gauge to this concern. TLC has live streaming video cameras — 21 in total throughout the center. Each is accessible online so parents can watch their children while at work.

Shari Robbins, the program director at TLC, said the kid-vision cameras have been a great selling point for parents. She added that they’re also a great tool for keeping an eye on TLC’s employees. “We want to have that accountability so parents know we’re doing our job,” she said.

The program is password-protected and completely secure. Each child can have up to three adults with access to the live feed. Robbins said some families use this as a way for out-of-town grandparents to see their grandchildren.

(Source)My Fox

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