Most parents fail to realize that at some point, perhaps the age of 4 or 5, their kids will start going to school for nursery and preparatory education. My how time flies! Normally, you would still treat them like a baby, a tyke to that you don’t want to see a single scratch or even bear to see them crying. But that is life and as far as kids are concerned, they are bound to grow out of their youth and there is nothing you can do about it.

One point to be considered is adjustment. While you are wary on how your kid will fare, think of how you will adjust as well of not seeing them always around as before. At this stage of starting their educational journey, you will be surprised at the new things that they would ask you like the alphabet, colors or even shapes. Normally you have taught them that before but understanding them with other kids makes it all the more challenging and interesting for them.

So as you see you child off to school, do not fret. The fact that you have enrolled them for education is already a good sign of good parenting on your end. It may be tough at first but kids need to learn and get qualified education as well. So during their first day of school, guide them and condition their minds. Surely, they will be trying to get a feel of how it is without their guardians alongside of them this time around.

“Taking young children to their first day of school can be filled with excitement as well as anxiety for both parent and student,” he said. “Parents can take proactive steps that will help ease their children into their new learning environment, help them enjoy school, and increase their love of learning. These attitudes and skills will benefit them throughout their lives.”

Chicago, IL (Vocus/PRWEB) February 02, 2011

The growing number of people who do not work will likely have an especially tough time this April 28th—the next Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day (TYDSWD).

Jayne Pearl and Richard Morris, co-authors of Kids, Wealth, and Consequences: Ensuring a Productive Financial Future for the Next Generation (Bloomberg, a Wiley imprint, 2010), offer ways to make TYDSWD constructive for parents in these circumstances.

• Stay-at-home parents. The Census Bureau estimates there are approximately 5.7 million (26%), mothers, and 158,000 fathers opting to stay at home (or forced to due to unemployment, illness or disability) rarely sit at home in pajamas watching soap operas and munching bon-bons. Pearl and Morris suggest that on TYDSWD, these parents can expose their children to the many productive activities involved in managing the household such as cleaning, laundry, cooking, shopping and paperwork. Some stay-at-home parents also volunteer in the community.

As parents go about the day involving their children in age-appropriate domestic chores, they should talk about their choice to stay at home: What family values and financial considerations factored into the decision not to work? If parents worked outside the home before, what did they enjoy and what don’t they miss about working? What were some of the main adjustments the parents made during the transition from work to home? How do children benefit from their parents being home?

• Unemployed parents. TYDSWD may sting this year for parents who are jobless. But Morris and Pearl suggest many positive activities to do and discussions to initiate with their kids. On the practical side, unemployed parents can show their kids, about 12 and older, what the job hunting regimen entails: searching online, contacting headhunters, responding to job openings, follow-up emails and phone calls, and tracking system for all the above. Parents can even solicit their children, if they are especially computer savvy, to suggest ways to improve the parent’s electronic tracking or searching. Parents can show the child their resume, and discuss how their education and previous experience have helped them along their career path. What were some of the best career moves they’ve made? And worst ones? Where are they focusing their search now, both geographically and in terms of job functions and industries? How have they tried to cope emotionally and financially with being unemployed? They can also invite their kids to suggest ways to further tighten the family belt.
• Wealthy, nonworking parents. Parents who have chosen not to have a formal job with a paycheck can still involve their children in productive or creative activities in which they engage. What is a typical day in the parents’ life like? If they sit on boards of companies or nonprofit organizations, they can try to take their daughter (or son) to a board or committee meeting. (If that’s not possible, parents can describe what such meetings are like and how they participate.) Parents who sit at a home office and trade stocks or manage real estate can invite their children to help or watch as they research a company or plot of land they have an eye on, and discuss the criteria by which they evaluate its worth.

Artists, writers or those who engage in other creative pursuits can think of a project in which they can involve their kids. Set up an easel and palette for the children to paint while the parent works on one of their paintings. While creating a piece of art, parents can talk about how they approach a blank canvass: the choice of subjects, colors, forms and genre. How has their work evolved over the years? A performing artist can take their child to a rehearsal, or let him or her watch the parent practice. It’s also important to talk about the business side of the parent’s creative work. How does the parent market himself? How has technology changed their art and the market for their work?

Morris and Pearl also have tips for parents who do work:

• Avoid over-glamorizing your job. “The point is not to highlight just what may seem like fun aspects of your job to your child, but to give them a realistic glimpse of your work. Most jobs require many tedious tasks, dealing with sometimes unpleasant customers or co-workers, and pressures from deadlines and competing demands from the boss, or making due with insufficient resources. Talk with your children about how you juggle these aspects of your job, including your efforts to utilize stress management and people skills to improve your work and workplace.”
• Make Every Day “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day.” Pearl and Morris explain, “You don’t have to wait for April each year to take a child to work. While planning a short business trip or interesting meeting, consider taking your child. At the dinner table, regularly talk about something especially challenging that happened with your work, or some important decision you need to make.”

Kids, Wealth, and Consequences helps parents and their advisers understand how affluence affects children’s future success, happiness and motivation. The book explores everything from how and when parents should talk to their children about the often-uncomfortable topic of money to what families from all income brackets can learn from the economic meltdown about spending, saving and investing to help them better prepare themselves and their children to survive in any economic environment.

Jayne Pearl is a journalist and entertaining speaker, focusing on family business and financial parenting. She is author of Kids and Money: Giving Them the Savvy to Succeed Financially (Bloomberg Press) and has co-authored or ghost-written ten other books. Jayne began her career at Forbes and was former senior editor of Family Business magazine, to which she has contributed for 20 years.

Richard Morris is an adjunct professor at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and is principal of ROI Consulting, helping family owners expand and pass down their business to subsequent generations. Previously, he worked at his family’s 80-year-old privately held company, Fel-Pro Incorporated, managing Marketing and then Acquisitions, and serving on the Board of Directors until its sale in 1998.

Parent teacher conferences are an important part of the communication between the school and parents. They can alert parents of any issues, and can serve to push academic growth. As important as they are, not all parents attend them. This is a problem, and one prosecutor thinks the answer is jail time for those that don’t attend.

Wayne County (Michigan) Prosecutor Kym Worthy is looking to send parents who miss the parent teacher conferences with jail time, with exceptions for parents of students who are doing exceptionally well.

In a statement to CNN, a supporter of the bill, Detroit Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown claims that missing those conferences is more severe than just missing out on communication efforts saying, "It’s child abuse when your child is failing in school and you’re not involved, because you are strapping that child to a life of poverty". Brown also does note that jailing the parents may not be the solution, however.

Is jailing a parent for missing parent teacher conferences the answer? While Worthy’s bill does have it’s supporters, it is unlikely to pass. Yet, should parents still face some sort of penalty for missing out? If so, what would be appropriate?

Facebook has brought more people in than anyone has before. Their popularity and fame has grown more than any other website before them. With so many people, and participants their privacy rules are notoriously lax. The privacy policies are difficult for many to understand and even for those that do make sense of it, the constant changes are giving many a harder time than most would expect.

With all of these changes and ‘updates’ some are raising concern about the younger generation’s use of the website. With so many pieces of information readily available, what assurances do parents have that their children’s privacy is being watched out for? While not many will argue that the parents are in charge of what their kids view online, others do argue that a website should still watch out for it’s users.

While younger kids aren’t supposed to be able to log in to the website, they do and have. While many are finding afterwards that any problems that arise from that sharing (and often, over sharing) won’t be dealt with due to what seems like a brick wall from the website.

Making sure your children understand what is, and isn’t appropriate to post (publically or not) and who they should and shouldn’t add can make a difference in the risks they face online. Look up information about the dangers, and what your children can do to avoid them.

A quick look at any news website can reveal that the state of the school systems are at times problematic. With one school facing no discipline for spying and others having their hands in bullying, it can be a cause for concern.

That concern is obviously far greater if it is your child being bullied.

So, what can be done if it isn’t the other children but instead a teacher, or the system itself that is posing the problem?

• Talk to those that are the problem. Talking calmly and rationally may be able to help, it may not be 100% the teacher’s (or whomever else) fault, and there are many chances that things can be misinterpreted when a parent hears it second hand.
• Don’t be afraid to go over someone’s head. Find the ‘higher up’ in charge of those that are the cause for concern. Write out a calmly worded letter and if you are worried about them receiving it, send it certified.
• If the problem is severe enough, contact the appropriate authorities. While there is a chance that if can have the same outcome as the spying incident, it is still better than doing nothing.

While it isn’t often that the above is needed, when the case of the school being the issue it is difficult to find a solution. If possible, switching schools may be the only choice. With understaffing, and budgeting problems there are many more people recently that are finding that it’s not always the other children that are the cause of schooling anxiety.