Child Development | Harsh Reality

What is the best way to tell your children that you’re getting remarried?

Anyone who has been there can tell you – marriage is tough. Most of the time, the work is worth the effort, but occasionally, things don’t work out. This isn’t a bad thing or a good thing – it’s just something that happens. Though we’d like to stop them from being affected, children are often the ones that feel and observe the most about these kinds of life transitions.

One of the most important things a person getting remarried can do aside from browsing new wedding rings, is to appropriately and sensitively communicate this change if she or he has children. The important attributes which should be practiced by everyone involved in the re-marriage process is honesty. Without that, walls go up and trust degrades.

The first thing to do when telling your teenager or younger children about your plan to re-marry is to be open about your feelings. Occasionally some bitterness may linger from past marriages, so you don’t want to let any residual resentment linger and create ideas of wrongful motivation for re-marriage. This is where honesty and tact are of the utmost importance.

Secondly, you want to provide a forum in which your children can feel free to communicate their own feelings and thoughts. When stunted or silenced vocally, children have a tendency to turn their feelings inward. Even if their thoughts are hard to hear, sensitivity again becomes indispensable.

Thirdly, provide your children with options. Even in their pre-teen and teenage years, children often have a keen sense of intuition and wisdom, though they might not know it themselves. Because entering in a new home presents the uncertainty of change, children may show some signs of regression, but be patient and assure them with your words and your actions that everything is just fine.

Change is a guaranteed part of life, and but it doesn’t have to be insurmountable.

Understanding Normal Adolescent Behavior

Parents of adolescents often mistake normal, expected changes in behavior as defiance. Surviving life with a child that moves from pre-adolescence to adolescence requires parents to understand what to expect at this stage in their child’s life.

What to Expect

As children reach the teenage years, their bodies go through physical and emotional changes. Their peers become an important part of their lives at this time as well. This means that teenagers and everyone they spend time with outside the home, are going through similar changes. They are bound to react in ways that may surprise their parents. If parents remember that many behavioral changes are completely normal, they can avoid repeated arguments that put a strain on a parent’s relationship with their adolescent.

The majority of physically and emotionally healthy adolescents will question authority. Teenagers want those in authority to explain why these rules are in place. Parents must stand their ground on rules about safety and health, such as always wearing a seat belt, or saying no to drugs.

What to Do

There are other rules where a parent and their teenager can make compromises, such as their bedtime and the amount of time spent watching TV. Allowing teenagers to make a trade off on certain house rules, also teaches them responsibility. Parents can let their teens know that if they keep up with their schoolwork, they can stay up for an extra hour at night. Similarly, if a teenager follows the curfew rules for an entire week, parents can reward them with a later curfew that weekend.

Living in Harmony

Parents can avoid major battles if they understand that questioning authority is a normal, expected behavior of most adolescents. Standing firm on important rules and remaining flexible with others, can lead to a more peaceful existence between parents and teenagers.

Being Responsible with Your Money

As a parent, it is your job to be responsible with your money. You need to know how to save money, and you need to take positive steps to save money for your family as often and as much as possible. Big expenses have a tendency to come up when you least expect them when you have a large family to take care of, including home repairs, car repairs, school expenses, medical expenses and so much more. The best thing that you can do to prepare yourself for these big expenses is to start a savings account early, and make it a goal to add money every single month so that you are never without a good working emergency fund.

There are a number of ways that you can pare down your expenses on a month to month basis in order to save money. The first, for example, is car refinancing, because refinancing your auto loan can allow you to get more favorable terms, and more money in your pocket at the end of the month. While on the subject of refinancing, you should also consider a mortgage refinance, which offers many of the same benefits. Couponing is a beneficial way to make sure that you are saving money in your grocery bills, because grocery bills and sundry costs can really add up if you are not using coupons.

There are luckily a lot of things that you can do as a parent to cut down on your expenses while still providing for your family. It is easy to provide for your family when you know what really matters and what does not really matter. Do you need the best cable and internet package, or can you get by with less if it means saving for a rainy day? Make the right decisions about your savings and your expenses and your entire family will surely benefit.

Using Natural and Logical Consequences to Correct a Child’s Misbehavior

The majority of parents learn quickly that ignoring the obnoxious or attention-getting behavior of their younger children, no longer works once a child reaches the middle years, anywhere between eight and twelve years old. Allowing a child to suffer natural consequences for their actions, works well with most children in that age group. As long as the consequences do not harm the child or anyone else, and depending on the disposition of the child, this method of discipline is desirable for parents.

Refusing to take an umbrella to school on a rainy day, forgetting to complete a homework assignment, or acting rude with friends, results in feeling chilly all day, receiving a scolding from the teacher, and the possibility of losing a friend or two. It may take several times for these scenarios to play out, but eventually a child will get the message. There are times, though, when natural consequences are not enough.

This happens when a child reaches the preteen years. Parents of pre-adolescents that never comes home on time, or who constantly skips out on chores, will need to use logical consequences to correct their child. As long as parents let a child know ahead of time what will happen when they commit infractions of the rules, they can make good on their promises of withholding privileges.

A teenager, who missed a party on the weekend because they came home late two nights the previous week, will learn that a parent will forbid them to go to the next party unless they respect the curfew rule. Maybe a child has his or her eye on the latest CD by their favorite artist, but has to wait an additional week for allowance because they did not feed the dogs all week, or forgot to take out the trash.

Suffering natural and logical consequences prompts children to value household rules and to learn responsibility for their own actions.

Causes of Psychological Dysfunctions in Children

When parents are incapable of providing a healthy, nurturing environment for children, it can cause emotional, social, and even physical problems for children that can last a lifetime.

The problem is most prevalent where children grow up in a home with an alcoholic or drug-addicted parent, but can occur in the home when parents are incapable of providing emotional or physical support for their children, because they were victims of psychological dysfunction themselves.

Psychologist Erik Erikson listed eight stages of development in one’s life span, each stage dependent on the other for growth.

In a healthy home environment, parents help children through the emotional stages of early life:

Birth to 18 months – Learning to trust
18 months to 3 years – Sensing self-worth, pride, and independence
3-6 years – Learning new skills and enjoying accomplishments
6 years to puberty – Acquiring skills for learning the value of working and how things work
Adolescence – Experiencing different stages leaning toward individuality and maturity

Growing up in an unhealthy or dysfunctional home environment causes the following problems for young adults. Without the help of a professional or a support group, these young adults will carry these problems with them their entire lives:

Young Adulthood – Isolation, self-absorption, and withdrawal from close relationships and intimacy
Middle Age – Social and psychological deprivation and self-indulgence
Old Age – Fear of death and disappointment in failure to accomplish goals in life

When children grow up in a household, where parents are not able to cope with meeting their own emotional needs, let alone the needs of their children, those children grow up believing they are to blame.

As adults, they punish themselves unconsciously, staying in bad relationships or avoiding all relationships. At worse, they become parents who repeat the cycle because they know of no other way.

People with problems relating to their upbringing, should attempt to seek help before becoming parents themselves. Support groups offer a place for those who, from birth, did not receive critical support at important stages in their development as a child. Seeking help is one way of breaking the cycle.

Clean Out Your Computer’s Registry

Computers and using the Internet have become an integral part of our daily lives. You shop, bank, read the newspaper, watch movies, share pictures, and stay connected with far-flung friends and family members. Your children download ringtones for their phones. They play online games. They install desktop wallpaper samples. They write papers for school. Your wife finds a recipe organizing software that she downloads. She does online scrapbooking. You download a software program to track your personal fitness routine. You download PDF files that explain how to fix that ugly knocking sound in your car engine. You buy music online. You buy a new printer and get a new driver for your old scanner.

Everybody is doing something all the time on the computer! After a while, you notice that your computer is sluggish. All of this use affects the registry of your Windows based computer. The registry is the part of your computer where it stores information that tells it how to run. It’s a huge warehouse of details. When you install, uninstall, save, delete, and browse the Internet, your registry is storing information. Practically everything that you do is recorded somewhere in the registry.

One way to improve your computer’s peppiness is to clean the registry using PC Tools Registry Software. It goes in and evaluates all of the information in your computer’s registry. It identifies files that are no longer needed. Then, it steps you through removing unnecessary items.

Before you use a registry cleaning software, make sure you back up your computer. After you have done this, you can safely run a registry cleaner. Read whatever the registry software has to say. If you don’t understand what it is trying to do, don’t delete the entry.

Now, after cleaning your registry, your computer start-up time will be zippier. It will run smoother and won’t hang up or freeze like it did before you cleaned it.

Time Out at Any Age

Time out is often used as a disciplinary tool by parents for children to help them understand a consequence for bad behavior. Time out’s as a guide should last about the length of a child’s age. So, for a two year old, they would have a two minute time out. Now, consider, that a two year old might not understand why they are in time-out, or be able to truly sit for two minutes, so if this method of discipline is utilized for this age group, you will need a nice warm lap, and a lot of patience.

Time out for older children allows them to think about the action that caused the consequence of time out, which in the end removes them from something that they wanted to participate in. Even as adults we don’t usually want to be removed from something rewarding or fun. Luckily we don’t have anyone that can put us in time-out.

Most parents find the use of a time out to be beneficial for a break in the situation and a few minutes to provide some breathing room, especially if further disciplinary action is necessary. The time out allows a child to consider what they did incorrectly and most importantly allows them to understand that you are firm when expectations are provided and you will not deviate from what you expect from your children.

Time out’s should not take place in a child’s room, since this is usually a place that holds a lot of their toys. A place without distractions that allows them to truly consider a resolution is best. The kitchen or dining table, a place that is quiet and removes them from the situation where they originally got in trouble.

The use of time out allows a child to settle down their strong emotions so they can calm down and adjust their attitude to remain positive.

Selective Choices

In today’s society there are choices for almost everything, from what size meal you want at a burger joint, to style of checks. The list is endless and pretty much second nature for most people. For children, choices can be confusing and often end badly with an erupting child, specifically toddlers.

As parents, it is wise to provide selective choices, preferably two that will encourage the child making an appropriate selection no matter what they choose because what we’ve offered them is within our approval. As children get older, these choices obviously would also model correct discipline and morals, still providing healthy choices for our children, and allowing them to discern through life’s circumstances.

By providing choices when our children are younger, they get into the habit of needing to choose something that is made available to them. They are less apt to get confused or to try to wager with an adult when the selection is limited and we ensure them that they are to only pick from the choices provided.

Often parents along with the idea of wanting to provide their children with a better life, will cater to their every need and desire, from cooking separate meals to letting a child have free reign. This is unhealthy for a child and shows them that there are no boundaries to getting what they want all the time.

There are many situations where as a parent we do not want to be in a situation where our children are allowed to make unjustifiable choices just because they want them. The relationship between parent and child would definitely not be healthy and we would be teaching our children to be self-serving individuals.

The repercussions of such free-reign would be seen quickly. Providing selective and healthy choices for children with clear boundaries provides flexibility, enough freedom, and safety. These are important as they venture into adulthood.