The Organized Parent 8 Tips For Getting Your Growing Familys Act Together

Writen by Jennifer Hull

One child is a relationship. Raising two or more is a small business. To stay sane as the family grows, you need to organize and plan effectively.

What follows are 8 tips for keeping family life on track as school events, pediatrician appointments and errands multiply.

*Keep a "Waiting For" file. My file currently contains: birthday invitations responded to, information on my girls' upcoming dance recital, and receipts for uniforms on order. Without this file, these papers would be on my desk.

*Read the school newsletter. Skip the newsletter and the school gods will get you. Your kid will arrive in uniform on costume day. You'll find out about the big pilgrim event after the turkey's been roasted. Note newsletter events - then look for them to change in the next newsletter.

*Get an electronic organizer. As the family grows, so do the number of regularly scheduled events. Kids' activities, PTA meetings - why record these by hand each week when you can program them to repeat? The best gift I got preparing for my second child was a Palm organizer.

*Keep spring open. Once the kids start school, May and June are as busy as December. Schedule a business trip during the last month of school and you risk missing an important event. Keep your calendar as clear as possible during this time.

*Create an inbox for your mate. You swear you left it on the counter for him. He hasn't seen it. Avoid conflict by giving your spouse an inbox. Put the roofing estimate job in the box and place flowers on the counter.

*Meet with your spouse. Plans made in passing don't always register. Men are lousy at multitasking. Women get overwhelmed at home. Sit down and compare calendars. Start by scheduling date night.

*Consider birthday parties optional. The more kids you have, the more invitations you get. Pass on those that don't fit your schedule. But RSVP so the busy birthday parent can plan.

*Preserve free time. My favorite days with my girls are the unscheduled ones. Set aside time to just hang out together. It's as important as anything else you'll do.

(c) 2006 Jennifer Bingham Hull. Reprint rights granted as long as entire article is published, including resource box and its live links.

Jennifer Bingham Hull is an award-winning author and mother of two. Her book, Beyond One: Growing a Family and Getting a Life, looks at life after the second child. Jennifer's articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Parenting, Working Mother and many other publications. Visit http://www.growingafamily.com/ where you can contact her to receive this "Life Beyond One" column regularly and sign up for her free newsletter.

The Power Of Positive Selfesteem

Writen by Barb Desmarais

Nathanial Brandon, the well-known author of several books on self-esteem tells us that "self-esteem is the key to success or failure." He also says that parents can't give their children self-esteem if they don't possess it themselves.

Why do we want our kids to have a positive sense of self-worth? Children who like themselves make friends easily, tend to be leaders rather than followers, understand that mistakes are a tool for learning, are willing to take risks and generally see the bright side of life. They have a lot of confidence and just know they have what it takes to be able to realize their dreams.

We all know adults who lack self-esteem. It's sad because often they are people who have so much to offer but somehow lack the confidence to share their skills and knowledge with the world. They avoid situations that might present potential risk. They limit their network to only those people they feel completely safe and secure with. They don't dare risk publicly displaying what they know for fear of humiliation of rejection. Taking any kind of risk is just too scary.

It's often been said that in life we don't regret the things we did as much as the things we didn't do. We can all look back on missed opportunities. The fear of failure and rejection is enormous yet read the stories of any highly successful person and you'll find that they faced rejection over and over again. They also "failed" many many times. What made them succeed is that they weren't discouraged by rejection and continued to believe in themselves.

The view we have of ourselves was established in childhood. It came from the way the adults who cared for us responded to our accomplishments, our dreams, our aspirations and our so-called mistakes. It came from how they honored and acknowledged our uniqueness and our special abilities. The view we took on of ourselves stayed with us even as we left childhood and became adults.

Children want to know that we believe in them. There are a variety of ways we can deliver that message. They want to know that no matter what we will always be there for them. They need to feel safe in their own environment.

All of us are only using a fraction of our potential. Why don't we do whatever it takes to ensure our kids become the magnificent people they're meant to be and experience success in all aspects of their lives?

Barbara Desmarais is a parenting and life coach and host of "The Parenting Coach Show" on http://www.snippetradio.com. Visit her website at http://www.theparentingcoach.com. She can be reached at barb@theparentingcoach.com Sign up for Barb's new e-course: "Your Child's Self-Esteem"

Summer Boredom Busters 10 Great Ideas To Keep Kids From Getting The Summer Blues

Writen by Polly Schlafhauser

Keep kids from getting the summer blues with these ten great ideas.

Build an Ice Cream Stand – Find a local ball park busy with little league ball games and set up an ice cream stand. Let the kids build and decorate the stand out of wood or cardboard (old refrigerator boxes work well) and add their menu to the outside. Keep kids involved by letting them be in charge of buying the supplies (large bulk clubs like Sam's Club are great for this) and figuring out how much to charge. Encourage your kids to donate a portion of their profits to a charity or add some fun games for their customers to play while enjoying their ice cream. Keep the ice cream cold by burying it in plastic containers at the bottom of a big cooler filled with ice.

Organize a Summer Playgroup – Ask other parents to join you and your kids at a local park once a week. Play on the playground, organize lawn games, or provide crafts for the kids.

Hold a Treasure Hunt – Write up clues that will lead your kids on a hunt through the neighborhood and to local places of interest. Begin by mailing the first clue to the kids (what kid doesn't like to receive mail?) and letting them figure out where to go. You can spread the clues out over the summer or have them complete the hunt in a day. At the end, have a "treasure" of prizes available as reward for their accomplishments. You can make it interesting by writing the clues on scrolls or by making them educational

Start a Neighborhood Business – If your child is old enough, help them start a small neighborhood business like pet watching, dog walking, mother's helper, or house watching (getting mail, watering plants). Help them create fliers, determine pricing, and of course help them understand how to provide excellent customer service.

Host a Neighborhood Cookout – Encourage your neighbors and friends to take a break from their busy lives by inviting them to a neighborhood cookout. Include the kids by having them help make invitations, plan games, and prepare food. Make it easier on yourself and family by asking your friends and neighbors to bring a dish to share.

Join a Reading Contest or Challenge – Encourage your kids to get lost in a good book this summer by signing them up for your local library's reading contest. Common among most libraries, book challenges are a great way to keep kids reading through the summer and earn prizes and awards for their achievements.

Start a Summer Scrapbook or Memory Jar – Start by saving small mementos from your summer vacations, activities, and trips. Over the summer let the kids add them to a scrapbook or store in a decorated memory jar or box. Make it fun by giving the kids a challenge of finding the most unique memento from their excursions.

Hold a Carnival – Let your kids organize a backyard carnival for friends and neighbors. Kids can be kept busy building a ticket booth, organizing games, planning food, and buying prizes. Let them take charge here; you will be amazed at what their imaginations can do!

Write a Family or Neighborhood Newsletter – Put your kids in charge of writing and publishing a family or neighborhood newsletter. Let them write creative articles and share the scoop on what is going on with friends and family. This is a great way to help them improve their writing skills and keep them busy at the same time.

Start a Puzzle – Pick out a large challenging puzzle and put it in an out of the way place. Encourage the kids to slowly add and complete the puzzle throughout the summer. This is a great one to have on hand when they say "I'm bored".

Polly Schlafhauser is Founder and President of Families with Purpose, a website dedicated to helping busy families enhance their family life and find time for the little things in life. To subscribe to their FREE newsletter or to find more creative ideas to beat the Summer Boredom Blues, visit their website at http://www.familieswithpurpose.com

Missed Opportunity Are My Parents To Blame

Writen by Kacy Carr

Parents have undying love for their babies which grows stronger and stronger each and every day.

The infancy months where four hourly feeds are followed by the hand aching task of burping baby. Dribbles of milk flow through your fingers as the infant rests his/her weary scrunched up face in the palm of your hand fighting off the land of nod. What is baby thinking? As he/she loses the battle to stay awake.

Then we have the nightmare months of the toddler years where mum and dad need eyes in the back of their heads. It is at this time we teach the toddler to walk/talk, and when they do we tell them to shut up and sit down. It only takes a second for baby to scale the stairs, and then it is panic stations while you negotiate and try to convince the child to stay put till you manage to reach out for them. What a relief when you have them safe in your arms smothering them with affection while you chastise them. What is the child thinking? Being loved and shouted at, at the same time.

We have the first day of school where many a mothers' heart is broken leaving their child behind. Some children adapt easily to their new school and we have the ones that don't. Thus making it harder for mummy/daddy to leave as teacher tries coaxing the screaming child tugging at the apron strings. What is the child thinking?

Teenage tantrums have to be controlled and the best person for the job is the parent. We are there to lend a shoulder to cry on all because they can not have Justin Timberlake or Brittany Spears on their arm. Then as parents we struggle with Once upon a time there were the birds and the bees. Parents are the first to see danger signs. Whether it be the wrong choice in boy/girlfriend or maybe the people they hang out with. so when they receive a clip around the ear for doing something they felt was right and mum and dad didn't, then what was that child thinking?

The wedding ring exchange between your child and their partner tells you the parent it is time to let go now they have all grown up. But do we ? I don't think so.

Whatever the age of your kids you will find they will always be your babies.

What were those children thinking? Well let me tell you, mum and dad it because they cared.

Want to know what the married kids were thinking? Well I think you may have guessed that one yourself. So you see as protective and caring parents we could not let go if we wanted too because someone has to look after the grandchildren.

It is cruel world out there and in some sad cases children have lost their parents to illness or misfortunate events and have no one to point them in the right direction. If you want to help your kids then further their education. This way they have a chance to get on in life. An educational background works wonders in the career world. You can find more information about online education on the internet.

Don't have your kids thinking they missed out on an opportunity because mum and dad chose not care anymore.

This is an amazing site with proven results with your kids best interests at heart http://www.allaboutonlineeducation.com

How To End The Misery Of Bedwetting

Writen by G Jones

When a child wets the bed they worry. Children tend to become dry during the day more easily than at night. During the day they are awake and aware of their feelings and can go to the toilet normally. However, at night, when they are asleep, the usual feelings of a full bladder aren't sufficiently strong to wake them. The result is a wet bed. Or, young children have to continue wearing diapers at night.

Fairly soon they realise this is not normal. They wonder why they don't need a diaper during the day, but do need one at night. They might also talk to siblings or friends and discover that they don't need a night-time diaper. This will only compound their worries.

Throughout childhood, your son or daughter is trying to establish their identity; they are trying to find out who they are. They also want to make sure they 'fit in', that they are just like everyone else and that they are not abnormal. As soon as they discover that wetting the bed is not usual, they worry.

Your child might not say they are worried, but they will be. What this means is that you need to do everything you can to reduce the potential for concern. That means treating the bed wetting occasions as normal, no trouble. Don't make a big thing out of them. The more you make a fuss, the more the child thinks they are unusual, out of the ordinary. And when that happens, they are more likely to continue wetting the bed.

Also, it's important not to punish the child. One survey found that 21% of all children who wet the bed are punished for doing so. But the child has no idea why the punishment is taking place. They are doing something natural - urinating - and they can't connect the punishment to any crime. This can lead to all sorts of difficulties for the child, including social ones. Punishment is also counterproductive, lengthening the time it takes to achieve night time dryness.

Instead of punishment, children who wet the bed need support, guidance and encouragement. Positive reinforcement of the good times - when they have a dry night - is much more likely to succeed in the long term.

The problem for most parents is that the best methods of dealing with bed wetting also take a long time. The child also gets frustrated at the delay in achieving a dry night. That's whey encouragement and a positive home and attitude are essential in helping children come to terms with the difficulties they face.

The more you talk about bed wetting and make them feel abnormal, the worse the situation will become. The more you treat each bed wetting incident as a normal everyday occurrence, the quicker the dry nights will arrive.

For more information on how to deal with bed wetting and end the misery for your child visit Bed Wetting Info.

Getting Through To Your Teenager

Writen by Joe Martin

Have you ever watched your teenager make a mistake (that you've made yourself) after you've warned them at least a thousand times? Is there anything more frustrating as a parent?

Well, this is somewhat typical in most "normal" households across America. We (parents) screw up, tell our children about it, and what do they do? They go out and repeat the same mistake. It makes you question your own gene pool.

In actuality, the problem isn't with the teenager (at least not all of it), the problem is in our approach to teaching our teenager the lesson we want them to learn. In a sense, we act just as crazy sometimes; we teach them using the same strategies that didn't work a month or year ago. We should be asking ourselves, when will we learn from our past mistakes?

Here's a better approach that I've experimented with few times with my own students. It's a modified version of the Socratic method. You simply lead your teenager to a predetermined answer that they come up with on their own. That's it. I know it sounds easy, but it takes quite a bit of practice. Allow me to demonstrate.

A parent of one of my students confided in me that her son was hanging around a dangerous group of boys in the neighborhood. She believed his friends were possibly into drugs, gang violence, and other criminal activity. With no father figure in the home, she thought maybe I could "get through" to him.

I asked her, "What have you said to him?" She replied, "I've told him at least a hundred times that his friends are up to no good, and they're going to eventually get him into trouble and jeopardize his future." She continued, as she cried, "I told him that I made the same mistake when I was his age, and he didn't want to go through the pain I did. I just can't get him to listen."

A lot of us can relate to this mother's frustration. We want so much for our children to avoid the mistakes we made. We can't understand why they can't understand our concern, and we become frustrated and sometimes even angry.

Well, I agreed to meet with her son after class. But I decided to use a different approach. I figured the old approach wasn't working, so what did I have to lose? After a little small talk, I simply asked a couple of simple questions, "Who are your three closest friends?" After he gave their names (all part of the group his mom disliked), I asked him a second question, "If you died tonight, and you had children, would you want any of those friends raising your son or daughter?"

After an extremely long pause, I let him off the hook by saying, "You don't have to give me the answer, but I do want you to ask yourself another question. If you wouldn't let them raise your children in the future, then why are spending most of your time with them today?" That was the end of our discussion.

This little episode may or may not have put him on the right track, but it did one thing his mother was unable to do – get through to him. He now had to make his own decision based on his own reality, not his mother or his teacher – and then accept responsibility for the consequences of that decision.

And that's all you can really do for teenagers…get them to think for themselves. If you did a good job teaching your children in the early years, the growing process (including the mistakes) is a lot easier to accept.

The key to getting through to your teenager is to say less, and ask more in order to get them to do more thinking. The more you say, the less they'll think. And the less they think, the more mistakes they're inclined to make. So, take your own advice, learn from your past mistakes by adopting a new approach.

Dr. Joe Martin is an award-winning speaker, author, professor, and educational consultant and owner of New Teacher Success. Visit http://www.newteachersuccess.com today!