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!

Stimulating Nurturing And Communicating With Your Child

Writen by Linda Milo

To help your baby develop a good attitude about him or herself, and to discover that life is exciting and wonderful, two things are most important: talking and touching. All children are born with the capacity to understand words and to learn to talk. Children start to communicate their needs from the moment they are born. When your baby hears your voice, he will stop what he is doing and listen. At about four months old, your baby will respond with noises when someone is talking to him. The first sounds your baby makes sound like e's and eh's and a's. These are called "discomfort sounds" of crying. A cry will sound like e, eh, and a. Your baby also communicates with gestures, facial expressions, and body movements.

Very soon after birth, a baby will also learn the sounds of ah, oh, and oo. These are called "comfort sounds" and you can usually hear them when your baby is content. Paying attention to these different sounds helps to establish a way your baby can talk to you. Every baby understands that when he makes these sounds, his mother or father will respond by doing something. At about six months of age, these sounds will show up in combination. This is the point when your baby will start to babble.

When your child starts "baby talk," your response should be smiles and praises. Imitate that sound back to your child. When you imitate these sounds, he'll probably say them right back to you. Hug your child and tell him how pleased you are that he is talking. How much and in what way our child will talk depends, to a great extent, on you. A child hears his first words from his parents and for the first few years most of the speech they continue to hear is from you. If a lot of talking goes on in the home, particularly directed to them, they will assume speech is important. They will work harder at speaking and will talk sooner and more.

Language develops by speaking with your child as much as possible. Whenever you're feeding, changing, bathing, and walking your child, talk to him. When you talk to your children, they are learning to put words to certain actions and objects. This helps your child express his needs in words. In order for you to share more complicated thoughts and ideas, your child must begin to develop language, speech at first and then writing. Just a few simple sounds during the first year of life will lead to the use of thousands of words by the time your child is a teenager.

Another wonderful way to stimulate language development is by reading to your child daily. You can read during the day or before bedtime. Hearing your voice communicates love and security to your child. Many parents tell me that their child let's them know they want to be read to when they being a book out of their book basket or shelf and hand it to their parent's to read to them.

Children's feelings are a good way to stimulate and nurture your child. Use words to describe how you think your child is feeling: "Jane looks very unhappy right now," or "Tim is feeling happy." Putting words to feelings will help your child express how they feel. This is a lifelong skill that will benefit your child's self-esteem and thoughts of himself. With the ability to use words, phrases and sentences, your child gains mastery of his environment by expressing his needs and understanding the needs of others.

Your child is a natural born explorer. There are many ways to help your child develop a sense of touch and stimulation, which helps in his overall development. Every child likes to touch, taste, grab, twist, bite, and pull on anything within their reach. Giving your child safe things to play with and touch helps their eye-hand coordination and sense of exploration. Here are some ways to help stimulate your child's development:

· Give your child things of different colors and sizes.
· Dance and sing with your child in your arms.
· Stimulate your child's body by a daily full body massage.
· Children love when you play with their hands and feet and tickle them gently.
· Stimulate your child with gentle rocking and singing songs.
· Give your child safe things to touch: objects that are soft, fuzzy, sticky, hard, squishy, etc.
· Show your child his and your face in a large mirror.

Stimulating, nurturing and communicating with your child from the day of his birth creates a conscious effort on your part to encourage your child to find life exciting and wonderful. Your child's physical, intellectual, language and social and emotional development depends upon your interactions with your child. You are the person your child most imitates throughout his lifetime. So give your child the best start in life by providing a loving, stimulating and caring environment that sends the message, "I love you and want the best for you."

Copyright © 2006 by Linda Milo and Empowering Parents Now. All rights reserved.

Linda Milo, The Parent-Child Connection Coach, specializes in helping mothers and fathers turn their parenting challenges into a more livable, more workable, and more enjoyable family life. Her FREE better parenting newsletter covers specific, proven, and immediately usable methods for overcoming the most common parenting challenges. Visit http://www.empoweringparentsnow.com to subscribe to her FREE newsletter, and you'll also receive her FREE Special Report.