Cell Phones Can Be A Good Thing for Children

Children age 11 and older should be allowed to have cell phones, along with clearly defined rules and consequences. Having a cell phone allows your child to have more independence and shows you recognize they’re growing up. It also helps teach them about limits and being responsible for things they own.

My daughter was 11 when she got her first cell phone; she’s now 16 years old and a junior in high school. Her first cell phones, which were around $60 each, had a pay-as-you-go plan from Virgin then I spent $20 a month on calls and text messages. Two summers ago, I moved her to my service plan and got her a new phone. My total cost for the plan and unlimited texting for two lines, including taxes, is $113 per month.

I wanted her to have a cell phone to allow her to have more independence. When she got to the middle school, she wanted to be able to walk the two blocks from the school to the library. Having a cell phone allowed her to call me to tell me when she got there and when she was walking to my office.

Now, during the school day, she uses it to verify plans and alert me to possible changes as well as to let me know she’s ready to be picked up. If anything changes on my end, I can send her a text message that she will get when the last bell rings. Away from school, we use it to keep in touch when she’s away from home or is ready to be picked up.

The middle and high school here allow students to have cell phones at school but they are to be turned off during school. My daughter uses it on the way to and from school, but most it is off unless she needs to contact me. Other students do not follow the rules, however, and are regularly texting each other, Facebook and their parents. In my daughter’s high school, if you are caught using your phone they give a warning to put it away. If you don’t, the teachers can take it away until the end of class. If it is an ongoing problem, they send the student to the principal’s office.

Overall, it has worked out great for us with some guidelines and faith in her ability to handle the responsibility.

How Much Food Should My Baby Eat?

Feeding your baby can be one of the most stressful aspects of parenting. When my daughter was a baby, it was definitely one of the things on my mind all the time. Am I feeding her too much? Not enough? When should I start giving her solids? How much of her diet should be liquids and how much should be solids?

Birth to Six Months

For the first six months, your baby should be drinking breast milk or formula exclusively because it has nutrients your baby needs. Breast milk also offers immune system protection and is nonallergenic. Newborns should be fed 2-3 ounces every few hours and need fewer bottles with more formula or breast milk as they get older. If you watch your baby’s cues, you’ll know when to start giving her more or less.

You can figure out if your baby is getting enough to eat by monitoring the diapers. If they’re getting enough, your baby will have 4-6 wet disposable diapers a day and 2-4 poopy diapers in a 24-hour period. Babies who are breastfed may have fewer poppy diapers. You can also tell by having them weighed and measured by your doctor.

Six Months to One Year

From four to six months you can start feeding your baby solid foods. You’ll know your baby is ready when the tongue-thrust reflex is gone and they can support their head and sit up. In our case, my daughter didn’t seem to be getting enough to eat from just the formula so our doctor suggested we start her on cereal.

The first food babies are given is an iron-fortified rice cereal. You can mix it with breast milk or formula. The first attempts should be mostly liquid with a little cereal. You can thicken it with more cereal as your baby gets used to eating it. You can heat the cereal or serve it cold. If you warm it in the microwave, stir it and make sure it is cool enough for your baby to eat. Don’t feed your baby cereal in a bottle as it doesn’t help them learn how to eat solid foods.

After your baby has gotten used to eating from a spoon, you can start adding in pureed single foods one at a time. Start with vegetables first then add fruits. After success with the single foods you can start mixing them. The primary source of food should still come from breastfeeding or formula and you need to continue until they are at least a year old.

At six months, you can introduce your baby to 100% fruit juices in a sippy cup (a specially designed cup that slows the flow of liquids and helps teach your baby to drink from a cup). You should only give your baby four ounces of juice a day to avoid your baby becoming overweight or having diarrhea.

Around nine months you can start giving them chunkier soft foods, second stage for most baby food companies, and single food pureed meats. You can also start mixing in some table foods. Watch for signs that your baby is full, like pushing the spoon away or turning their head, and stop feeding them. Also, watch for signs that they want more. As your baby is approaching one year, they will drink less breast milk or formula. Your baby should only need 3-4 six-ounce bottles a day, which should be fed to your baby before their meal of solid foods.

As with the first six months, you can tell if your baby is eating enough or too much by monitoring their growth with your doctor. Your doctor can answer  your questions about feeding, too. Your baby’s needs may vary from these recommendations and you should pay attention to cues they are giving you.

Foods to Avoid

In the first year, you should also avoid honey, eggs, fish, seafood, nuts, and citrus fruits and juices. These foods are common food allergies or may cause health issues, like honey possibly giving your baby botulism or acidic citrus fruits causing painful urination. Cow’s milk should be avoided in the first year as it doesn’t provide enough of the required nutrients for your baby.

References:

Boyse, K., RN (Sept. 2010). Feeding your baby and toddler (Birth to age two). University of Michigan Health System. Retrieved from http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/feedbaby.htm

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2010). Breastfeeding: Recommendations vitamin D supplementation. Retrieved from

http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/recommendations/vitamin_D.htm.

KidsHealth (August 2008). Feeding your 4- to 7-month-old. Retrieved from http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/feeding/feed47m.html#.

KidsHealth (August 2008). Feeding your 8- to 12-month-old. Retrieved from http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/feeding/feed812m.html.

Thompson, J and Manore, M (2010). Nutrition for life (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Keeping Kids Busy at Your Party

Having a party for kids is fun, but one of the biggest challenges is keeping them busy. You can keep your young party-goers happy with a variety of activities, crafts and games. These ideas can also be used to keep kids busy at family gatherings or holiday parties with both kids and adults.

Arrival

The perfect time for an activity is when the guests first arrive, especially if there are going to be a lot of people who don’t know each other. This is great for the parent helpers so they can learn all the kids’ names.

You could have the kids decorate a name tag or party hat after you take their jacket and present. Another fun idea is to have each guest sign and draw a picture on a large birthday card poster, which can be made from colorful poster board.

Activity/Craft Centers

You can have as many or as few of these as you have room for. The centers should be available to the kids to use at any time during the party. The centers can offer crafts, coloring, puzzles, or toys like building blocks or dollhouse that the kids can play on their own or with minimal adult guidance.

Crafts, which can also serve as goodie bag items, should be easy for all your guests to do on their own. It is a good idea to avoid crafts that require a lot of gluing, which is messy and frustrating as you wait for the glue to dry. If you’re going to be using markers or paint, offer your guests the washable varieties so clothes don’t get stained.

Crafts can include sand art, pipe cleaners, beads and cord for necklaces, paper airplanes or dolls, door knob hangers, decorating picture frames, coloring goodie bags, decorating T-shirts or pillowcases, and spin art. You can find a variety of simple crafts that require little to no adult supervision and are inexpensive to make for kids ages 3-7 at www.kidsholidaycrafts.com.

Another popular activity for kids is face painting. You can buy books that come with face painting kits that show you how to draw simple animals. If you don’t feel comfortable doing the face painting, you could call on the artistic talents of a parent helper or a high school art student.

Games

There are a wide range of games you can play, inside or outside, that can be modified to suit the age level of your guests or the party theme. Many popular themes based on TV shows or movies often have theme-related games you can buy.

Your guest would get tickets that can be redeemed for prizes at the end of the party. Every kid would get one ticket for participating in the game then the winner would get three tickets, second place would get two and third place would get one ticket. You can either make the tickets on your computer or purchase them at a party store.

If your party is indoors because of the weather or season there are still a wide range of games you can play. Some fun games are pin the tail on the donkey (or have it match the theme of your party, for example pin the parrot on the pirate’s shoulder), scavenger hunts, 20 questions, bean bag toss, ring toss, bingo, duck duck goose, guessing games or Simon Says.

If you’re lucky enough to be able to have your party outside you have even more choices for games. You can use the kiddie pool for fishing games, a coin toss (try to get the coins in the floating pie tins) or duck pond. You could also play musical chairs, do an obstacle course, relay races, tug of war, water balloons or a piñata.

Prizes

Prizes for games can be purchased at dollar stores, party stores or catalogs like the Oriental Trading Company. The prizes offered will depend on the ages of your guests and how the kids will be winning them. The prizes for games would be in addition to a goodie bag.

For ticket redemption you could have items like plastic bracelets/cars or pieces of candy for one ticket, small dolls or beanbag animals for five tickets, and so on. Make sure you have enough prizes for the number of tickets you’ll be giving out. Any prizes not chosen can be raffled off or saved for the next party.

Have a great party!

Baby Mental Stimulation

Babies need mental stimulation. Some are doing this even before their child is born with people having their baby listen to classical music because, according to studies, this is helpful in stimulating a baby's mind. There are a variety of effective ways to ensure that your baby is properly mentally stimulated and nourished.

• Communicate with your baby. Sure they’re not yet equipped with the vocabulary to respond to you in full sentence but it does not mean that talking to her is futile. Talk to her while you dress her, bathe her or feed her. This will encourage interaction and she will soon respond with a coo, smile or a few syllables.

• Engage your child in activities that will stimulate their mind. Allow your baby to explore his surroundings by showing him around the house, taking him for a stroll at the park or letting him play with safe household items like plastic cups and pails. Just be sure he can't put it into his mouth.

• Give her mind stimulating toys like building blocks, shape sorters and push and pull toys that will incite her to use her creativity, imagination, logical thinking and teach her a variety of lessons like spatial awareness and cause and effect.

• Encourage socialization and interaction. Introduce your baby to other kids and neighbors. Teach him the art of conversation by putting up a puppet show or making him play with toy telephones and have him imitate you when you talk to someone on the phone.

• Give constant signs of affection such as hugs and kisses to make your baby feel loved and cared for and to give her an assurance that she is safe and secure which is also contributory to the development of a positive self-esteem.

• Read stories to your baby. This is important in widening your baby's language capacity and introducing him to different concepts.

• Avoid subjecting your kid to stress. Don't over stimulate your baby by bringing her to crowded and noisy places. Also, avoid having arguments in front of your baby because this may cause psychological trauma and may be detrimental to her overall development.

• It is of utmost importance that you give your baby a proper nutritional diet. If he's already started on solids, make sure you give him adequate nutrients, vitamins and minerals that are needed for his brain to thrive and develop properly.

• Let your child have cars, trucks and vehicle toys that do not have small or loose parts, sharp and pointy objects and are made of durable and flexible but safe plastic material.

Your baby's brain development is one of the most important aspects of their overall development as an individual. As a parent, it is your responsibility to provide a safe environment where your baby can explore with their mind and senses, and learn about the world around them.

The Importance of Age-Appropriate Toys

When I was a nanny, I had a short-term position with a family in New Jersey. They had a little girl who was about seven months old. The darling girl was happy enough but she was being held back on her physical and mental development because of her mother's fears of the child getting hurt. She only had rattles and teething toys to play with. She hadn't even been allowed to just lay on the floor so she could learn to roll over, forget begin crawling.

The need for age-appropriate toys is simple: to offer a challenge and encourage development. The toys don't have to be store bought and there doesn't have to be a lot of them, but they are needed. Toys help the child learn to master the skills they should be learning at that stage, especially when they're in the baby, toddler, and preschooler stages. Age-appropriate toys are going to be engaging and challenging to your child. The best ones are fun and, when they can be, educational.

Children also need variety as they grow tired of the same old toys after a few months, which stagnates development. It is good to have some toys hidden away to swap into the mix of toys. Take three to five out that they're bored with and replace with the same number of new ones. This helps save money and keeps your child from getting bored. As your child starts outgrowing the toys, weed them out from the toy box helps eliminate clutter and encourages them to play with more age-appropriate toys.

TIP: When it comes to birthdays and holiday present giving, buy one or two toys that are for the current age and the rest for about six to nine months out so that when they get to that point you already have toys ready to give your child new challenges without having to spend more money.

A Side Note:
 The mom's reasoning for the infant toys still being used was that she didn't want her baby to hurt herself. It had been a difficult pregnancy and birth, which she was advised not to repeat. That meant their daughter was going to be their only child and the mom wanted to protect her as much as possible. Not a bad thing until it prevents your child from advancing mentally and physically, which is what was happening with this family.

By the end of my first week I went to Toys 'R Us and made a list of age appropriate toys and added a few things for the next six months. There were probably 20 items on the list from small handheld toys to larger items like an exersaucer, which allowed for freer movement for the baby and the safety the mom needed. The mom accepted that I knew what I was talking about, then went out and bought everything on the list. The baby's life was so greatly enhanced and she started developing in leaps and bounds.

And, with the mom's permission, I took the baby into their bedroom with the uber thick carpet and let her lay on the floor. Within a day or two she was rolling over and managed to get up on her knees. By the end of the week she was starting to crawl a little. She had been more than ready to physically do these things. She just needed to be allowed to do them.

A Creative Solution for Preschool Nightmares

I recently published an article for a solution to help deal with the nightmares of preschools. You can find the article at: http://nancycav.hubpages.com/hub/A-Creative-Solution-for-Preschool-Nightmares

What do you do when your child has a nightmare?

Welcome

Welcome to Incidentals of Parenting. This is my blog offering parental advice and tips as well as crafts for parents to do with their children.

I have had many jobs over the last 25 years including babysitter, live in and live out nanny, worked in an after school program for tweens, raised my own child and worked as an editor of a monthly parenting magazine in southwestern New Hampshire. Additionally, I have some college education in psychology for infants and babies.

I hope you enjoy the blog!