Posts Tagged ‘Children’

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The Most Popular Lies that Parents Tell their Children

November 20, 2012

I make a point of not lying to my children, yet as I posted a while ago, I am guilty of perpetuating the tooth fairy fib.  I am also guilty of hiding vegetables in my daughter’s food without telling her, and if she mistakes quinoa for couscous, who am I to argue?

The ice cream van only plays music when it’s run out of ice cream….there’s a princess in your tummy who can only eat vegetables….and there’s a baby dragon in the hand-drier who needs to practice his fire-breathing on your hands.

These are just some of the white lies parents have admitted feeding to their children to steer them onto the correct path in life, according to new research.

Some 90 per cent of parents have a list of creative tales they tell to their little ones, with other favourites including that you’ll be washed down the plughole if you stay in the bath too long and that eating green food will turn you into a superhero.

The traditional tale of the tooth fairy remained the most popular story, used by 38 per cent of mums and dads, while other prevailing stories include giving different foods more exciting names to get kids to eat them, such as calling broccoli  trees (21 per cent) and feigning phone calls from teachers to tackle reluctance to do homework (16 per cent).

TELL ME LIES, TELL ME SWEET LITTLE LIES

  • 35 per cent of parents disguise vegetables in other foods to get children to eat them
  • A third of parents spell out certain words to each other using letters rather than say the word in full
  • One in seven (14 per cent) parents wind clocks forward to get children to bed on time
  • 2 per cent of parents tell their child that the music played by an ice cream van means they’ve run out of ice cream.
  • Parents surveyed as part of the research admitted to getting creative with their children in order to improve behaviour (58 per cent), encourage them to eat nutritiously (56 per cent), improve imagination (39 per cent) and improve their health and well-being (38 per cent)
  • The traditional tale of the tooth fairy remained the most popular story, used by 38 per cent of mums and dads

Click on the link to read A Case of Parenting at It’s Worst

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Posted in Parenting | 1 Comment »

The Psychological Impact of Divorce on Children

November 8, 2012

Many in society figure that since divorce is very common nowadays that the effects on children are far reduced. This is not the case. A child can be in a classroom full of children from broken homes. It doesn’t make their personal pain any less tangible:

Family breakdown is as devastating for today’s children as it was when divorce was a source of social disgrace, a state-backed report warned yesterday. 

Even though divorce is no longer considered ‘shameful’ – as it was until the 1970s – the children of broken families continue to suffer destructive effects throughout their lives, the report said.

The paper, produced by a team of senior academics, found that the damage caused to a child by divorce continues to blight his or her life as far as old age.

It said parental separation in childhood was ‘consistently associated with psychological distress in adulthood during people’s early 30s’.

The report added: ‘This seems to be true even across different generations, which suggests that as divorce and separation have become more common, their impact on mental health has not reduced.’

It comes a week after figures were published showing that almost half of all children have now seen their parents break up by the time they are 15.

The report said that good health depends on lifestyle conditions that it termed ‘social medicines’. Key among these is a stable family background.

The findings undermine the claims of politicians, lawyers and activists who have argued for years that divorce causes no harm to children if parents part amicably and without conflict.

‘Family life has undergone dramatic changes over recent decades,’ the report, produced by a team led by Professor Mel Bartley, said.

‘Families no longer have to have two parents, they can contain children from different parents, and parents no longer have to be of different genders.’

But it warned: ‘More freedom also means less certainty, and this has led to concerns about the impact of family stability on the health and well-being of both children and adults.

‘Family living arrangements are related to children’s physical health.

Click on the link to read Research Suggests That There’s no Such Thing as a Good Divorce
Click on the link to read The Role of Teacher in Helping Students Deal With Divorce
Click on the link to read Don’t Dismiss the Effect of Divorce on a Child
Click on the link to read Teaching Union Wants Porn on the National Curriculum

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Posted in Children and Divorce | 1 Comment »

Sometimes the Union Makes me Embarrassed to Call Myself a Teacher

November 5, 2012

I know that is it very unpopular for a teacher to be criticising the Education Union and I invite my readers who have been assisted by the union to defend them if they wish.

I was angered to hear that teachers through the union have been sending notes home to parents stating that they will not be writing end of year reports for their students. Why? Because they haven’t been paid enough money. Well, any teacher who abides by this nonsensical ruling doesn’t deserve to get paid a cent more!

I believe that teachers should be paid more than they do, but what a teacher gets paid is not as urgent as their duty to put their students first. Teachers and nurses do a fine job and deserve more than what they are earning. But we knew when we signed up for the job that the pay wasn’t fantastic. Yet, we still chose to become teachers and nurses. Why?

I hope the answer is because we felt that making a difference was more important than making a fortune.

The union have blinkered our teachers. Instead of helping us to nurture and inspire our students they have tried to make us selfish and unprofessional. Writing reports is a professional duty. Giving parents current and comprehensive feedback on the progress of their children is of paramount importance. Failing to do so on account of a few dollars is outrageous!

The children are not the ones underpaying us. The parents are not the ones to blame either. Leave them out of this. We are supposed to put them first. We are not supposed to lose sight of what we are trying to achieve here.

The unions are a shameless bunch. They have a record of bullying non member teachers (like myself) and through their greed have turned a sympathetic public well and truly off our cause.

I realise that many (if not all) will disagree with me. I encourage them to do so. This blog is about giving everyone the opportunity to debate the issues that effect education in a robust and thorough fashion.

I just can’t help but agree with the assessment of this parent who wrote of her outrage at receiving one of these letters:

I received late last week from my children’s school indicating that their teachers will not be writing any comments (apart from general behavioural ones) in the end of year reports this year. This means that students will have a very scant record of the year’s work particularly when it comes to specialist areas like LOTE and art. I have a son in prep so his end of year report for this year is pretty important.

I think asking students to forgo feedback for the year so that teachers can get a few more dollars shows a breathtaking lack of professionalism on the part of the teachers and an entitlement mentality that is just extraordinarily arrogant. If I had tried this sort of tactic in the private sector – refusing to complete reports for clients because I wanted more money – I would certainly have been sacked (and rightfully so).

Click on the link to read If Teachers Were Paid More I Wouldn’t Have Become One

Click on the link to read Pressure in the Workplace

Click on the link to read Sick Teachers Need to be Arrested not Fired!

Click on the link to read Teaching Union Wants Porn on the National Curriculum

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Posted in Education Union | 3 Comments »

Trick, Treat or Cocaine?

November 2, 2012

This is why I wrote a post on safety tips during Halloween:

A man has been charged with possession of class-A drugs after children out trick-or-treating for Halloween were given bags of cocaine.

Snap bags containing the white powder were handed to youngsters taking part in traditional Halloween fun in Royton, Greater Manchester, at around 7.50pm on Wednesday evening.

The bags were taken to police and examined and confirmed to contain cocaine.

Donald Junior Green, 23, has been charged with possession of class-A drugs and is due before Oldham magistrates’ court on Friday morning.

A 21-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of possession of class-A drugs and was later released without charge.

Superintendent Catherine Hankinson, of Greater Manchester police, said: “The parents and police acted quickly when this report was made, in the interests of public safety.

“We understand this to be an isolated incident.”

Click on the link to read Tips for Keeping Children Safe During Halloween

Click on the link to read Hilarious Parenting Checklist

Click on the link to read Hilarious Video of Twin Toddlers Sleeping at the Table

Click on the link to read Dad’s Letter to 13-Year Old Son after Discovering he had been Downloading from Porn Sites

Click on the link to read Potty Training at a Restaurant Table!

Click on the link to read Mother Shaves Numbers Into Quadruplets Heads So People Can Tell Them Apart

 

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Posted in Drugs | Leave a Comment »

Tips for Keeping Children Safe During Halloween

November 1, 2012

Courtesy of wndu.com:

• Younger children should be accompanied by an adult when “Trick-or-Treating”, older children should go with friends.

• Parents should know the route taken by older children, and stay in neighborhoods known to them.

• Only approach homes that are well-lit, inside and out.

• Children should only enter homes known to them and with prior approval by parents.

• Children should wear reflective clothing and carry a flashlight or glow stick.

• Costumes should always be flame-resistant. Stay clear of luminaries or candle-lit jack-o-lanterns.

• Make sure any masks worn allow for clear visibility and breathing.

• Don’t eat any treats until they can be inspected for tampering. Look for tears and even pin size holes in the wrappers. Don’t eat homemade treats from any strangers. Make sure kids have a good meal before they head out so that they are not snacking on their Halloween treats before they get home.

• Stay in well-lit areas, never take shortcuts or go into isolated areas.

• Where there are no sidewalks, walk close to curb facing oncoming traffic, never with your back to traffic

• Cross only at crosswalks, don’t walk between parked cars.

• Adults should never ask a child for help, they should ask other adults.

• NEVER approach a vehicle, even if it appears unoccupied.

• If someone tries to take a child (or anyone) scream, kick, run away, grab something large like a trash can, light pole, anything that makes it harder to be pushed into a vehicle.

• Report any suspicious people/activity to parents, police.

• Practice with children what to do when in danger.

I wish you a safe and fun-filled holiday!

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Preschool Presidential Debate

October 30, 2012

Whilst I believe that healthy debate is vital for democracy, there are times when politics can lead to division and unruly behaviour.

Click on the link to read Kid’s Cute Note to the Tooth Fairy

Click on the link to read ‘Love’ as Defined by a 5-Year Old

Click on the link to read The Innocence of Youth

Click on the link to read Letting Kids Take Risks is Healthy for Them

Click on the link to read Study Reveals Children Aren’t Selfish After All

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Posted in Child Development | Leave a Comment »

Explaining Hurricane Sandy To Kids

October 29, 2012

Some resources to help prepare children for Hurricane Sandy:

FEMA For Kids is one of the best.

With games to play, colorful characters to follow and easy to understand explanations, your kids will come away with a better understanding of Mother Nature’s biggest storms: hurricanes.

Weather Wiz Kids is geared toward slightly older kids and goes a bit deeper into its explanations of hurricanes, how they form, and what kind of problems they can cause.

Owlie Prepares Kids For Hurricanes via an online coloring book which makes hurricane preparation interactive for the kiddos.

The University Corporation For Atmospheric Research has a “Web Weather For Kids” site. This is a great place to learn the basics about a hurricane.

Finally, the National Weather Service (.pdf) page for kids is a great page worth taking a look at.  Check out “Owlie Skywarn” in action – helping kids get ready for a hurricane.

 

Click on the link to read Helping Kids Cope in the Aftermath of Sandy

Click here to read ‘Helping Our Children Make Sense of Natural Disasters’.

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Posted in Dealing With Tragedy | Leave a Comment »

The Difficulties Faced by Students With Allergies

October 28, 2012

 

In a bid to care for children with strong allergies it seems schools have made allergic children feel socially isolated, different from their peers and vulnerable to being bullied:

TAKARA Rose is the face of a new dangerous fad of playground bullying. The eight-year-old has never hurt or been nasty to anyone, her only “crime” is she suffers a range of allergies.

Mum Alanna describes her daughter’s experience of bullying as terrifying, likening it to having a “loaded gun against her head”.

The year 2 student from Sandringham, in Sydney’s south, is dangerously allergic to nuts, dairy and eggs, meaning if she is exposed to foods containing those ingredients – even brushing past them – she can go into potentially fatal anaphylactic shock.

In a bad week, Ms Rose, 50, is forced to call the ambulance four times because of Takara’s extreme reactions.

Twice, the young girl has been chased by a group of year 6 boys threatening to throw nuts at her, leading her to once lock herself in the school toilets to stay safe.

Takara is among a disturbing number of food allergic children who are being targeted by bullies in Australia, which has one of the highest food allergy rates in the world.

“In her eyes, it’s like holding a loaded gun against her head,” Ms Rose said.

“It’s hard enough to live as restrictive as we do without having the added problem of being bullied by other kids,” Ms Rose said.

Ms Rose also said the school told her the incidents did not constitute “bullying”.

It seems as if the school doesn’t equate life threatening behaviour as “bullying”.  How can we properly protect children when schools continue to make excuses for unacceptable behaviour?

Take this horrible story for example:

Central Coast paediatric nurse and founder of Allerchic website, Stephanie Holdsworth said she knew of one kindergarten child who ended up in the intensive care unit at Sydney Children’s Hospital for four days after having a peanut butter sandwich rubbed in his face by his young tormenters.

These incidents are not simply ‘bullying’ they represent the height of bullying. Nothing is likely to change for allergic kids unless schools are aware of their challenges, actively work to see that they are integrated properly within the school and that the culture of the school is such that bullying and harassment are not taken lightly.

Click on the link to read Doctors Able to Reverse Egg Allergies

Click on the link to read A Nut Allergy is Not a Disability

Click on the link to read Anaphylaxis: The New Form of Discrimination

Click on the link to read Nowadays There is Nowhere to Hide From Bullies

Click on the link to read When Something Doesn’t Work – Try Again Until it Does

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Posted in Anaphylaxis, Bullying | 1 Comment »

Teaching Union Wants Porn on the National Curriculum

October 25, 2012


The Teachers Union is struggling to be relevant. They can shout and scream, but as recent times have shown, they are neither good for students nor education as a whole. There will be plenty of us that have been assisted by the union and others that have had no benefit from the association. But if they were as relevant today as they once were, they wouldn’t see the need to grab for outrageous headlines.

It is important to note how desperate the union is becoming and how stupid their ideas are. Putting porn on the curriculum would have no real benefit for the child and would represent a legal minefield for teachers and schools.

Children as young as 11 are becoming addicted to internet pornography giving them ‘unrealistic expectations’ of sex, according to new research.

It is now ‘common practice’ for schoolchildren to access hard core pornography at an early age and become desensitised to sexual images.

A study, published by Plymouth University, said that more children are finding themselves ‘hooked’ on internet porn before they become sexually active, leading to problems in later life.

The news comes as a teaching union said yesterday that children as young as ten should learn about pornography as part of the national curriculum.

Ten year-olds being taught about pornography? Are you serious? For every ten year-old that views pornography there are many who have had next to no exposure to it.

It is not the role of a classroom teacher to offer a ‘realistic expectation of sex’. That is the job of the parent. Parents have the responsibility of raising their kids, setting limitations on what they watch and how much they watch and it is their job to educate on personal areas such as sex.

The union should know this better than anyone.

Click on the link to read If Teachers Were Paid More I Wouldn’t Have Become One

Click on the link to read Pressure in the Workplace

Click on the link to read Sick Teachers Need to be Arrested not Fired!

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Posted in Education Union, Sex Education | Leave a Comment »

Hilarious Parenting Checklist

October 24, 2012

Are you ready to have kids?

Test 1: Preparation

Women: To prepare for pregnancy

1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2. Leave it there.
3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children

1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2: Knowledge

Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.

Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour.

Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3: Nights

To discover how the nights will feel:

1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 – 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2.  At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.
Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4: Dressing Small Children

1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hangout.
Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5: Cars

1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6: Going for a walk

a. Wait.
b. Go out the front door.
c. Come back in again.
d. Go out.
e. Come back in again.
f. Go out again.
g. Walk down the front path.
h. Walk back up it.
i. Walk down it again.
j. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
k. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
l. Retrace your steps.
m. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
n. Give up and go back into the house.
You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7: Conversations with children

Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8: Grocery Shopping

1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child – a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9: Feeding a 1 year-old

1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

Test 10:TV

1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11:  Mess

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor and proceed with step 5.
5. Drag randomly items from one room to another room and leave them there.

Test 12: Long Trips with Toddlers

1. Make a recording of someone shouting ‘Mummy’ repeatedly. Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.
2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13: Conversations

1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.
You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 14: Getting ready for work

1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
2. Put on your finest work attire.
3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
4. Stir
5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
8. Do not change (you have no time).
9. Go directly to work

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Posted in Parenting | 1 Comment »

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