The holidays are stressful for parents-the shopping, wrapping and entertaining guarantees that we're exhausted by the time it's over. But, guess what, the holidays are also stressful for your child.
Social media has become the new back fence, a place where parents can tell stories, swap tips and even brag a bit. A recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that moms, in particular, give and get lots of encouragement as well as useful parenting information from networks like Facebook (FB), Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Almost all of these efforts involve photos, which would be great if those photos would ‘stay put.’ Unfortunately, they don’t. Photos of cute kids - especially babies - have been misappropriated by people who use them for their own, sometimes dubious, purposes. Baby role-playing, for example, involves young women who use random photos of children to fantasize about motherhood. By posting pics and inventing details about babies they don’t know, they attract attention on social media.
While some kids will barely utter a word, their talkative brethren are more than happy to fill the silence. How do you know when talking has crossed from socially acceptable to problematic?
When I was a kid, I would eat just about anything with gusto. I was always hungry at mealtime and I would devour whatever my mother put in front of me. So imagine my surprise when my daughter turned out to be just the opposite - a fussy, picky eater who always regarded unfamiliar foods with suspicion, rejecting most - if not many - of the choices placed in front of her.
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