Do you need to scale back for balance? Most parents have times where they feel like they have to be in multiple places at one time to manage their children’s calendars. But what happens when the imagined need becomes real?
When it comes to discussing difficult topics with your kids, your natural inclination may be to try to avoid the task altogether. But remember, your children will pay for your hesitancy or embarrassment with a lack of awareness that they will need to make good decisions. You don’t want your child making emotion-fuelled, spur-of-the-moment choices about alcohol, sex or peer pressure to try and prove something to their friends. You want them to be in the know, be prepared and know in advance where they stand on crucial decisions before they get caught in a slippery situation.
Making friends sounds as simple as child's play, but if you watch any young child, you'll see how hard it really is. Experts agree that learning social skills is one of the most difficult developmental tasks a child faces and one of the most critical for future success in life.
I knew my son was different when his tantrums lasted hours at a time. I would dread waking up in the morning because I didn’t want to have to face another day with Dylan’s defiant behavior. Each day was an all-out war between the two of us, and it was over anything and everything. Sometimes he would yell at me because his underwear was too high or too low and it wasn’t ‘right’. He wouldn’t wear sneakers because they were too big or too small, even though he’d worn them just the day before. Sometimes he’d spit at me because I’d send him to time-out for telling me he hated me. Situations like these would go on every day, all day.
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