Are your kids listening to you?

Often the parents who complain most about their kids are the ones who have not set rules and codes of behavior. Right from the crib a child learns that when he cries in his crib, someone picks him up and hugs him and feeds him. Of course I’m not saying that you should leave your child in the crib to cry his lungs out, but when he is fed, has had a bath, and his diaper is clean, you can put him down in his crib. As he begins to walk and talk the lessons start, imperceptibly, with simple things like having him or her say, thank you, mummy, and having him repeat it.


How you and your partner interact at home, the kids subconsciously take note. What the parent does, the child will emulate. If you swear at home the child will learn these words also and hurl your own words back at you. Discipline does not work if the parents teach one way, and they themselves break the rules by swearing at each other at home. You are not a good pair then for the kids and the calmer of the two must bring order when there is a dispute over anything. In some homes the kids want to complain to their father, not their mother. Is that wrong? No, whoever has the right temperament and the right sense of justice should handle the complaints.


Teaching a child discipline starts right from the beginning.


• He learns to pick up his toys before going to bed. It can be a fun exercise when the two of you pick up the toys and pack them in the right place.

• He learns potty training in the bathroom where it is quiet and he can’t be distracted; he must learn to close the door without banging it. When he is finished he must learn to wipe himself. This will take a week or two if you support him by regularly putting him on the potty until he has got the hang of it.

• Some children are fascinated with what comes out of them and you should not be surprised when you come into the bathroom and see his handiwork on the wall. Do not shout at him.

• Learn not to scream at your kids when they do something wrong; that is only to appease your anger and does not in any way help them. Tell the child nicely when you want to reprimand him for something that he did wrong. He must know what he is being punished for. How you speak to the child now, is how the child will speak to his kids when he becomes a parent.

• Disciplining a child is easy when you do it with love and with patience and do not change your pattern every day. In their hearts kids want stability although they don’t know it themselves. Not yet, until they become parents themselves.

http://www.raydajacobs.blogspot.com

Are online writing sites all the same?

If you’re an online article writer or blogger you probably have a book full of codes and passwords to keep track of your various accounts. Just when you join a site and are satisfied with the earnings and the incentives, along comes another site a friend has sent for you to check out which pays a cent more. Yes, a cent! Okay, make it two.

There is Experts Column which remains a favorite as well as MyLot. I am still waiting for Knoji to lift my ten day writing ban and feel pretty taken for granted as Knoji figures that writers can just wait around. What are they doing during this absence? Would the Knoji staff like it if people did this to them? Writers are punished for infractions, yet the Knoji team is guilty of a breaking the same rules and nothing is done. How can a writer correct an article if he does not have any idea why the article was rejected? You never impose a ban of a stipulated number of days, and don’t reply yourself to writers who want to know why it is thirty days already gone by, and still no lifting of the ban.

With a bit of a shock I realized how far I had let my writing slide. From writing ten novels and writing and directing a film, I have in one year gone from writing books to writing articles which pay less than a dollar. Why? Because the sites are addictive and you can’t wait to write your next article to see how by how many cents your earnings have increased. It’s a lot of fun navigating through all the sites and seeing where you can get your foot in the door. The experience is akin to a bunch of hungry dogs groveling around the same bone for a bit of the action. I have to get my act together and do what I am good at – and forget this article writing.

The little holiday is over. My brain is wracked from writing two or three articles of 500 and 400 words a day for which I am paid a huge fee: 40 cents!! I can hear you asking why. The answer is that you get a huge kick from writing articles and having readers come up to you saying that the advice helped them. And so the die is cast and I will join the group of groveling writers on the ground. As far as the writing sites they are all the same except for a few cents here and there and different gimmicks to get you to sign up. Tomorrow the writer returns.

http://www.raydajacobs.blogspot.com

As a single mom do you leave your two young girls alone with a new boyfriend while you go out shopping?

You absolutely should not leave your two young kids with a boyfriend while you go out; not for any reason. You will put your kids at risk and you might deeply regret it. Once the damage is done there is no undoing the act. This is not to say that boyfriends should not be considered. They can be if you know the person very well, the kids like him and are used to him, and you don’t stay away for more than fifteen minutes or so. Otherwise, the kids should always be in your sight. It is just too dangerous to take chances. Kids are hurt every day by strangers as well as by people in the family.

Setting the parameters

• As a single parent your first priority is your kids. They trust and rely on you for their safety. You cannot abuse this by going out and leaving them with strangers while you are out having fun.

• Make arrangements with your mother or sister to look after your kids when you go out. Make sure the person is reliable and not going to be on the internet or playing computer games.

• If your former husband is good with the kids, let them see him more often. Your severance is with your former husband, not with the kids. Let them be with him for the weekend rather than be with a new boyfriend.
• Particularly because you have girls, do a background check on your boyfriend to see if he is a
safe person to be around your kids.

• Teach your girls not to sit on anyone’s lap – not even uncles and aunts – and to come and tell you if the boyfriend touches them anywhere.

• Teach your girls not to get in the boyfriend’s car or not to go anywhere with him- even if he says that they have to go and look for the dog.

• Have your mom come to the house to look after the kids if you are going to be out for a long time. Use this time also to do your shopping for the week, giving you more time with your kids.


http://www.raydajacobs.blogspot.com