Kids are busier than ever. Between a full schedule during the school day and all the extracurricular activities after school, when does a kid have time to relax? It’s important that children have interests outside of school and family, but how much is too much?
Getting kids into volunteering builds character, develops empathy and allows them to learn about their community. Here are ten reasons why it’s important to get your kids to volunteer.
#1: Volunteering helps foster empathy.
Empathy is the most critical disposition for responding to the needs of others. We need to be able to imagine what other people may be going through or feeling. Volunteering helps engage our natural empathic sense, but you have to make sure that there are opportunities to talk about the purpose and experience of any volunteer activity if the recipients aren’t visible in the process (making sandwiches for the homeless isn’t the same as helping to deliver the sandwiches to homeless people).
Do you have a child who is hard to wake up in the morning? Or a child who dawdles for what seems like hours? Or the child who scrambles to find her homework while you are already waiting in the car? Oops, forgot to brush her teeth, tie his shoes, can’t find his… The list goes on and on. Mornings can be a big challenge for many families and even in our house, where most mornings go smoothly, there are certainly days where everything seems to fall apart and we are late getting out the door for school and work.
My kids are 13 and 10, so it feels like we have been practicing for a while. It’s never perfect but I think we have managed the monster of morning chaos after some trial and error. Hint: We do not pick out clothes or make lunches the night before and we still have plenty of time in the morning. Here’s what has worked for us:
by Visa Shanmugam
It’s that time and you can’t believe it’s here. How did your baby grow up so quickly? How can they be ready to move out of their crib into a toddler or twin bed? Or are they?
Most parents tend to jump the gun when it comes to transitioning their toddler from a crib to a bed. If your child hasn’t learned to sleep well on their own in their crib or if you are still facing bed and night time challenges then they are most likely not ready. Changing them to a big boy/girl bed, in the hopes that they will start to enjoy sleeping on their own, is probably not a good idea. You will have a toddler who has a new game to play – leaving their bed and room to come find mom and dad.
If you go to the library to find some resources on helping your children get over the fear of the dark; you’ll probably be hard pressed to find very much. Although the fear of the dark is said to plague millions of children, it is still a subject that most parents know very little about.
Most parents will end up willing to do just about anything after frustration and exhaustion takes over. You hear of children sleeping with their parents for weeks, if not months. Parents hire therapists to help their kids overcome such anxieties and many children are simply left to deal with their fears on their own. While most methods have their validity, some are more effective than others.
When it comes to the problem of children wetting the bed, the consolation for most parents is that most children usually outgrow bedwetting. Sadly, however, this is not always the case. And even when a child does eventually outgrow nocturnal enuresis, much of the psychological damage from the problem until that point has already occurred. Fortunately, there is much you as a parent can do to help guide your child through and past these experiences with self-esteem intact.
