Understanding Teens, Privacy, and Online Identity
Today’s teens are easily the most private and reputation-focused of the age groups. Try getting a sixteen year old to explain their day as more than “fine” – it’s about as challenging as convincing them to leave for school in the fifth outfit they’ve tried on.
So why is it that as soon as a teen powers-on his or her device, they aren’t lost for words?
How does someone who merely grumbles when asked about school, send 60-80 text messages a day to his or her friends? How can someone who cares so much about how they look, make mistakes on social media that can affect their reputation not only online, but offline...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - December 3, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Sarah Hoffman Tags: Perspectives Safety Teens & Safety Source Type: blogs
Online Safety, Security, and Privacy: Talking to Kids about the Basics
Cross the road without looking and you might get hit by a car. Touch a hot stove and it might really hurt. Kids are taught the basics of common sense early.
But are we teaching them to apply the same common sense and critical thinking skills when they get online? Just as in the real world, it’s important to help them understand the basics so they can avoid accidents or getting burned.
Here are some easy ways to help kids see why offline rules apply online, and some tips to help you keep them safer and more secure when they power-on:
You don’t give everyone in the neighborhood a house key:
That’s obvious, right? ...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - December 2, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Sarah Hoffman Tags: Perspectives Parenting Safety Source Type: blogs
Meeting the Challenge of Becoming a Team
As I said in last post, parents and stepparents do have different roles. However, they do still need to become a team, supporting each other, helping each other, and working together.
Parents do need to retain the disciplinary role. Meanwhile, stepparents have input, and parents have final say. Often parents need help making firmer demands of their kids. Stepparents need help to become more understanding and empathic. Parents and stepparents will disagree often about parenting. The challenge is to talk about these things in a “collaborative cha cha” rather than a polarization polka.
Try using what I call “sof...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 29, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Patricia Papernow Tags: Perspectives Parenting Source Type: blogs
Ice Packs vs. Warm Compresses After Injury
Dr. Greene’s Answer:
Great question. Many parents and teachers ask the same question. Below is an explanation of how cold and warmth work with the body. I hope this will help you understand when to use cold and when to use warmth. I’m also including a few tips to make it easier to treat an injury. By the way, don’t forget to “kiss it” to make the boo-boo better. Studies show that aids healing, too.
Ways Cold Can Help
Ice (or cold compresses) can help, in at least five ways.
It can help prevent swelling to an injured area
It can reduce bleeding
It can reduce inflammation (reducing delayed injury)
It can te...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 28, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Dr. Alan Greene Tags: Q&A Accidents & Injuries Handling Fear & Pain Outdoor Safety Source Type: blogs
Parenting and Discipline in “Blended Families”
Parents and stepparents feel differently about kids.
Stepparents, even if they care about their stepkids, do not begin with a deeply established heart connection with them. Furthermore, habits, values, and everyday routines are shared between kids and their parents, not between stepparents and stepkids, or in the stepcouple. If stepkids are struggling, one or more of them may be barely speaking to their stepparent.
Parents, even when their kids are driving them crazy, usually carry a bedrock feeling of loving and being loved by them. Moreover, parents and kids agree about what’s a “loud” noise and how much mess...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 28, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Patricia Papernow Tags: Perspectives Parenting Parenting & Discipline Source Type: blogs
Insiders and Outsiders
Stepmother: When your kids are here, I might as well be a piece of furniture.
Dad: But they’re my kids, what do you expect?
Stepmother: I expect you to treat me like I’m your wife!
Dad: How many times have I told you, don’t make me choose!
In a stepfamily, even though the new couple may be very much in love, the hard-wired, pre-existing attachments lie between parents and their children. So do the established agreements about everything from whether Grape Nuts is a breakfast food, or a form of cardboard, to the “appropriate” price for a new pair of sneakers.
This means that every time a child enters the room, or ...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 27, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Patricia Papernow Tags: Perspectives Parenting Source Type: blogs
From Enemies to Intimates
Becoming a stepfamily is a process, not an event. It takes time, counted not in days or months, but years. My experience, corroborated by the research, is that even “fast” families take a couple of years to begin to feel some shared sense of “how we do things.” It takes another couple of years to feel a solid sense of “we-ness” at least in some areas. Sometimes one child moves more slowly and others more quickly. Becoming a thriving stepfamily also takes longer for stepcouples who begin with very unrealistic ideas and cannot shift, those who handle differences with attack, criticism, or withdrawal, those w...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 26, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Patricia Papernow Tags: Perspectives Parenting Source Type: blogs
Helping Stepkids to Thrive
A stepfamily is a fundamentally different structure upon which to build intimate relationships than a first-time family. The familiar phrase “blended families” does not prepare stepcouples for the challenges this structure creates. Advice abounds on the web. However, much of it is well meaning but misleading. The good news is that decades of research and clinical practice tell us a lot about what works and what doesn’t to meet these challenges.
While the new stepcouple is a gain for the adults, it often creates a whole set of new losses for children. Newly in-love moms and dads turn away from their kids and tow...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 25, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Patricia Papernow Tags: Perspectives Parenting Source Type: blogs
Setting Realistic Health Resolutions and Goals
Many people are already making their New Year’s resolutions and thinking, “this time I’m going to stick with it.” So often however, our resolutions go the way side within a few weeks. In one survey, 45 percent of those who set New Year’s resolutions had broken them before February. How do we avoid this burnout? Here are some tips that can help.
Many diet experts say that most people who set New Year’s diet resolutions set them to broad and unrealistic. They might say, “I’ll never eat out again.” Or, “I’ll never eat ice cream again.” However, the better way to do it is to set smaller specific g...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 22, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Lisa Holcomb Tags: Perspectives Mental Health Parenting Source Type: blogs
8 Tips for Keeping Your Children Stress Free This Christmas Season
Holiday season is right on top of us. Even though stores were playing Christmas music and putting out Christmas decorations before Halloween, it isn’t officially what I would consider “Christmas” until the day after Thanksgiving. Along with the Christmas carols, Christmas baking, stressing over holiday budgets and shopping comes STRESS!
Often adults think they are the only ones who are stressed at holidays. However, our little ones have a strange way of picking up on our moods, including stress. How can children relax when parents aren’t? When we are rushing all over the place and stressed ourselves, we can...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 21, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Lisa Holcomb Tags: Perspectives Mental Health Parenting Source Type: blogs
10 Tips for Using Holiday Leftovers
A feast is always one of the highlights of the holiday season. We go all out planning, cooking, and yes, eating the feast. But when it’s all done and the table has been cleared, what do we do with all that leftover food? Here are some great ideas and a few recipes from Build A Menu.
Make sure you have plenty of storage containers and zip lock freezer baggies before the big day. Freezer bags are your best choice. Make sure when freezing leftovers that you squeeze as much of the air out of the bag as possible.
Make sure you freeze the leftovers within 3 days of cooking.
Did you know you can re-heat frozen pie in a...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 20, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Lisa Holcomb Tags: Perspectives Eating & Nutrition Family Nutrition Parenting Source Type: blogs
Tips for Avoiding Overeating During the Holidays
Here come the holidays and with them comes food, food and more food. If you believe the old saying, “through the lips and onto the hips”, you’re probably already stressing out over how you’re going to control the temptation of the constant barrage of goodies that comes along with the holiday season. One of the first things to remember is that depriving ourselves of every little treat or holiday food that we like is very hard to do. Instead, we should work on just maintaining our current weight. Here are some tips to help us stay on track.
Drink a glass of water before you eat. Water takes up space and is calor...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 19, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Lisa Holcomb Tags: Perspectives Eating & Nutrition Mental Health Parenting Source Type: blogs
Steps for Holiday Meal Planning for the Family
The holiday season is almost right on top of us. For many of us, that can evoke an immediate sense of panic. What are we going to plan for the all-important meal? How do we plan for it and not stress out over trying to decide on what to prepare, how to make everyone happy, and if we’re on a strict budget, how do we afford it?
Holiday meal planning doesn’t have to be stressful. It can actually be enjoyable if approached in the right way. By just breaking the planning down into smaller easier steps, you’ll find it’s not so daunting after all.
Plan the number of guest and extended family you will have. When you...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 18, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Lisa Holcomb Tags: Perspectives Family Nutrition Parenting Source Type: blogs
Fighting The Urge To Feel Needed
“They are only little once.”
“They won’t need me forever.”
“That looks hard, let me do that for you!”
Oddly enough, these are the parenting phrases that I try to avoid. I firmly believe that giving my children the tools to fend for themselves is the most important gift that I can give them. Maybe this be should called cave-man parenting?
Picture this; My two-year-old daughter comes to me with a task that I know she can do. In this instance, she wants help putting on her shoes. I’ve seen her do it a hundred times, but for some reason this time she feels frustrated. Her asking turns to pleading. Tears well...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 15, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Joelle Wisler Tags: Perspectives Parenting Source Type: blogs
How Friendships Change
My girlfriends are who I go to when my instruction manual for motherhood begins to look like the psychotic ramblings scribbled in a bathroom stall. But my friendships have changed over the years.
I remember when our best couple friends told us they had decided to start trying to have children. We knew their life was going to change and we weren’t quite ready to make that change with them. We were afraid of losing them. And in some ways we were right to be afraid. Once that little bundle of joy enters your life, your whole life changes. Including your friendships.
Here are some of the ways I have found my friendships ha...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - November 14, 2013 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Joelle Wisler Tags: Perspectives Parenting Source Type: blogs
