Global Public Articles

Many schools throughout the country have established a curriculum to introduce art in the schoolroom. Children are usually very open to experiment with whatever media they are given. Art is a natural expression of oneself and an easy way for children to express how they feel.

Many parents are surprised at what their children have drawn at school as it reflects a child’s inner landscape that is usually not seen on the surface. Encourage your child to draw, paint, color, and sculpt, in whatever form they have an interest in. Children love woodworking at an early age as it affords them the use of their hands to express themselves.

Many occupational therapists highly recommend art as a form of therapy to allow a child to open up and learn to trust their insights and feelings. Children who come from an abusive childhood derive the greatest benefits, and usually produce the most talented artwork.

Art can provide children with the opportunity to express them through art, using art as their own language, when words are not enough or are too difficult and painful to be expressed.

In many instances, a child’s art will display their strengths, weaknesses and general interests as well as their emotional mien. Profound and intense therapy can be conducted and augmented with the introduction of art in a child’s life.

Art can be a portal into a child’s emotional landscape that would otherwise be difficult to connect with as in the case of children who are disabled or challenged in some way.
Children express a myriad of emotions some of which are not always socially acceptable for a child to demonstrate to others. Artwork is a way that children are free to express their emotions in a safe and contained environment.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that schools retain their art curriculums to help facilitate this form of self-expression. Many schools opt to cancel their art programs due to lack of funding. This is a sad truth in our society today when art is seen as an ‘extra’ school subject and not a mandatory one.

Art teachers throughout the country continually have to defend their programs to higher school authorities when funding is scarce or lacking all together. Art teachers recommend that you voice your approval and sanction the art program that your child participates and enjoys in his or her school.

Ultimately, if there are enough parents involved and voicing their opinions, then the school boards tend to be more reluctant to cancel an art program altogether.

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The majority compute the cost of baby formula as the sum of the cost of formula, feeding bottles, and artificial nipples. Not to mention the cost of sterilizing and storing all these baby formula supplies. But there is a hidden cost of baby formula on children’s health.

Children who are formula-fed have increased risks for certain diseases than children who have been breastfed. These risks mean increased costs to families and societies in terms of greater medical care, medicines, hospitalization costs, and lost time at work because parents have to stay with the sick child. More illnesses may also impede a child’s growth and proper development.

Most people calculate the cost of baby formula by adding up the price of formula, feeding bottles and rubber nipples. They might also include the cost of sterilizing everything, which requires clean water and energy.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and INFACT Canada, babies who receive baby formula instead of breastmilk have greater chances of developing:

Diarrhea and Pneumonia

Formula-fed babies have been shown to get sick twice as often and 3 times longer than breastfed babies. They also have increased risk of pneumonia and diarrhea. In contrast, exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life prevents at least 33 per cent of diarrhea cases.

Asthma

Babies fed infant formula have a 40-50 per cent higher risk of developing asthma and wheezing than infants breastfed for at least nine months.

Allergies

Children who were breastfed the longest in infancy had the lowest incidence of atopy, eczema, food allergy and respiratory allergy.

Reduced Intelligence

Children who were formula-fed in infancy had lower IQ points than breastfed children. Greater differences were observed with children who were breastfeed longer.

Infection From Contaminated Formula

The International Food Safety Authorities Network says that it is not possible to manufacture sterile powdered baby formula. Therefore, the risk of contamination is always present. In fact, baby formula products are being recalled all the time, because of contamination with anything from molds to metal particles to bacteria.

Chronic Diseases

Children who receive little or no breastmilk are at increased risk for becoming overweight and developing diabetes and cancers, including leukemia.

The hidden cost of baby formula is the cost of illness and even death of a child in a family. The increased risk for illness and disease - even death - are part of the cost of baby formula. The loss of human potential through reduced intelligence is another hidden cost of baby formula. Parents should be aware of the true cost of baby formula in order to make informed choices about how to feed and nourish their children.

Alexis Rodrigo is a breastfeeding Mom and certified childbirth educator. Find out why breastfeeding beyond one year is good for Moms and babies too. Want to get more natural parenting information? Subscribe to the free Natural Parenting Newsletter at http://www.naturalmomsblog.com

Parenting as a matter of fact, is a style of caring for your infant that brings out the best in the baby and the best in the parents. You will definitely learn that the key to putting balance in your parenting is being appropriately responsive to your baby. Knowing when to say Yes and when to say No and having the wisdom to say it when you want to. Parenting is joyful, important, challenging and deeply a satisfying work that is worthy of everyones best efforts.

It is a learned art and our most important teachers are our own parents, our family and our children all put together. Creative parenting is often the easiest on our purse. For attachment parenting, it is not a new style of parenting and that is why we stress that attachment parenting is responding quickly to your babys needs. It is a question of balance not being indulgent or permissive, yet being attentive.

However, attachment parenting is really the best long term investment you will ever make, for your child and yourself. One of the many payoffs you will soon dicover of is mutual giving. That is the more you give to your baby, the more your baby gives back to you. The hardest part of parenting is the feeling. You just do not know what your baby wants. Attachment parenting is the best way to get connected between you and your baby.

Patience and parenting goes together. Needless to say that for a good nights sleep, you need to teach your child to fall asleep on his or her own. Many advice abounds when it comes to parenting but caregivers find that it only seems to work for everyone elses kids not theirs. Sleep problems are one of the mst common problem in parenting. Child massage, reading books and listening to music are the most commonly recommended ideas for your childs sleep time and they work.

Nevertheless, bed time routine is considered a nightmare for all baby sleep problems. Frustrated parents like often find the experts insistence that once a bedtime routine is in place, the baby will respond consistently to it, to be an insult added to injury. Indeed, there are no books, advisors or in laws around to shower you with child tending advice. The knowledge of attachment parenting would come naturally to you as they have to other cultures who have centuries more child rearing experience and tradition than all of us have.

You actually, may have heared that being nurturing and responsive to your babys needs might spoil your baby and set you up for being manipulated by your baby. This is why we stress that attachment parenting is responding appropriately to your baby. As you and your baby grow together, you will develop the right balance between attentive but not indulgent. Instead of rushing to scoop your baby up, simply acknowledge your baby and give your baby its okay cues.

Since you and your baby are so connected, your baby can read your body language and see that you are not anxious, so you naturally give your baby the message. The fear of baby being in control sets up new parents for an adversarial relationship between babies and parents. But because of the mutual sensitivity that develops between attached parents and their attached children, parents response time can gradually lengthen as mother enables the older baby to discover that he does not need instant gratification.

One good thing you have to remember is that your baby is not just a passive player in the parenting game. He or she takes an active part in shaping your attitudes and helping you make wise decisions as you become an astute baby reader. The ability to read and respond to your baby, carries over into the ability to get behind the eyes of your growing child and see things from her point of view. This is why attachment mothers speak of a flow between themselves and their baby, a flow of thoughts and feelings that helped many mothers.

It is a fact the baby perceives himself by how the mother reflects his value. Thus, attachment parenting implies responding appropriately to your baby and spoiling suggests responding inappropriately. They felt that if you held your baby a lot, fed on cue and responded to cries, you would spoil and create a clingy, dependent baby. Parents, whose kids are the center of their lives, are willing to sacrifice almost anything to see them succeed.

Moreover, parents are cautioned almost everyday against kids programming and it is a sign of an irresponsible parent if a child is allowed to watch regular programs. Parents gradually learn to trust in their ability to appropriately meet their babys needs. Parents are a childs first teachers but child care providers become important role models. Most parents have included reading into their bed time rituals and Sleeping through the night is a major issue half of all parents with children over four months old continue struggling with.

It is a fact also that parents for a long time now have taken care of babies not until childcare advisors came on the scene and taught them to follow books instead of their babies. However, from eating and sleeping, to discipline and being a working parent, proper parenting will surely help you to develop your own rules. But while parenting is both a challenge and a huge responsibility, if you know the rules of the game, it is definitely and truely a lot of fun. So if you feel you really know your baby and indeed have a handle on the relationship, it is easier and more relaxed and for sure easy at all ages.

Obinna Heche. Los Angeles - California

For more info on parenting and other child care ideas visit.

http://www.biggsmall.com

Mothers who use baby formula incur more costs than breastfeeding Moms do. After all, they need to buy the formula, along with feeding bottles, artificial nipples, and sterilizing equipment. They also have to spend sterilize and store everything. However, there is a hidden cost of baby formula that many do not realize. This is the cost to women’s health in terms of increased risk to diseases and other conditions that women who do not breastfeed, or do so for limited periods, are exposed to.

When a woman uses baby formula, she ends up either not breastfeeding or doing so for a limited period. Because breastfeeding is part of the pregnancy and childbirth process, when a woman’s breastfeeding is disrupted by the use of baby formula, her health risks increase.

For women who do not breastfeed, or do so for a limited time, the risks for the following increases:

Breast Cancer

Non-breastfeeding women are at greater risk to develop breast cancer than women who breastfeed. The longer a woman breastfeeds, the greater is her protection against breast cancer. The scientific evidence for breastfeeding’s protective effect against cancer is so great that The World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research identified breastfeeding and being breastfed as one of 10 ways to prevent cancer.

Being Overweight

For every month a woman breastfeeds after birth, her weight is reduced by 0.44 kg, according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Being overweight and obese increases the risk for a number of diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancers. Since breastfeeding helps women control their weight, then it also helps protect breastfeeding women against those diseases that are associated with weight gain.

Diabetes

For every year that a woman breastfeeds, a woman’s risk for developing diabetes is lessened by 15%. This was found by a study published by the American Medical Association. The longer a woman breastfeeds, the more she is protected against diabetes.

Endometrial and Ovarian Cancers

Other studies have found that women who never breastfeed have increased risks of developing endometrial cancer than their breastfeeding counterparts. Moreover, those who breastfeed longer and have more children have greater protection against ovarian cancer.

Osteoporosis

Contrary to popular belief, breastfeeding makes for stronger bones. Higher bone density and fewer bone fractures were observed among women who had more children and breastfed for longer duration than women who never had any children or never breastfed.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

In a study published in Arthritis and Rheumatism, breastfeeding for at minimum of 1 year lessened women’s chances of having rheumatoid arthritis.

Stress and Anxiety

In a study in Biological Research for Nursing, mothers who use baby formula said they had fewer positive moods and positive events in their life, and more stress than breastfeeding mothers did. Formula-feeding Moms also had more experience of depression and anger than mothers who breastfeed. Breastfeeding causes oxytocin to rush into the mother’s brain. Oxytocin is a hormone that creates positive feelings and increases feelings of trust. No wonder it is also called the “feel good” and “love” hormone.

Closely Spaced Pregnancies

Breastfeeding, when it is done exclusively during the first six months after birth, has a natural contraceptive effect. According to a study published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, none of the test women who were breastfeeding got pregnant within six months after birth. Women who use baby formula do not have this natural reduced fertility.

Using baby formula brings about more costs than what can be computed in dollars and cents. Baby formula increases a family’s - and society’s - medical expenses, reduces productivity, and could even contribute to death. If one wants to understand the real cost of baby formula, you should take all this into consideration. Parents, especially, should be aware of the hidden cost of baby formula so that they can make an informed choice on the feeding and care of their children.

Alexis Rodrigo is a breastfeeding Mom and certified childbirth educator. Find out why breastfeeding beyond one year is good for Moms and babies. Want more natural parenting tips and resources? Subscribe to the free Natural Parenting Newsletter at http://www.naturalmomsblog.com

Nearly everyone has now been affected by the recent global economic crisis wrecking havoc in most countries. Thus, as some people would say, it is now the time to tighten up ones belt in order to survive in this financially battered times. It is in this premise that people are now almost always looking for the best buy on anything they need to spend their money on.

But the financial chaos that is recently plaguing nations globally, must not be enough reason to suspend the traditional gift giving on Christmas. Despite the financial crisis everyone must have to deal with, it is equally important to continue the need for gift giving in this special season of the year especially for kids.

Gifts for kids need not be expensive. They do not have to be elegant and classy either as kids innocent mind does not recognize those kinds of stuff yet. What matters for kids are those gift items that are appealing to their eyes and those that would surely delight their appetite.

Banking on these simple tastes of kids in terms of material things, picking up gifts for them is now an easy task to do. It would also be easier to look for gift ideas which are truly affordable and purse friendly yet awesome for the kids to behold.

Some of the affordable gift ideas for kids are stuff toys and other toys which are not electronically inclined yet fascinating and attractive for the innocent eyes of the recipient. There is also a lot of food stuff which will surely delight kids appetite at very affordable prices. Better way to come up with these gift ideas is either to pick them from specialty stores or on line shopping sites in the Internet.

Though one maybe much concern with the price for economical and practical reasons, quality and the real value the gift you will be handing out to kids must also be taken into consideration and with a lot of sense. It must not be taken for granted and should never be trade with the fact of wanting to save on your budget.

Gifts for kids therefore must not only be affordable but of good quality as well. So, the next time you think of going out to the mall to shop for some gifts for kids, think again. You can now have all the comforts of doing the shopping for those gifts right in your hose. Gifts for kids are now just a click away in so many shopping sites in the Internet. But, wait. It must not be as easy as it sounds. You try to make sure of visiting the best site that caters to your needs for gifts for kids.

Matthew Stanton writes an article about Gifts for Kids which provides you with tips on what to give to children and how they will appreciate it. Simply visit this website at Gifts for Kids