Family Tips

It is parent’s first responsibility to ensure the child’s safety when traveling in a car. Great number of children are killed or seriously injured in automobile crashes or incidents. Auto death-rate is higher than in any other type of incident, but parents can prevent widening of this horrible statistics by keeping some basic rules and taking simple measures.
Using a child car seat is the best protection that you can give your child in a car. Law in many countries requires that an infant or small kid be fastened - and with a good cause. Safety seats can lower the risk of a potentially lethal injury strongly for babies in particular and also for toddlers. Unfortunately, many car seats are used incorrectly.
Choosing any car seat, you should stick general guidelines to ensure your child’s safety. The best car seat is not always the most expensive one. First of all it should fit your child’s weight, size, and age, as well as your vehicle - not always a chosen seat can be fixed in your car.  Once you pick out a seat, try it out, remembering that displays illustrations might not show the correct usage. It’s up to you to learn how to install a car safety seat properly.

Don’t forget about relatives and friends and find other people who can help you. There are many tasks in planning a wedding and for sure it will be overwhelming. Finding others to share the tasks can give you great safety net, if you choose wisely. Remember, the idea is to reduce stress and trouble, not to increase them. Choose people that make you feel comfortable, won’t be arrogant, and won’t start conflicts and quarrels. Also, always remember that it is your wedding and you do not want others deciding for you. Choose a close family member or best friend.
Look around for good service providers and suppliers. Pay attention on quality as well as price. Also, look for good treatment and the willingness to cooperate with you. Some can be excellent and others terrible, as all people differ from each other. Many times service providers can change or break your wedding. For them, ask for references at first or ask to see them at work. If you were satisfied with their services at someone else’s weddings, don’t forget to ask the names of the providers. Concerning suppliers, buy some samples of wedding items first. If you are happy with their quality and service, then go ahead and purchase the rest of the items.
And eventually remember about yourself, as you deserve a little time to yourself after a day filled with troubles and cares. Have a rest for at least half an hour. You may go to the local gym, swimming pool, yoga or even visit your neighbors. This will help you to switch over to something else and get your ideas into shape.

Kids used to play and they don’t have jobs, but they still have much to worry about. Stress from such common for adults things like school, social and life situations can be overwhelming for kids, specifically if they are not taught how to cope with strong feelings and solve routine everyday problems.
But in most cases it is too difficult for parents to connect with a child who is feeling depressed.
Here are a few advices:
Tell your child when you notice something he or she may be feeling. (”It seems like you are still too worried about what happened at the …”). But this shouldn’t sound like reproach (as “well, what happened now, are you still crazy about that?”).
Listen to your child. Ask him to tell you what is wrong. Listen attentively and calmly — with interest, patience, concern, sincerity, and anxiety. Avoid any impulse to judge, censure, lecture, or say what you think your child should have done instead. The plan is to let your child’s concerns and feelings, as well, to be heard. Try to get the whole idea of the event by asking questions like “And what happened then?” Take your time and let your kid take his time, too.

Say briefly on the feelings that your child is presumably experienced. For example, you may notice, “That must have been sad”, or “That must have seemed unjust to you.” Doing this shows that you understand what your child felt and that you are worried about him. Feeling understood and listened to helps every child and adult as well in any life situation.
Many kids do not have words to express their feelings. If your child seems angry or out of humor, use those words which can help him to learn to identify his emotions. Putting feelings into words helps a child to communicate and develop emotional awareness, as the child recognizes his or her own emotional states. A child who can do so is less likely to go apeshit where strong emotions get demonstrated through careless actions rather than communicated with words.
Suggest activities your child can do to feel better now. Encourage your child to think of some proposals. Your child’s active participation will start confidence. Support the good ideas and add to them as needed, ask whether your child think that this will work. Sometimes talking and listening and feeling understood is all that’s needed to help a child to calm dawn. Try changing the subject and moving on to something more positive and don’t give the problem more attention than it deserves.

Very often kids don’t like to talk about what is bothering them. Taking this into account, give your child an alternative, and make it clear that you are ready for a talk when he or she does feel like talking. Even when children don’t communicate, they usually don’t wish their parents to leave them alone. You can help your child feel better just being alongside — spending time together. So if you notice that your child seems to be out of humor, stressed, or having an unlucky day — and doesn’t want to talk — start doing something together. You may take a walk, watch a movie, go for a shopping or cook something tasty.
It hurts you to see your child miserable or worried about something unknown for you. But try not to ask a child to fix every problem. Instead, pay attention on helping your child, slowly but surely, become a real problem-solver — a kid who knows how to deal with life’s squabbling, starts putting feelings into words, calm down when needed and try again.
Remember that you can’t solve every problem, and that you won’t be next to him in different life situations. But by teaching to choose reasonable strategy, you will prepare your child for the adult life in the future.

Recently computers have been more likely luxury, but now they are almost “primary necessities”. Soon your kid will struggle for the opportunity to take advantage of this miracle of the technical progress. Whether should you resist to desires of the child? Or let him push yourself around?
It is impossible to pull out the child from that environment in which he was born and will live. And if computers have filled their place in our life it would be better to teach children how to be guided in a cyberspace without harm for the health and with advantage for themselves. Paying to much attention only on the negative sides of the question, you can miss many positive moments in your kid’s dialogue with a computer:

1. It helps to reveal and develop abilities of the child.
2. It is nice way of self-training.
3. Develops independent thinking.
4. Strengthens concentration of attention.
5. It teaches the child to switch quickly from one action to another.

The list can be continued farther, but in a counterbalance it is possible to offer not less impressive list of well-known “horror stories”. But you may avoid them if you manage to find the correct approach to the child and to a computer. In fact their further relations depend on their first meeting.

Prepare computer workplace for your child
First of all, take care of conditions: whether it is comfortable and convenient for your kid to sit at the computer table. The furniture should suit the child’s height; the distance up to the monitor should not be less than 70 sm. Do not put the computer place near the window as the monitor may flash.

Do not save money on a computer
Modern computers are not so dangerous to health, as their predecessors. Special attention should be given to the monitor. The most safe variant is a plasma screen.

Do not put a computer in a nursery
At least until your child will be 8-9 years. To this age you can cultivate healthy attitude to a computer.

Strictly determine time frameworks
For children till 6 years - no more than half an hour, for more grown-up - from one up to one and a half hour with a break for a rest. At the beginning find a new interesting toy to which they can be switched at once after dialogue with a computer. In any case, in the given question your position should be inexorable and firm enough, in fact it will help to protect you and your child from possible problems in the future.

All depends on the age of the child. Younger kids can paint pictures, or collect puzzles, study to count and write, get acquainted with the variety of the wildlife and flora, and also with natural phenomena imitation. It is very good, if heroes of the games are their favorite heroes from cartoons and films, instead of unknown to the science monsters from Japanese animation.

For more senior children strategy may be offered. And don’t be so categorical concerning so-called “shootings”. All depends on your child temperament. If one after a game can ruin the entire apartment, for another it will be only a way to get rid of aggression accumulated during the day. The main thing - to study the game beforehand and be convinced, that it does not contain cruel and violent scenes.

Play together with children
Your presence is necessary for kids, especially when it goes about training games. Make comments on all actions of the game, compliment for child successes. Such alive intercourse will show that any computer cannot replace dialogue with the real person. Your praise and recognition of his achievements will be necessary for him even in more grown-up age.

Set a good example to a child how to use computer
If the daddy spends whole days before computer, and mum periodically vanishes in a cyberspace for some hours a day, it is rather difficult to expect from the child reasonable attitude towards computer. You can long and persistently explain that you are already adult and you can afford it. Your offspring will grow up, and already in 8-9 years will feel «quite adult» so it will be possible for him. So, even if it is too hard for you, you should limit computer time within the day. Exception is made by the cases when you work at home, but this situation easily can understand even three-year tiny tot.

Learn the child to relax
Any time spent before computer is connected with the certain strain. Eyes suffer above all. Teach the child several simple exercises for eyes. The most simple - to look into the distance for 2-3 minutes, it will be enough for eye muscles to relax.

Insure yourself from computer dependence
To make forecasts is very always difficult. But if the computer will be only a part of an everyday life of your child – it is nothing to worry about. If he goes in for sports, communicates with friends, spends a lot of time with parents, he won’t have neither interest, nor time to spend whole days sitting at home before computer.

At first sight, phone doesn’t make any danger to the child and to us as well, but it is only superficial opinion. Let consider and think over.

Very few people nowadays can imagine communication without a phone. You leave house, give the order to the child in case of danger call on… And if your child does not call, you are quiet - everything is all right, or not?
Quite often from means of protection phone turns into “master key” of criminals, and it is just a trick.
Your child has remained one at home, he plays peacefully, and suddenly the phone calls. The child lifts the receiver, and speaks. If he got used, that you tell the surname, he will do the same, prompting the criminals. Therefore the first rule says: lifting the receiver, a child should tell: «Hallo!» or «listen to you!», but under no circumstances tell the name or a surname. Even if it seemed to him, that the voice of the calling is similar to someone from his relatives or family friends, he should not tell any names. Let the calling person introduce himself. If the calling person says unfamiliar name to the child or asks: “… are that you? “, the child should answer at once: ” you were mistaken “. Warn the child under no pretext say the name,  the best way - to hang up.