Next to rent or mortgage payments, childcare often ranks as the second-highest expenditure in a household budget. Working couples can pay a whopping 10-20% of their incomes on childcare while their children are small. Seeing the high cost needed to be expensed for their children’s care, some couples decided to…
Kids don’t come with an instruction manual, and there’s no such thing as a perfect parent. You can read as many books as possible, talk to all the moms on the playground and pay for weekly therapy sessions, and you still might feel like you don’t know what you are…
Child discipline and logical consequences demand you learn to think before you act. You take the time you need. You get your feelings under control. You come up with a simple plan. You execute that plan. When kids are careless, rage can explode and it can feel great. Later shame…
Watching a young girl hit, kick, and call her mother names I never imagined a 6 year old knew, engaged in an (ultimately successful) attempt to get dessert led to an enlightening luncheon conversation with a few friends last week. As parents ourselves, we had all dealt with incidents like…
Paying for college is one of the largest expenses a parent will face in their lifetime, other than paying for a house. Because of this, care needs to be taken as well as special planning and allocations of finances in order to take the burden away from this expense. Starting…
David’s mother explained, “Whenever David doesn’t get his way he throws himself on the floor, screams, kicks and cries incessantly. What can we do to help him overcome this behavior?” TIP: What is David getting out of this behavior? First make sure that you are not rewarding this type of…
It used to be that parents were skeptical when it came to their kids using cell phones. The technology seemed too grown up for kids and teens, and the possibilities of them having instant secret communication with their friends sparked concerns about all kinds of trouble. Today, all that is…
It seems like just yesterday that you brought home your new bundle of joy in your carefully chosen, backward facing car seat. After miles of spills, tantrums, and on-the road snoozing, you’ve cycled through the forward facing car seat and are ready to shop for a booster seat. The booster…
I learned the truth about Santa Claus from our big brother. I was skeptical at first, so we sneaked out to my grandparents’ trailer and he showed me all the gifts we had asked Santa to bring. He was telling the truth! My brother had somehow stumbled upon an amazing…
When the Internet first came on the scene way back when, most of us were amazed at the way the new technology would bring so many people and ideas together. We may not have considered that having the Internet in your home was a bit like having an open house…