A study done by the fatherhood institute in the USA revealed that almost 70% of American mothers believe that men are just as good at looking after children, as they (mothers) are. With the mothers valuing the importance of dads in the children’s life, why then do we still have a society where fathers are not that active in the lives of their children? The traditional family set up, where mothers stayed at home while men spent all his time fending for his family, is no more. Today women have joined the corporate world, hence the reason for fathers to be more involved with the children, to fill and take advantage the void left by the now working mom. There are a number of reasons why some fathers are dragging their feet. The first and most prominent being that, society values a child’s relationship with its mother, over that with its father. You find fathers who have custody of their children, people look at them with suspicious glances, as if there is something wrong with them. Our society is not yet used to the idea that a man can take care of his children alone. Instead of trying to recreate a father and trying to make him more nurturing or ‘motherly’, there should be a focus on teaching fathers how to be fathers, not mothers.

Our government (policy makers), also behave in the similar fashion towards fathers. It values the child relationship with its mother over that with its father. With the government, it is pretty clear from the right of child custody laws and policies that are in place. Our government expects father’s names to be on the child birth certificate, but it does not insist on fathers actually signing their child certificate. I am of the view that if fathers could be allowed to actually go and put their signatures on the birth certificate, it could make them proud enough to be involved in their children’s upbringing. The government should involve fathers at all levels of the child development. In Zimbabwe, they used to have a policy where each pregnant woman, can only be helped at hospitals if they have their husbands or boyfriends by their side. No boyfriend, no medical help! This policy helped to get men involved.

Unsocial hours and inflexible working hours are largely to blame for men being unable to take a more active role. Our laws allow for maternity leave by mothers, but the same gesture is not extended to the fathers. This arrangement makes the mother to look and feel more important, in the life of the children, more than the father. The government and policy makers need to catch up with reality, by coming up with policies that encourage father to be active, in the wellbeing of their children.

The other reason why fathers are not actively involved in the wellbeing of their children, is the mindset of the men. Some fathers simply think that providing for the basic needs of their children is enough. They don’t know that playing or hanging around with their children is equally as good as buying food and clothes to them. Fathers should move beyond the provider or breadwinner role and become more involved in the physical and emotional care of their children.

Surely good parenting is not sex-specific or sex-related. Fathers can make a good job, just as mothers do. Mothers and father’s roles are supposed to complement each other no one sex can do a good job, without the other sex. Fathers are unique and essential figures in their children’s lives (particularly their sons). It is fathers who teach their daughters what to look for in a male friend, not a mother. It is a father who teaches his son how to treat women, not a mother. A son becomes his father over time and practices what he learnt from his father when he, himself, has his own family. Indeed fathers, if given chance and support, can be as good as mothers.

By Ditiro Mogomotsi Sesinyi

Source: The Bostwana Gazette – http://goo.gl/RKjm5

Two recent books, Pamela Druckerman’s “Bringing Up Bébé” and Karen Le Billon’s “French Kids Eat Everything,” make the case that French parents raise kids who behave and eat far better than their American counterparts.

This month, the English language debut of the European bestseller by French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, “The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women,” is already causing a stir.

Badinter argues that overwhelming numbers of French mamans manage to work full-time and have several kids because they haven’t succumbed to intensive ideals of motherhood, most of all American-style “natural mothering.”  Think extended breastfeeding, nonmedicalized birth, co-sleeping, and cloth diapers.

Commentators are already jumping on Badinter’s polemic as mommy war fodder.  Does La Leche League oppress women?  Is the environmental movement, or feminism, to blame?

It’s been a busy season indeed for chroniclers of the faux mommy wars.  But as usual, that war is more farce than reality.  Fini, everyone. The global battle between mamans and mamas, just as the one between stay-at-home and working moms, is largely staged.  The sometimes jazzy headlines — such as “The conflict attacks progressive parenting as anti-feminist” on April 10 in The Washington Post — do a disservice to the complex lives of women.

Creating two categories of mothers pits one against the other, and obscures the way traditional mommy-dividing categories often overlap. Women frequently opt in and out and back from paid work. Conversations about that fabricated domestic war and the latest international one obscure real differences linked to factors such as class and education.  And of course, “French” and “American” simplify the lives of millions of mothers in both countries.

If, instead, we actually read these books, we would realize that these authors are trying to offer solutions to the same problems in different ways.  We admit it’s hardly as sexy as the Hilary Rosen-Ann Romney showdown, whereby stay-at-home motherhood became partisan fodder after the Democratic strategist Rosen criticized Mitt Romney for turning to his wife, who has “never worked a day in her life,” for counsel on the economic issues working mothers face.  But we ought to slow down long enough to hear what these authors say before pulling our guns.  There are kernels of wisdom here.

Badinter, for example, wants all women (and particularly those who are French) to resist ideals of mothering that view women as the primary, more “natural” caregiver, which can make it all the more difficult to balance motherhood with work and a full, adult life.

We applaud the way she asks us to examine these intensive ideals of motherhood and their reach. No woman should feel shame because she fails to breastfeed or give birth without an epidural.  More fundamentally, we agree that care-giving shouldn’t be the province of women alone.

We disagree with Badinter, however, that the obstacles are merely in our heads.  We think they’re in political structures, too.  Despite Badinter dismissing as irrelevant the French policies that make health care and day care accessible and affordable, here in the U.S., we lack such support for parents, mothers in particular, who work and do the second shift at home.

The battle for pumHping stations and flextime seems a worthier cause than the trumped-up war between those who breastfeed and those who don’t.  Surely natural mothering practices would not be so oppressive and disadvantageous to women if we set up society to accommodate them.

And while we’re on it, the focus on breasts is a diversion.  As a mother said in an interview when Badinter’s book came out in France, the real conflict is not between the mother and the woman,  but the woman and the company.  When Badinter rejects breastfeeding so mothers can retain their sexuality, one could argue she is merely replacing the tyranny  of “breasts for bébé” for the tyranny of “breasts for men.”

Still, Badinter has good points, and we shouldn’t be so offended as to let the criticism of our parenting overshadow the reality that we, in the United States, have a long way to go. Perhaps there is something to American mothers’ nostalgia for the French way of life, like authors Judith Warner, Jennifer Conlin, Le Billon and Druckerman, all who have raised children in France.

You don’t have to be an anthropologist to know that other cultural perspectives can shed light on how we’ve constructed particular ideals of motherhood and family, how our government and workplaces value — or don’t value — motherhood.

Perhaps the French experience might be a reminder that, with a revolution, structures can, and do, change. The solution to the challenges of American parenting is hardly as simple as making children eat spinach, or privileging disposable diapers over cloth.

Editor’s note: Deborah Siegel is the author of “Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild,” co-editor of the anthology “Only Child,” and founder of the group blog Girl w/Pen. She is a research fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families. Heather Hewett is an associate professor of English and women’s studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She writes the “Global Mama” column at Girl w/Pen.

By Heather Hewett and Deborah Siegel

Source: CNN – http://goo.gl/7Wi4D

Yet the more you can plan ahead, the better sense you’ll have of what you’ll need and how to schedule your new life. Here are seven things to think about:

1. Your marriage may take a hit.
Before deciding on another baby, think about how your marriage has changed since having your first. According to a recent study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, parents reported a sudden decrease in marital satisfaction after their first child, compared to a more gradual decrease in couples without children.

“Many people believe that having a baby will strengthen a marriage or turn an unhappy marriage into a happy one,” according to Erin Boyd-Soisson, certified family life educator, and associate professor of Human Development and Family Science at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. Boyd-Soisson said that because the time and commitment required to take care of a child takes away from time to maintain a marriage, it’s important to come up with a plan of how you will be able to spend time with your partner and make your relationship a priority.

2. You should (try) to agree.
You and your partner should both be ready for another baby because it will be easier if you have each other’s support, according to Cora who said you already have a sense of what your partner will be like with the second. “If your partner has never been helpful with your first child, but now you’re fantasizing that they’re going to be helpful with your second child, I would say think again because chances are, if they haven’t been doing it, why would they start doing it now?” she said.

3. It will take a village.
Chances are you’ll have less sleep, less time, and more work, so think about who you’ll be able to rely on for help.  Are there family members, friends, or neighbors who can babysit for a few hours so you and your partner can go out to dinner? Is there someone who can help with household chores or errands? If you don’t live near family, you can hire a babysitter or mother’s helper, or reach out to a local mother’s group.

4. Your other children’s needs.
A new baby requires all of your time and attention, but remember your other children will need your attention too, so you should think about how it will affect the time you’ll be spending with them. If your child is still a newborn, are you physically and emotionally ready to handle another baby so soon? You’ll also want to consider how your children will adjust to a new baby and ways you can minimize jealousy. “You really do want to try to foster a positive sibling relationship,” Boyd-Soisson said. If you’re concerned about how you’ll handle a second, talk to friends who have more than one or take a parenting class.

5. Your money.
The average cost of raising a child until he’s 17 (not including college), is $226,920 according to the Department of Agriculture. Sure, you have a lot of the baby gear already, but you’ll still be shelling out money for diapers, food, medical bills, and other incidentals so budgeting for the next 3 to 5 years can help you manage your finances. If you or your partner will be staying at home full-time, or you’ll have to pay for double the daycare or increase your nanny’s salary, you should factor those changes in as well.

6. Your career.
If you’ll be returning to work, you should think about how you anticipate your job and career aspirations fitting into your new life. Will it be OK if you leave at 5pm every day to pick up your kid from day care or does your job require you to work late hours? Many women have regrets about leaving a successful career behind to stay at home full time, or they feel conflicted if they have to leave work to pick up a child from daycare. Being aware and anticipating as much as you can, can help avoid frustration later.

7. Expect the unexpected
We all hope for a healthy baby but sometimes they’re born prematurely or with health conditions, which is why it’s important to plan ahead if you’ll need more time or additional help. Also, consider the chance of multiples. If you’re undergoing fertility treatments, there’s a 44 percent chance your second baby could be twins.  And regardless of how easy or challenging your first was, you never know what the second baby will be like. “You will be dealing with two completely different people,” Cora said.

By Julie Revelant, a freelance writer specializing in parenting, health, and women’s issues and a mom.

Source: Fox News – http://goo.gl/VPypY

Feeling isolated and worried that her baby might not be getting enough to eat, the Bloomington woman reaches for her new best friend – an iPhone – to check Facebook. She wonders: Who else in the world is awake and experiencing the same challenges?

While a new mom’s need for support hasn’t changed much over the years, the places she’s finding it have. If it takes a village to raise a child, then Facebook, Twitter and thousands of “mommy blogs” proliferating the Web have become the virtual village.

“Without this group, I’m not sure what type of mother I would be,” Champ said of the private Facebook community she belongs to called September Sweetpeas. The group comprises 300 women from all over the world who gave birth around the same month, including several from the Twin Cities. “I’ve learned more from these moms than I could from any book.”

The virtual mommy network is growing at a staggering pace. Fourteen percent of American women with at least one child blog about parenting or turn to blogs for advice, according to a recent study by Scarborough Research. And about 3.9 million U.S. moms identify themselves as bloggers.

Young mothers such as Champ, who checks in with her online mommy group daily, spend twice as much time online as women who are not moms, according to the 2012 American Media Mom report, a joint study between Nielsen and BabyCenter.com. The number of visits to the BabyCenter’s “community” page, where parents can find existing support groups or create their own, grew 259 percent from 2008 to 2011.

But these moms aren’t just showing off their babies’ latest photos. From postpartum depression to mother-in-law and marriage issues, no topic is off limits. What starts as an online exchange of ideas is often just the beginning of real-life friendships.

During those middle-of-the-night feedings, what – aside from sleep – do new moms long for?

Company. Someone who’s been there, who can feel their pain, maybe even offer a few tips they haven’t tried.

“When I’m up at 3 a.m., all I can do is take out my phone and start looking for answers,” said Alison Cromie, a Farmington, Minn., mom who initially experienced nursing difficulties. “In-person support groups are time-dependent; social media is immediate.”

New moms aren’t replacing the advice from their own mothers, existing friends and doctors, experts say, but are using social media to enhance their circles of support. They continue to forge relationships at day-care dropoff or through Early Childhood Family Education classes, but also connect online – often creating Facebook groups – to deepen their friendships.

“A lot of new moms today are digital natives,” said Susan Walker, an associate professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota who studies parents’ use of technology and social media. “They were brought up with these technologies, so it’s within their culture and their comfort to be socially engaged with other mothers through these media.”

Generic baby blogs started over a decade ago but have since splintered into diverse niche groups devoted to every parenting style imaginable. Whatever your beliefs – “cry it out” vs. attachment parenting, breast vs. bottle, co-sleeping vs. crib, cloth vs. disposable diapers – there’s a blog, forum or support group at which other parents are likely to share your views.

No matter their style, mothers by their biochemical nature are primed for bonding both with their babies and their communities, said Sara Pearce, owner and founder of Amma Parenting Center in Edina. New mothers have high levels of oxytocin, the “hormone of love” that aids in bonding with their babies, but also primes bonding with other mothers.

“Even though so much has changed in the way we connect and communicate with each other, fundamentally, things have been the same for an eternity,” said Pearce, also a nurse, certified nurse/midwife and lactation consultant. “Moms need other moms.”

Susan Biewen, a psychologist for Fairview Health Services, which specializes in postpartum issues, said online support has been very helpful in alleviating postpartum depression, particularly in the first isolating weeks after giving birth.

But as children reach school age, wired moms are less likely to engage with other mothers in online communities.

“A mother’s confidence grows as her kids get older,” Biewen said. “Her resources are more established within her lifestyle either through her children’s schools, activities or the neighborhood.”

Becoming real-life friends

Just because new moms connect online doesn’t mean they isolate themselves behind their computers and never leave the house to make real-life connections. Quite the opposite.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that the average social networking site user had more close ties than the average American and was half as likely to be socially isolated.

Missy Berggren, well known among mothers in the local social networking community, has formed many friendships with women she has never met face-to-face. Through Twitter, Facebook and her blog, the Marketing Mama, many of those connections evolved into real-life ones, too, over lunch meetings, “Tweetups” and local blogger events.

“The support and friendship is tangible, it is meaningful, it is very, very real,” she said of her online friends. “Then when it transcends to face-to-face, it’s even more powerful.”

Berggren, who co-founded the Minnesota Blogger Conference, said the stigma attached to meeting online friends in real life is fading away.

“There used to be a time five years ago where social media was this thing that only existed online, but in the last few years that’s changed,” she said. “Now online is just the beginning of the relationship.”

Berggren started connecting with local women via a message board on TheKnot.com in 2001 when she was planning her wedding. Over the next several years, many of the women kept communicating online and eventually met in person. They supported one another through pregnancy, motherhood and divorce. When one of the group’s members lost her battle with cancer, they came together at her funeral.

“It was very profound,” Berggren said. “And that was a relationship that began with a bunch of women online talking about Vera Wang wedding dresses.”

By Aimee Blanchette

Source: Centre Daily Times – http://goo.gl/6XUiF

From: Laurie, Newton MA

Dear Laurie,

He’s a preschooler; last I heard, not belong on a team is not a prerequisite for kindergarten. Just because all these activities are available doesn’t mean they are necessary or important. In fact, I would argue that they are neither at this age. Is your son in preschool at least three mornings a week? That’s all the socialization he needs;it’s plenty of opportunity for him to engage in all those important preschool socializing activities.

At this age, the point of these extra activities should be for fun, not to learn skills, or to figure out areas of interest or ability, and certainly not in the hopes of putting a child on a track that might someday lead to a varsity team and college scholarship. So why wouldn’t it be fun for him when it seems like it’s fun for everyone else? (Keep in mind you have no idea how much cajoling it takes other parents to get their kids there…)

Here are just a few reasons:

1. Some kids have a low threshold for noise and/or smells. Were the swim or soccer lessons indoors? Noise can echo or ricochet off the walls. The smell of chlorine can be overwhelming, especially but not only indoors.

2. Some kids are fearless, others are not. They worry about getting hurt. They don’t like being part of a crush of bodies, even if the bodies belong to other kids the same relative size and shape. And what if there’s one kid who’s bigger? Even a little bit bigger can loom large.

3. Everything you mention is an athletic activity. If socialization is what you’re after, what about arts and crafts, or music? What about a non-team sport, like skating lessons?

Back off, Laurie. Lower your expectations and absolutely don’t convey a sense of disappointment to your son. Stop pushing activities on him. Let him ask for an activity. Doing it with a buddy is always a good idea. Most of all, don’t worry. Your son is only 4. Just because he doesn’t like a group sport now doesn’t mean he never will. Just because he isn’t drawn to athletics now doesn’t mean he won’t be athletic later. And, btw, so what if he isn’t, on both counts? All in all, all of this is Not a Big Deal. (Oh yeah, and where did his dad fall on this spectrum?)

By Barbara F. Meltz

Source: Boston.com – http://goo.gl/i7oE3

Parents have always been fond of storing sentimental keepsakes – a first tooth or lock of hair – as their child grows up.

And pictures marking significant milestones – birthdays or their first day of school – are a mainstay of mantelpieces.

But there is now a much more ambitious trend in cataloguing a child’s growth. And rather than being something typically kept within the privacy of the home, it prides itself on going public.

Take the time-lapse of Natalie, who grows from birth to 10 years old in one minute and 25 seconds. It has racked up seven million hits since it emerged on YouTube in 2008.

Or a pregnant mother and her partner’s take on the trend, which encapsulates the nine-month pregnancy cycle in just 90 seconds.

Clearly, for some snap-happy parents, posting a couple of hundred pictures on Flickr is not enough. They are posting them every day. Others are creating video montages to capture the process.

So what motivates parents to create baby time-lapses – and are they becoming the ultimate way of recording a child’s development?

Munish Bansal, 39, a bookkeeper from Gillingham, Kent, has been recording every day in his children’s lives from the day they were born. He has now amassed more than 10,000 photos of Suman, 16, and Jay, 13, which are displayed on a dedicated website.

“I decided it was something I wanted to do before Suman was born – I wanted to see the daily changes, and it was also for family in India.

“I thought I’d only do it for a few years, but then it seemed a shame to stop. When you look at the photos, it’s like fast forwarding a movie, you can see how she used to laugh, smile, and look – it’s wonderful,” he says.

Bansal says he “has to be strict” with himself to keep up the practice. And on one occasion, when his daughter went to France, he had to get friends and teachers to take the pictures in his place.

In an ideal world, he says he would like to carry on taking photos until his children are 18 years old, but it depends on how they feel when they go to college. At the moment, they love the attention, he says.

“Either way I feel as if I have achieved a goal – and I will hopefully have given my children a gift which they can pass it onto their children.”

For Dutch filmmaker Frans Hofmeester, who has been filming his daughter Lotte, 12, every week since she was born, a time lapse was never something he set out to achieve.

“She was changing at such a rapid pace, I felt like I needed to document the way she looked, the sounds she made, to keep my memory intact.

“I developed a rhythm of filming every week, and editing a film every birthday. When my son Vince came along, I started doing the same thing,” he says.

Hofmeester says the process became “more intense, more powerful” as time passed, until he realised he had “something special in his hands, which he had to do something with”.

However he says he was “overwhelmed” by the reaction to the result – the Lotte time-lapse video from birth to 12 in two minutes 45 seconds – which went viral and clocked up 3.7m views on Vimeo in one week.

Hofmeester puts the appeal down to the “soul feeling” of the live images, which “touches people”, as well as the natural draw of children.

“It is also the most essential example of what life is – there are so many emotions in just three minutes,” he says.

It is easy to understand how the creators of baby time-lapses get captivated by them, but their wider appeal is perhaps more surprising.

Especially in light of a recent poll of Facebook users, which puts baby photos as the second most irritating picture annoyance on the website.

So how popular are baby time-lapses, and why do other people like viewing them?

Kathryn Blundell, the editor of Mother & Baby Magazine, says whereas parents are often drawn to time-lapses because of an awareness of how fleeting childhood is, their wider appeal is, in part, because of the “hypnotic and memorising” element of the medium.

“It’s like when you watch the David Attenborough flower opening – there is a fascination, it pulls you in,” she says.

According to Blundell, baby time-lapses are part of a growing trend that has developed alongside technology.

“Whether it’s photo albums, videos, or babies that now have their own Facebook pages and Twitter pages with updates like ‘I’ve pooped my pants’, to mums writing their own blogs, Mumsnet and Pinterest, the culture is already out there.

“In a way, baby time-lapses are the modern scrap book,” she says.

Ellis Cashmore, professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University, agrees technology has simply given parents another means of documenting their child’s development – but he believes baby time-lapses also reflect a much broader shift in society.

“We have a different concept of the private life than we used to, even 20 years ago. The concept of shielding something away from public attention has virtually been abandoned – we share practically everything nowadays, not just in social media, but in day to day interactions.

“So whereas in the mid 20th Century sharing photos of your children may have been a cause of embarrassment, the advances in media, which started with the introduction of television, have incrementally changed the notion of what is private,” he says.

Of course some parents are uncomfortable with baby photos being put online, or fear they may be open to abuse or manipulation. Critics also argue a child should have a right to decide whether it has a digital footprint, not parents.

But a study by internet security company AVG, which found that 92% of children in the US have an online presence by the time they are two years old, with countries such as the UK and France not far behind at 81%, suggests the majority of parents are more relaxed.

However those that think baby time-lapses are set to be the norm are misguided, according to Greg Hobson, curator of photographs at the National Media Museum.

“It is an interesting phenomenon and I think people tend to connect with these time lapses as they are human beings, and there are intonations of death and the passing of time – in a similar way to time-lapses of fruit or flowers decaying – which make us aware of our own mortality.

“But these are essentially family shots, so while it is interesting to see new something on the internet, the attention span for these things is relatively short,” he says.

By Vanessa Barford

Source: BBC News – http://goo.gl/ZJEIV

Parenting with attachment in mind is not limited to the baby or toddler or early childhood years. The goal is secure parent-child attachment, and the thing about attachment bonds is that they’re able to change over time depending on the influence.

This is good when a child or person does not have a secure attachment history, but this also means that if a parent decides that enough is enough, and begins treating his son’s toddler tantrums in a way that does not promote attachment, the parent can actually go backwards in terms of attachment quality.

That secure attachment quality can be lost strikes fear in many parents’ hearts, but relationships decline over time. If your baby ends up crying himself to sleep inadvertently, here or there, there won’t be any lasting damage on your relationship.

For example, my son hates his car seat and cries hysterically on most car rides. I’ve tried holding his hand, singing, asking his sisters to try to distract him, you name it, but the whole activity that distracts him is actually getting out of the buckles. And, of course, that’s just not practical as we’re driving down the road. So, he ends up crying a bit, which is hard for me because, as a rule, I respond quickly and sensitively to my baby anywhere else, long before he has to cry to get my attention.

The difference is whether this letting your baby cry it out is a habit in your home. If it’s a regular thing, that will damage your attachment bond. If it happens every once in a while, because Mommy has to take a shower or put him in a car seat or has another need that just can’t be done with baby in tow, it’s OK.

Back to what I was saying, though: There isn’t a time in childhood when it’s appropriate for a child to no longer have a secure attachment with her parents. There just isn’t. Certainly, parenting changes as a child grows older. It becomes less physical and more mental – we’re not holding and cuddling and breastfeeding our children anymore, but they need us to guide them as they become more opinionated and vocal about their choices.

They need us to guide them with our values and wisdom. And we need to have a secure attachment bond with our children so that they trust us when we warn them or when we encourage them or when we support them.

Where do children turn if they feel they can’t trust their parents? If we’re lucky, they’ll talk to a trusted adult like an aunt or uncle or a teacher or coach. And hopefully, that adult can actually be trusted. Lately, though, a lot of children begin to glean their values from their peers. And this is dangerous, because their peers’ relationship skills are just as immature and their sense of self and values just as under-developed. It’s a bit like the blind leading the blind.

What makes parents think their children have outgrown the need for attachment-minded parenting? It tends to happen when their old stand-bys no longer work – their child is too old to breastfeed, is now sleeping through the night, or no longer is soothed by cuddles alone. And it tends to happen when their child starts having tantrums and non-punitive discipline doesn’t seem to be working.

The cornerstone of parenting with attachment is the primary caregiver responding with sensitivity. The specific parenting techniques are irrelevant; what matters is that whatever parents are choosing to do is what works for the family and promotes a secure attachment bond with their child.

With babies, parents are often prescribed certain, rather rigid techniques that “must” be done to be doing attachment parenting: For example, some say you can only be parenting with attachment if you’re breastfeeding; not so. Are you bottle-feeding? Are you feeding when your baby is hungry, rather than on a schedule? Are you holding your baby and therefore interacting while you’re bottle-feeding, rather than propping the bottle? Are you watching for allergies or gassiness to formula and are willing to change brands to make baby more comfortable? Then you’re feeding your baby with attachment in mind!

If not, examine the reasons why and see if there is a way to tweak what you’re doing to make it more attachment-minded. Keep in mind that the American Academy of Pediatrics confirms that babies should be fed on demand, rather than a schedule, and bottles should not be propped, as there can be serious health consequences.

OK, I digressed again. Back to what I was saying: Attachment parenting changes what it looks like as our babies grow to toddlers to preschoolers to older children to teens to adult children.  As our children hit more and more milestones,  their independence blossoms and parenting itself changes. But the need for parenting with attachment can’t be outgrown. It’s just as important with our three- or six- or nine- or 12- or 18-year-old as it is with our 4-month-old.

By Rita Brhel

Source: PsychCentral.com – http://goo.gl/0ECPh

Aussie kids think their parents are working too hard and not spending enough time being mums and dads.

Children like spending time with their parents and trust them, but don’t always share their feelings with them, a report card on Aussie parenting also found.

But children might not be pulling their weight.

Only half of 10,000 children aged 10-11 surveyed for the Australian Institute of Family Studies regularly help their parents with housework.

The report shows Aussie families are more likely to hang out at museums and school concerts than play sport together, and most parents are not too worried about what their children eat or watch.

Parents also say their children benefit from them working, but only 14 per cent help their children with homework most days and only half regularly visit their child’s class.

And mums rule the roost, being both boys’ and girls’ first port of call with a problem.

Although nearly two-thirds of parents are not worried about how much time they spend with their children, both they and their children think work is getting in the way of family life.

Up to 43 per cent of children think their dads spend too much time working, and 27 per cent think their mums do, according to the report, released yesterday.

AIFS director Alan Hayes said children were affected, not only by the hours their parents spent working, but the spillover of work-related worry into family time.

Bub Hub website editor Rebecca Galton said steps like job sharing, working from home and having flexible hours “can go a long way to ensuring mums and dads are finding a good work/life balance”.

Parent Wellbeing director Jodie Benveniste said the issue was not that parents work but “how parents are when they come home”.

St Kilda parents Justin and Rachel Bernhaut turned their back on full-time work to formulate and market a natural children’s toothpaste.

They run Jack n’ Jill Natural Toothpaste from home, enabling them to spend lots of time with sons Dali, 4, and Jagger, 2.

“It’s much less travel and more conducive to family life,” Mr Bernhaut said while his wife said she worked “hell for leather” when Jagger slept.

By Susie O’Brien

Source: Herald Sun – http://goo.gl/u9jTt

Researchers of the McMaster University in Ontario, Canada demonstrated that one-year old children who participated in interactive music classes with their parents smiled more, communicated better and showed earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music.

The trail which its results appeared in the journals Developmental Science and Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, involved a group of babies and their parents who spent six months participating in one of two types of weekly music instruction.

In one music class, parents and infants worked together to learn to play percussion instruments, take turns and sing specific songs. In the other classes, babies and their parents played at various toy stations while recordings from a popular baby music series played in the background.

“Babies who participated in the interactive music classes with their parents showed earlier sensitivity to the pitch structure in music,” said co-author Laurel Trainor. “Specifically, they preferred to listen to a version of a piano piece that stayed in key, versus a version that included out-of-key notes.”

On the other hand, “infants who participated in the passive listening classes did not show the same preferences. Even their brains responded to music differently. Infants from the interactive music classes showed larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones,” adds Trainor.

“Many past studies of musical training have focused on older children. Our results suggest that the infant brain might be particularly plastic with regard to musical exposure,” he concluded.

Source: Press TV – http://goo.gl/zXAZA