1. Visit the local library at least twice a week. Many libraries have kids’ story times in the morning.

2. Let them splash in puddles or play in the snow, then go inside and drink hot cocoa.

Qole Pejorian

3. Make a list of goals for the new year. If they’re old enough to write, they can prepare it by themselves. If they’re young, help them - the list can contain drawings instead of words.

4. Bake cookies together and decorate them.

Scott Schram

5. Go to the movies.

6. Don’t forget that kids need to be active. Even while indoors, you can create opportunities for them to be active. For example, we have a set of jump ropes that we only used indoors.

7. If they’re old enough, take them to the museum. If you have a local kids’ museum that’s great, but a “real” museum is fine for generally well behaved kids over 5.

8. Play board games or card games together.

Gracie and Viv

9. Make popcorn and watch a family movie together.

10. If you can handle the pressure, don’t let them open all their gifts on Christmas. Save a few presents to be opened - one each day - during the very last days of the break.

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Helicopter parents are hovering parents. They pay extremely close attention to their children’s experiences and problems. They try to prevent their children from experiencing difficulty or failure and will not let them learn from their own mistakes. They pave the way, fight their kid’s battles for them, and protect them at all cost. Helicopter parents don’t allow their kids to fail or succeed on their own.

The problem with Helicopter Parenting is that these parents are too obsessed with their children. They turn them into the center of their universe and expect the entire world to do the same. These kids are over-managed, over-scheduled, highly pressured, and do not get the opportunity to be left alone, act as kids and learn from their own mistakes. They are protected to a degree that threatens their ability later in life to strike off on their own and form healthy relationships and proper job skills.

The constant hovering and managing of kids’ lives undermines their confidence and sends them a clear message: they can’t make it on their own. Kids should be protected from failure. They need to learn to deal with disappointment. It’s part of life. If we over-protect our children to the extent that they are shielded from ever feeling disappointment or experiencing failure, we are denying them the chance to learn that they can survive a failure, learn from it and move on.

Kids also need to learn to be self-reliant. Helicopter parents do not allow their kids the opportunity to become self-reliant. Obviously, the extent to which you’ll allow your child to manage on her own depends on her age and maturity level. But a good rule of thumb is that you should never do for a child what she can do for herself.

There’s a fine line between being involved in your kids life, being a caring, loving parent, and suffocating them. Helicopter parents may have crossed that line.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss helicopter parenting, or any other parenting topic, with other parents using our discussion panels.

In past generations, bullying was considered as part of childhood. Today bullying is recognized as a serious problem. Since childhood bullying can have lifelong consequences, it is imperative that you help your child cope. A child should never be expected to “just deal with it.”

Any child can be bullied, but the kids who are most commonly bullied are kids who are shy, timid, and have few friends. There are many types of bullying. Physical bullying includes hitting, kicking and destruction of the child’s property, such as spilling his milk over his lunch or ruining his clothes. Verbal bullying may include teasing, name-calling and spreading rumors. Cyberbullying includes harassing emails, spreading gossip through emails and blogs, and sometimes threats.

Since it’s vital that you help your child, but he may not necessarily tell you he’s being bullied, it’s important to recognize the following warning signs: children who are bullied may be afraid to go to school. They may suffer headaches or stomachaches, have trouble sleeping or lose their appetite. They may have unexplained bruises or injuries and damaged or missing personal belongings. In the long term, bullying could lead to depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem and in extreme cases to suicidal thoughts. Many adults who suffered bullying as children never fully recover from the psychological damage.

If you suspect that your child is being bullied, it’s important that you intervene as early as possible. Encourage her to talk with you. Listen calmly, show her that you understand and make it very clear that being bullied is not her fault. Assure her that together, you can take care of this problem.

Encourage your child to be assertive. He should not “fight back”. Instead, he needs to calmly say “leave me alone” and walk away. He may be safer if he stays with a group. If he’s alone, he should try to identify friendly people who may offer him safety. If nothing works, he should ask teachers for help.

Once you get all the details from your child, you should immediately contact the teacher and the school principle. If your child has been physically attacked or threatened, consider filing a police report. Don’t contact the bully’s parents yourself. School officials or the police should do it.

It’s a good idea to enroll your child in after-school activities that would build her self-esteem, such as sports. It’s also important to help her develop friendships by inviting friends over for play dates and encouraging her to reach out to friendly children at school.

Sometimes, if serious damage to your child’s self-esteem has already been done, you will need to get professional help.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss bullying, or any other parenting topic, with other parents using our discussion panels.

One of the most daunting tasks on your Holiday to-do list is probably buying teacher gifts. The main problem is that they deserve wonderful, useful, thoughtful gifts - but since most of us need to buy gifts for several teachers and coaches on a very limited budget, we often resort to the dreaded coffee mug or ornament.

The key when buying teacher gifts is to buy something they can actually USE rather then something they would be expected to DISPLAY. Gifts that fall under the “display” category are often no more than added clutter.

A few ideas for inexpensive, useful teacher gifts:

1. Always accompany the gift with a personal note from you, thanking the teacher for all her hard work, and from your child. The note need not be long. A few words that acknowledge the teacher’s hard work are very appropriate.

2. Consider joining other parents, or organizing the entire class, so that each family contributes a small amount (say $5) that can be joined into a good-sized gift card.

3. Speaking of gift cards, these are great. They don’t take space, are highly useful and highly appreciated. Gift cards to places such as Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, or even Target are great. Wouldn’t YOU love to get a $5 Starbucks gift card? The only caveat: gift cards are problematic in an economy that sees a store after store closing down and going out of business. Try to give gift cards to stores that are not rumored to be in trouble, and if you are the recipient of a gift card, use it sooner rather than later.

3. Homemade baked goods are a beautiful, thoughtful gift, especially when nicely presented in decorated jars with a recipe card included.

4. Another option is to beautifully package a few basic office supplies, which teachers are always short of, and present them a a gift. As unglamorous as it may sound, this is one of the most useful, thoughtful gifts you can give to a teacher.

5. If you ever heard the teacher mention something specific that they love, and it’s within your budget, go for it. A couple of years ago, my kids’ swimming instructor told me how good my kids’ goggles were and asked me where I found them. Needless to say, her (much appreciated and promptly used) gift that year was a beautifully packaged pair of goggles accompanied by letters from my kids and from me.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss teacher gifts, or any other parenting topic, with other parents using our discussion panels.

The economy is officially in recession. Not that the official deceleration changes anything. Many families have been trying to cut down on expenses for several months now. While the Holidays are often a time of outrageous spending, more and more families are making a conscious decision to keep it simple this year.

While most grownups are fine with less gift giving (many are probably secretly relieved), some parents are worried about their kids’ reaction to a smaller holiday.

One of the most important things you can do is to openly talk to your kids about the need to save money. Make them part of the process. There’s no need to apologize or make them feel as if they’re being cheated out of something, because they’re not. A holiday season that focuses on spending time together, sharing homemade meals and exchanging simple gifts can be a beautiful, intimate experience.

Let the kids know, matter of factly, that this year the family needs to save and so the emphasis will be less on gifts and more on spending time together. Ask them to come up with ideas for having simple, inexpensive fun during the holidays. Review their gift wish list with them and ask them to focus on smaller gifts rather than make big requests for expensive items. Or you can allow a single big item per child, depending on your budget.

Teach by example: when the grownups forgo the traditional gift exchange, it sends a powerful message to the kids that gifts are not an integral part of the holidays. When they hear you tell each other that you don’t want any more stuff - that stuff means clutter - it sends another powerful message about what gifts really mean.

If your kids are very young, you may not need to discuss this with them at all. You can “cheat” by giving lots of gifts that are cheap, but look big or colorful or are beautifully packaged. After all, boxes make the best presents.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss simpler holidays, or any other parenting topic, with other parents using our discussion panels.

Of course, “everything in moderation” will never be as popular as “PROCESSED MEAT CAUSES CANCER STOP EATING IT!”, but I’ve always believed in it and always will.

The recent findings that link processed meats to cancer are not all that groundbreaking, are they? There’s a reason health food stores such as Whole Foods only sell uncured, nitrate-free meats. It’s also important to remember that while the report highlighted the risk of processed meat, it also pointed to other elements of diet and lifestyle which could either reduce or increase cancer risk.

No doubt, it’s good for researchers and for the media to come up every once in a while with alarming news about various stuff that causes cancer. But the bottom line has remained the same for centuries: a diet based on plants, with meat and dairy consumed in moderation, is the healthiest. Smoking is lethal, and too much alcohol is bad for you. An active lifestyle is healthy to our bodies and souls while a sedentary lifestyle is very unhealthy. And being able to de-stress and spend quality time with our loved ones is one of the healthiest things we can do for ourselves.

All of this is pretty basic.

What about kids? Kids definitely tend to prefer processed carbs and salty snacks. But what if those were not even an option? A recent TV advertisement said something like “kids are hungry when they’re back from school. That’s why I always have X in the house!” X is an over processed, frozen, microwaveable pizza-pockets type foodstuff. But what if those same hungry kids were offered celery and carrot sticks, small toasted peanut butter on whole wheat sandwiches, and lowfat milk for their snack? I bet they would eat it, especially if they knew THERE WAS NO OTHER OPTION.

So, my best advice: don’t keep junk in the house. Offer healthy food. Teach your kids about the importance of eating well and of getting enough servings of fruit and veggies each day. Now that my kids know they should eat AT LEAST five servings per day (ideally more, but that could overwhelm them), they are highly motivated to achieve that goal.

If you can, buy organic meat and dairy. It’s a good idea regardless of this scare becasue the nonorganic variety contains hormones and antibiotics. If you can’t, eat meats in moderation, emphasize plants and whole grains, encourage an active lifestyle, never ever smoke, and remember: everything (except for smoking) in moderation.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss healthy eating, or any other parenting topic, with other parents using our discussion panels.

An employee was trampled to death at the opening of a Walmart store in the New York suburbs on Black Friday. Others in the crowd “sustained minor injuries such as sprained ankles.”

The scariest part for me: watching our local news cover Black Friday, there was only a brief mention of this violence. The short segment about a man killed was just that: a short segment that joined other short segments that were put together to create the Black Friday piece.

I expected a discussion. Maybe a change in the news people’s expression. But no. There was no reaction to this news. They dryly reported it and moved on.

There WAS discussion on the internet. My friend Cath Lawson said we’re all responsible for the Walmart tragedy, even if we weren’t there, even if we hate shopping. I think she has a point: we’re responsible in the sense that we live in a consumerism-driven society. We place too much importance on buying and owning stuff. We succumb to advertisers that tell us we won’t be happy, won’t be complete, unless we buy more stuff.

So what are we teaching our children when we’re raising them in such an atmosphere? An atmosphere where getting what you want justifies killing someone? Where purchasing something is of an utmost importance, so important that it makes people act like animals?

My kids are young. They don’t watch the news and we have no intention of telling them about this. But if the subject does come up (if they hear about it in school, for example), we will address it as a case of out-of-control consumerism. We will take the opportunity to re-emphasize something that we’ve already started discussing at home: that buying stuff does not make you happier. There’s a very short period of content after you buy something new, but sooner rather than later, the excitement wears off and you’re looking for something else to buy to recreate that feeling of excitement, or temporary contentment.

Allowing advertisers to convince us that our happiness is tied with consuming is dangerous, because it leads to perpetual dissatisfaction, to overspending, and often to out-of-control debt. This is the message I’m trying to teach my children. What message are you trying to teach your children?

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss consumerism, or any other parenting topic, with other parents using our discussion panels.

Parents today are trying hard to build up their kids’ self-esteem. While parents in previous generations were often emotionally distant, busy with work and with providing the family’s basic necessities, parents today often lavish tons of attention on their kids and turn the kids into the center of their universe.

But it looks like in parenting, just like in other areas of life, too much of a good thing cab actually be bad. Psychologists warn that we are raising a generation of smug, spolied, self-centered kids who expect the world to revolve around them.

These young people are headed towards a huge shock when they learn that the world does not actually revolve around them and that they are not the bright stars that their parents made them think they are. Many of them will have to learn the hard way that like most of us, they are in fact quite average.

Average is fine, of course. You can lead a happy, fulfilled life and make a good living if you’re average and willing to work hard. But if you grew up thinking you’re way above average and won’t be happy with anything but the best, you are in for an unpleasant reality check.

When parents constantly overpraise their kids, and when school gives higher grades than kids deserve, kids develop great expectations about their chances of reaching the stars at work and in family life. Later, when things don’t work out as well as they expected, they are at risk of becoming depressed and giving up altogether.

Experts warn that previous generations had more realistic ambitions. Today’s teenagers have been taught to reach for the moon without being warned that many of them will not make it.

There’s a fine line between encouraging your kids to be the best that they can, and promising them that they would get everything they want in life if they just put their mind to it.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss this or any other parenting topic with other parents using our discussion panels.

A new study says that time spent on the Internet is not time wasted but is actually good for teens.Teens who spend time on the internet learn important skills such as how to communicate online, create an online identity, and create a home page.

While I can see how building online skills is crucial, I am still bothered by the statement that “connecting online with friends via social networks was where teens now “hang out”, compared to the usual public places like shopping malls, the street and parks.” It bothers me because I spend time online too, and form online connections, but as much as I value my online friendships,  the 9 months I have spent on the Internet have taught me that people need face to face interaction.

In addition, as much as teens need to build online presence and online skills, they also need to get exercise, read books and study. If their entire free time is spent online, they’re missing out on other important aspects of life.

As long as time spent online is reasonably limited, I can see how online time can be beneficial. But the key here is limiting time spent online and not allowing it to take over the child’s life.

The study authors point out that most parents know very little about what their kids are doing online. As a result, they are struggling to give real guidance and help.They encourage parents and teachers to become more familiar with kids’ online activities so that they can give important guidance on issues such as online predators and spending too much time online.

It’s not that parents should join their kid’s Facebook network. Most kids - and parents - would not want that. But parents who have an online presence and spend time on social networks will have a better understanding of their teens.

A good way to start your online social profile is to sign up with UpToUs - an online network for parents, which offers tools for managing kids’ groups such as classrooms, sports teams and scout troops.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss kids and internet, or any other parenting topic, with other parents using our discussion panels.

The cnn.com blog chose an interesting title for their article on overweight children. It was insensitive, not politically correct, and definitely attention grabbing. It certainly grabbed MY attention.

Although I disagree with the choice of title, I agree with the general advice that was given in the article.

Did you know that a third of American kids are overweight? This is serious, because it puts them at risk for serious conditions such as heart disease and diabetes. It’s also a big problem for us as a society, because managing these conditions is costly.

There are many discussions on what we can do as a society to solve the obesity epidemic, including taxes on fast food and other forms of government regulation. As an individual, you should be alert to any signs that your child is becoming heavy. Don’t rely on your pediatrician to alert you to the fact that your child is overweight. She won’t necessarily do it.

If your child is overweight, the best way to deal with it is to help her become more active by enrolling her in after school activities such as sports teams, gymnastics or self defense classes: anything that requires her to move. Packing healthy lunches and making sure the entire family eats healthy (so that you don’t just put the child on a “diet”) are very helpful too.

Remove soda, sugary cereal and candy from your shopping list. If it’s not in the house, your child is less likely to consume it. When eating out, it’s very important to manage food consumption by sharing dishes and by asking for sauces and salad dressing to be served on the side.

UpToUs offers online groups for parents. Sign up to discuss this or any other parenting subject with other parents using our discussion panels.