Question of the Week

What is your favorite PARENTING TIP?

Ortho-Tri-Cyclen Chick Karin

• Tip 1 (For first-time mothers, pregnant or with newborns): Read Baby Wise: How To Get Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night. I loved that book and so have all my friends, our children are all sleeping testimonials that the schedule in the book really works.
• Tip 2: Have a life away from your children; don't live for your children, live for yourself
• Tip 3: Keep Red Wine on hand at all times.
  Chick Jana

Criticize the behavior, not the child. Chick Susie

In the childs best interests -- every child needs a little healthy neglect! Chick Jeanette

Pick one night a week when you turn off the TV and do something else with your kids... read, play games, go somewhere together, work on a project... Start when they're younger; it's hard to get a teenager to change his/her schedule, but families that build this tradition often find that kids want to hold on to it for quite a while. anonymous

My mother told me when my daughter Isabelle was just weeks old to never leave home without the wipes. I carry them allover (and have stashes everywhere I can fit them) and now at 28 months Bella looks for them whenever she is sticky or one of her friends needs to have their hands cleaned. I know kids who fuss gettting cleaned up, but she loves being in control of wiping her own hands, and sometimes offers one to me! BetsyinRI

Listen to 'em, love 'em, lie down with them at bedtime for a few minutes. I spend "alone" time with each of my three children every evening at bedtime. My husband doesn't understand it, but when I leave their room and we are calling out to each other "love you, sweet dreams, don't let the bed bugs bite" (you should hear it said in my 4-year-old's raspy, pure-boy voice), I can't think of anything more fulfilling than that. Beth

Touch your kids... a lot! Find ways to touch them often in every way that's appropriate. Even when they're older and feel "too big" for constant hugs (and may not even want you to touch them), find ways to make that physical contact... a hand on their shoulder as you walk by, a touch of the hand when you speak to them. Don't stop doing it. It commuicates love in powerful ways that aren't even recognized in the moment. Augie

Whatever you want your child to learn, teach it before he/she is a teenager. Maryann

It the most important and critical job you will ever have and the one job for which you have had little or no training to perform and many times lack the necessary tools to do it. There is no job, no surgeon, no anything, more important than the job of raising a human being! Remembering always: prayer must be our first response -- not our last resort. Betsy