How Can You Be Tactful with Unwanted Advice?

If you are a new dad, you may often receive unsolicited advice on how to bring up your baby. Close friends or family members may typically offer this. Casual acquaintances and even total strangers may add their bit.

While it may be well meaning, a torrent of unwanted advice can be highly annoying. Parents have the first prerogative of making choices and making decisions for their baby. Exasperated parents are not to blame if they see unwanted advice as interference in their freedom to bring up their child the way they want to.

However, it is also important that you respond to such counsel in a way that is not hurtful to the other person. These are different approaches you can adopt when faced with unsolicited advice:

• Listen before you react: Listen to and consider a suggestion offered to you before rejecting it. Chances are you may actually value it.
• Find something to agree upon: Even if the advice in its entirety is not acceptable to you, try to see if there is some part of it that you can agree upon, and acknowledge that.
• Be polite: If you know that your rejecting it will not go down well with the person offering you advice, you could thank the person for the concern and let him know you will consider it. It will keep the peace and you are not bound to put it into practice.
• Argue wisely: If you must counter unsolicited suggestions, do so logically, backing your arguments with facts.
• Be frank: If you think it necessary, do not hesitate to let the person know that you do not agree with his or her opinions.

Useful Article: Parenting Advice

Accurate Acetaminophen Dosage

Acetaminophen is one of the most common drugs administered to children. The drug is commonly given as a cure for fever and pain. Yet, for dads, it can be one of the most challenging drugs to give a dosage correctly. This is because Acetaminophen is easily available in many forms. It has become a staple resident of home medicine cabinets in one form or the other since the 1970’s. Due to its easy availability, Acetaminophen is considered to be the drug that causes most deaths by overdose. Overdoses occur because parents are unaware of Acetaminophen’s toxicity. Symptoms of acetaminophen intoxication include nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, and liver failure.

There are few things that every dad should remember before administering Acetaminophen to their children.

• Never give Acetaminophen to a baby under the age of 3 months without consulting with your doctor first.
• The amount of Acetaminophen given to a baby depends on his weight and not on his age.
• Read the medications label carefully as it is easy to be confused by the different forms and concentration of acetaminophen that is available at the medical store
• Remember to use the measuring device that came with the medication to ensure correct amount of dosage.
• Check whether you are giving an adult dosage or a child’s dosage before administering the drug. Even within the children’s version there are many variations depending on age group. For example, an infant drop formulation is three times as concentrated as the syrup given to toddlers.
• Overdose of acetaminophen can cause liver damage.

Age:		0 to 3 months		4 to 11 months			12 to 23 months		2 to 3 years

Weight:6 to 11 lbs./ (2.7 to 5 kg)    12 to 17 lbs./ (5.5 to 7.7 kg)    18 to 23 lbs./ (8.2 - 10.5 kg)   24 to 35 lbs./ (10.9 to 15.9 kg)

Drops: 		0.4 ml (1/2 dropper) 	0.8 ml (1 dropper) 		1.2 ml (1 1/2 dropper) 	1.6 ml (2 droppers)

Syrup:			-- 			1/2 tsp. 		3/4 tsp. (3.75 ml) 		1 tsp. (5 ml)

Chewable Tablets
80mg tablets: 		--			-- 				--			2 tablets

Useful Article: New Born Baby Care

Tips for Dads trying to cut down on Kids TV watching time

We like TV. After a long day at work, it’s like a frothy dessert at the end of a mediocre meal. It might not have any nutrition value, but it’s sweet and airy and enjoyable with very little effort.  However, when TV becomes the routine and more your reality than your real life, you or your kids might have a problem. 

How to know? Do you talk about TV characters’ lives as if they were your family or close friends? Do you miss important events because you can’t bear to miss the earliest episode of your favorite show rather than time-shifting to when it’s convenient?  Would your kids rather watch TV than go to the park or go swimming? Do your kids spend more than the two-hour daily-recommended maximum time in front of the tube? If so, here are a few tips to help you cut down based on a research study in November of 2006 by the Academy of Pediatrics.

• Keep track of TV watching so you really know how bad the problem is. Most people under-estimate how much they and their children watch. Remember to count the time the TV is on is “just on” in the background.
• Take the TV out of the kids’ bedrooms. Having a TV in the bedroom makes monitoring viewing habits more difficult, as well as actual time spent. Additionally, it promotes dual watching/studying.
• Ditto the dining room. Watching TV while eating ensure less communication within the family at a key time for family bonding.
• Set rules for TV watching on school nights. 
• Eliminate background TV.
• Take responsibility for finding other things for your kids to do rather than watch TV. This will be especially true immediately after you lower their consumption. After a while, however, you’ll be surprised how kids manage to find other things to do.  After all, kids have survived for millions more years without TV than with it.

Child Behavior Suggestions – Cleaning up their Mess

Are you tired of your kids acting like royalty around the house? Making a mess of their rooms as they throw away their clothes and food, expecting you to go picking after them?

Enough is enough – pull yourself out of the mess by teaching your toddlers to help. Its time for Operation Clean Up! As a parent, the following steps will certainly help with the clean up:

• STEP 1: Make an announcement. Let your toddlers know that it’s time to clean up. Give them a specific place to put the toys – a plastic tub or a toy box will do fine. Place the container in the middle of the room.
• STEP 2: Using a loud voice, say “Look at this huge mess. Is there anyone who can help me?” as you are setting the container down. A toddler’s attention tends to pick up this tone. You can also make up and sing a cleanup song to get them into the swing. Remember to be happy and positive about the task.
• STEP 3: By means of demonstration, pick up some toys on the floor and place them in the container. All the while you can continue with the singing and coaxing.
• STEP 4: Now is the time to ask your children to (please) pick up a specific toy. Thank them when they start placing toys in your hand or in the container.
• STEP 5: Always keep a back-up plan, as a consequence for not helping. Give them a timeout or better still, you can threaten to take away one of their treasured items till they start cleaning up.
• STEP 6: Warn the toddlers only once and then follow through with the consequence they don’t help.
• STEP 7: Continue cleaning up the toys until all of the toys are picked up.

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Six Tips for Teaching Kids to Share, Save and Spend

With the economy what it is today, there is no better time for parents to teach their kids lifelong lessons about responsibly sharing, saving, and spending. These lessons can go far in shaping kids’ attitudes and habits about money and its use.

Here are some ways to introduce kids to the concept of saving money:

1. Discuss and demonstrate with your child how you share, save and spend money: For example: explain how you share money by supporting your place of worship or a charitable cause; how you save money by depositing it in the bank; and how you spend  money on groceries and the home.
2. Work together on establishing a guideline on how they’ll manage  their money: For example: if you set “share 10 percent, save 10 percent and spend 80 percent” as a guideline, the next time  your child gets $20 as a birthday gift, the child should divide the  money to meet the guideline.
3. When older children want to buy something immediately, ask them to  ‘Stop, think and choose’: Stop to consider whether they really want or need the item, think how the money spent could be used more resourcefully and choose whether the item is really more important than other wants and needs.
4. Make it visual: For example: label three clear jars to serve as share, save and spend piggy banks allowing the child to see their  contributions add up. Each child at “Teach Your Kids to Share Day” will receive a 3-slot blue piggy bank to encourage sharing, saving and spending.
5. Make it fun: For example: initiate activities such as making ice cream sundaes at home rather than spending money on them at a  fast food restaurant. Set up a lemonade stand and agree to donate the proceeds to a local charity.
6. Most importantly, make sharing, saving and spending an ongoing conversation: Talking with your child is one of the best ways to build a financial foundation for the whole family.

Tips on How to Deal with Toddler Tantrums

Toddlers may throw tantrums from time to time. As a parent, you have no choice but to put up with it or try to subdue your toddler. Most parents usually ending up taking action with the idea that stopping the behavior quickly is important in developing good habits. However, try to correct a child in a way that corrects the behavior in a positive and loving way.

Tantrums most frequently occur between the ages of two and five. Before you can curb toddler tantrums, you need to know the causes behind them:

• Fatigue or hunger pangs
• Lack of proper attention
• Not getting what they desire
• Unhappiness or frustration

Here are some tips on how to deal with your toddlers’ tantrums:

• Do not pay attention to tantrums: Your toddler is looking for a reaction from you. If he does not get it, he may just move on.
• Encourage quiet and balanced behavior: This will also indicate to your child that throwing tantrums is not productive.
• Allow other alternatives: This will prevent situations where toddlers might feel trapped and allow them to get in control of the situation by exercising their choice on the matter. Try to provide your child with options that give the impression that he is exercising free will. “Would you like to put your pajamas on first or brush your teeth first?” “Would you like to eat carrots or peas?” Would you like to put on your socks first or your shirt?” While none of these questions are real choices for an adult, a child will feel more control and will often willingly follow through because ‘he has decided what to do next.’