When A Child Loses A Parent

This is a subject that is very dear to my heart, as it has touched my family on more than one occasion.

I cannot remember how old I was when I first realised that my lovely cosy existence would one day be shattered by the death of one or both parents. The impact was profound as the harsh reality set in that my parents would one day be taken from me.

Little did I know that when I reached my twenties, tragedy would indeed strike but it would be the two young children of my husband's first marriage, who would become the casualties.

My husband's wife was killed in a car crash leaving two young children without a mother. There was no advance warning or preparation. My husband and I were very young and didn't know what to do or how best to help the children come to terms with their enormous loss and grief.

At that time there was so little information available on how to cope in such a crisis and we didn't have a clue. If we had had the wealth of information and expertise that is available today, it would have been a lot easier but somehow we managed to muddle through.

After what seemed an eternity, equilibrium returned to our household. Then just when it seemed nothing could upset the harmony in our lives, tragedy struck a second time. My stepdaughter's partner died suddenly leaving her with three young children to look after. To make matters worse, we were away on holiday. How could a tragedy of such magnitude happen not once but twice in one family? I found my stepdaughter sobbing her heart out under her bed covers beside herself with grief. Initially she was unable to give her three young children the support and care they desperately needed. So she moved back into the family home where we all rallied round offering whatever help and comfort we could. Finally with a lot of love, care and advice from the experts, my stepdaughter was able to rebuild her life and that of her children.

For me, it was interesting to see how differently she handled her own children's grief. I suppose she was drawing from her own childhood experiences. Every evening she would set aside a period of time, light candles and get the children to talk about their father plus anything and everything that was troubling them. She also made sure the children had their say in how they wanted their father to be remembered. Collages, diaries and pictures were made. Photographs brought back happy memories and even laughter. Through their writings and drawings they were able to express themselves and preserve his memory in their own way.

Children who suddenly find themselves in such situations display signs of grief by having difficulty in managing and expressing their feelings, isolation, problems at school, disturbed sleep, attention seeking behaviour and fear losing the surviving parent. I know my stepdaughter's son initially worried about her leaving the home but I'm happy to report that he seems perfectly okay now. This type of behaviour only becomes cause for concern if it continues for a long time. On the other hand parents find it difficult to maintain their parenting role as they struggle with their bereavement.and the disruption in their circumstances.

The one thing that should be taken into account when offering help to a person who is suffering a bereavement is that you take your cue from them. Peoples needs vary and how they wish to grieve is unique to them.

It is also invaluable to get outside expert help as my stepdaughter did. By seeking such help, children and parents benefit greatly by speaking to someone who understands the experiences they are going through.

I'm glad to report that my step-daughter is at a happy stage in her life now as she has a loving partner and new baby girl.

6 Ways to Be a Strong Role Model for Your Daughter

"I want to be a writer when I grow up," my daughter said to me recently. Clearly, the scribe gene runs deep in our family, I thought to myself. But then I paused. Or...maybe Charlotte's just copying my career choice? The moment was poignant; it made realize that how I behave and navigate choices are her first lessons on how to take on the world.

"Children learn good behaviors by copying good examples—and moms play a huge role in that," says Michele Borba, Ed.D., parenting expert and author of UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World. And it's during the regular, everyday moments when our children pick up on what we moms do or say. The problem is you never know what they're tuning in to. "That's why it's important monitor your own behavior and intentionally start to model the type of behaviors you hope your daughter copies," says Borba. Ready to set a good example for your growing girl? Here's how:

1. Put on your oxygen mask first. This emergency flight mantra is the perfect metaphor to describe how moms need to take care of themselves before being able to properly take care of others. Sure, you'll be a happier mom if you take the time to enjoy activities you love like yoga, bike riding, reading, or jogging. But you'll also show your daughter the importance of taking care of herself. "There is so much pressure to put other people's feelings and needs ahead of our own—and we need to change the messaging for the next generation of women," says Simone Marean, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Girls Leadership. "Simply put, you have to have empathy for yourself in order to teach it." So book that massage or manicure or sneak off to the library or coffee shop for an hour or two. Just be sure to tell your daughter where you're going and why: To be happy and healthy.

2. Take off the super-mom cape. Trying to tackle everything on your own not only leads to burn-out, it shows your daughter that it's okay to run yourself ragged. So ask for help—including from your girl. "By asking your daughter to help you, you're not only getting much-needed assistance, but you're also showing her that it's okay to ask for help and to speak up for what she wants and needs," says Marean. Teaching self-advocacy might mean making things harder for your daughter today (say, by doing chores), but in the long run it will free her of the expectation that she has to do everything herself, ashamed of asking for help, says Marean.

3. Get comfortable with your bad-self. Most of us grow up thinking that to be a cool, good girl, you've got to have lots of friends—as well as conflict-free relationships, says Marean. "For many of us, we were raised avoiding conflict and we pass this mentality on to our daughters," she says. The danger: when girls don't learn to express disappointment, frustration, anger, or embarrassment constructively, they often turn to toxic behavior, such as gossiping or social media bullying, to deal with their emotions. "Conflict in our family, at work, and in our personal lives is going to happen so it's important that we show our daughters that dealing with it head-on can actually bring about positive change," says Marean. If you have a disagreement with your partner, let your kids hear you calmly talk it out. "You have to be able to show your kids that you you're not always happy and that you sometimes make mistakes," says Marean. When's the last time you told your child that you were sad, felt embarrassed, or left out? "Share some of your negative feelings," advises Marean. "That gives your girl permission that she doesn't have to be happy and pleasing all the time."

4. Have courage and be kind. It's important to show your daughter that you treat and talk to your friends and peers with respect, says Borba, who is working with Beech-Nut on an anti-mom-shaming campaign. "Avoid gossiping or shaming other moms—especially in front of your daughter." Borba adds that we also need to stand up for other moms who may be facing a mom-shaming incident. "Mom-shaming cascades down to children—and then they learn that judging or bullying others is acceptable when interacting with their peers." Being kind also applies to how you speak to and about yourself. Mumbling self-depricating comments is a form of self-shaming. "Teach your daughter to love herself," says Borba, who suggests making an effort to replace comments such as "I need to lose ten pounds before the reunion" with comments such as "I love my hair and makeup today."

5. Put down the phone. Our girls are learning how to navigate technology by watching us. When you're having a conversation with someone, be mindful to put down your cell phone. "Your daughter will see you having deep, face-to-face conversations, and she will replicate in her own life," says Borba. And be sure to practice self-control and social media etiquette. When you receive an irritable email or read an upsetting social media post, instead of instantly responding in an angry tone or shouting at your phone, count to ten or walk away from it for a minute. "This will help teach your daughter not only patience but to not fight fire with fire," Borba says.

6. Lose the mom guilt. We want our daughters to find their future path that will bring them joy and fuel their passion, says Marean. Whether we stay-at-home, work full-time, or something in between, we should share our successes with our daughters. Talking about what you love about your life—whether that includes a career or not—can reduce your guilt or conflict surrounding it. Plus, it will help your daughter recognize that girls have choices. And that might be the most important lesson yet.

Special dad time: how to make it happen

Creating high-quality dad time with your children

High-quality interactions with your children happen when you do that little bit more than simply caring for them. But it can be hard to find the time when you’re juggling long work hours, time for yourself and time with your partner.

Here are some simple ways to make ‘dad time’ even more special:

*  Talk to your children. Tell them stories and jokes. Listening to grown-ups talk helps babies and young children learn, even if they can’t understand what you’re saying. It also brings you closer emotionally.

* Read with your children. Reading aloud with your children is a great way to spend time together. Even better, reading and storytelling helps promote language, literacy and brain development.

*  Explain things. Point out things that are worth noticing or remembering – for example, a digger on a building site, or a cicada shell in the backyard. Explain how they work if your child asks questions.

* Why talking is important. Moments when your children have your exclusive attention are truly golden. If you stop what you’re doing and give your child your full attention, you’re also giving a great boost to his development and self-esteem.

* Be a good role model. Your child learns how to interact with others through her interactions with you. Every parent has to say ‘no’ and ‘don’t’ sometimes, but even these can be ‘learning moments’ if you’re clear about the behaviour you want. Praise your child when she cooperates, and model politeness. This gives her a powerful example to follow.

*  Create challenging learning opportunities. If you watch carefully, you’ll work out how to keep a game just within your child’s ability – not too hard, not too easy. For example, you might point to where a puzzle piece could go, rather than letting him flounder, or just doing it for him.

*  Offer choices when you can. For example, instead of saying, ‘Put your t-shirt on’, you could say, ‘Do you want to wear the red t-shirt or the green one?’ A choice is a good alternative to an instruction. It helps build independence and encourage responsibility, and gives your child the feeling she has some control in decision-making.

*  Use your sense of humour when you’re reading or explaining things. Tease playfully. Humour and playfulness can help children’s wellbeing as they grow.

The good news is that you don’t need special training to make these interactions happen. Chances are you’re already doing lots of good things. Not every minute with your children will be high quality, but knowing what great interactions look like will help you create more of them.

Rough-and-tumble play
Rough-and-tumble play can be fun for children and grown-ups, and it can be a dad specialty.

As well as giving children the chance to get some exercise, rough-and-tumble play lets them safely test their physical capabilities and limits. It also helps children learn how to be strong without being aggressive. And when they’re playing rough with their dads, children can learn how to manage emotions like anger and excitement, as well as the desire to win. This type of play also helps your child learn important social lessons, like what’s ‘fair’.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of rough-and-tumble play with your child:

* Time your play wisely. Kids playing with dad can get so excited they need some quiet time before they can go to bed, eat a meal or get dressed. Make time for winding down after rough play.

*  Set a few ground rules. For example, when someone says they’ve had enough or gets hurt, it’s time to take a break.

*  When the occasional bump or collision happens, calm things down, make sure your child understands it was an accident, and start the game again after the tears are dry.

*  Encourage your children to keep trying when they ‘lose’.

*  And remember – as the strongest and biggest player, you might have to let yourself be overpowered or caught so another player can ‘win’ at least some of the time!

How to Organize a Summer Camp for Kids

Winter is over and now summer is fast approaching. It is now time for kids to play outside and enjoy the outdoors. However, it would be more significant if kids can experience camping outdoors so that they can have fun with nature and bond with other kids, friends and classmates. In essence, summer camps always bring about educational experience for kids because the outdoors offers so many different kinds of discoveries. Kids can be able to realize all the things that are worth knowing even these are outside their homes and schools. They can be able to feel the value of survival, experience camaraderie and teamwork. So how to organize a summer camp for kids can be one of your agenda if you want your kids and other kids to enjoy their summer vacation.

On the other hand, you must remember that kids unlike adults are more prone to stress but have unstoppable energy that is why they must be guided accordingly when they are in their camps. This is why organizing a safe but fun camping must be properly thought about. Here are some tips that could help you along in coming up with a nice summer camp for kids.

Advice on How to Organize Kids' Summer Camp

1. If you are organizing a large group and want to indulge kids with various activities like sports and contests and you want to give away prizes to make the event more memorable, you must find sponsors to help you out with the expenses. However, have a clean budget plan before starting to solicit sponsorship from different organizations. Draft your goal so that your potential sponsors will see that your goal has a good cause. If organizing a summer camp is for the school children, the school's alumni can be asked to provide financial assistance.

2.If you already have sure potential sponsors, check for the required legal issues such as parent's waiver and insurance for all the kids including you and your assistants. You can consult a lawyer about this because as an organizer, you are most liable for each and every camper including the staff or teachers who will want to attend the camping.

3. Find the best location for the summer camp. Don't think about going to remote areas because your companions are the kids. You can consider nearby national parks, forest reserves or city-owned parks if ever the management will let you camp for free. If there are no parks available, there can be the community centers, farmsteads or even schools that don't have summer classes. These may not be part of the outside world but you can at least make the children develop their sense of teamwork, independence and comradeship with camping.

4.Think about the activities that anyone can enjoy and include activities that will enhance the physical, mental and logical skills of the kids like sports or discovering things around. There could be the study of flora and fauna around the camp, photography or just plan nature tripping.

5.Find people that can assist you. These can be young volunteers that have knowledge about supervising kids' summer camps. Teenagers or college students are ideal assistants because just like the kids, they also have lively dispositions and can get along well with the kids. If there would be no volunteers, you must at least hire camp workers to make sure everyone and everything goes well within the camp.

6.To enable many kids to participate, take your time in advertising your summer camp. You can create flyers, posters or advertise the activity in a local radio station and invite parents to include their children with the activity. You can also use the technology like the web, radio or local newspaper just to reach many people.

7.Make your registration form easy to access. You can upload a registration form online through a Facebook account or through the camp's website. You can also borrow a small office where people can personally get registration forms and file completed forms directly.

8. Inform parents and participants about the requirements needed for the camping and don't forget to tell people the exact date. If possible, you can broadcast about the number of kids that have already registered. This is to tell everybody the remaining slots. Remember that you must have a limit on the number of kids attendees because you literally cannot handle hundreds of campers even you will be personally assisting the camp activities. Around 150 to 200 kids are manageable if you have reliable staff with you. More than this, it would be hard for you to monitor each and every kid. You can group the kids once they are in the camp.

9.Advertise actively. You can post your posters inside daycares, parks, schools, community message boards or websites. You can also ask the help of your local radio station in the campaign and you must also have a ready landline phone if someone needs to inquire about your coming summer camp.

How to organize a summer camp for kids must take a lot of considerations on your part because you would not want anything bad to happen to even just one kid. Your goal is to make kids enjoy the experience. To let them be with other kids and do various fun activities so that they can learn the significance of teamwork. You want them to stay in the outside world for a while to let them know that the world needs someone like them to rely on. As an organizer, probably your greatest satisfaction will come from seeing kids enjoy the camping experience and see them learning from it.

How To Find the Best Kids Bedding Online

Shopping for kids bedding can be lots of fun for you and your children. Yet all the fun can turn into disappointment is you are not happy with your purchase once you begin using it. It gets even more disappointing when your kids love the bedding but it shrinks or tears, fades, stains easily or simply does not hold up to the wear and tear kids give their bedding. How can you avoid this disappointment? The best way is to become an informed, cautious shopper when choosing bedding for kids.

You'll want to create a sleep environment that's fun and makes the bedroom a cozy, comfortable place for your child to fall asleep easily. Comfortable sheets and blankets are a must. Hard, scratchy bedding can result in your kids having difficulty falling asleep.

You'll also want the child's personality to be reflected in the bedding you get. Sometimes your kids will want bedding that isn't what you would select for them as far as patterns or colors. But it is the kids who have to sleep there. As long as the bedding your kids want is not objectionable for some reason and is well-made, why not allow them to have bedding themes that interest them?

By selecting several bedding themes for kids that you have determined to be of good quality construction and materials, you can allow the kids to choose the bedding they like best from this selection.

You want everything well made so that they will hold up through long, hard use. Most bedding for children is made of cotton or polyester cotton blend fabric. As an adult, you may be very concerned with bedding that has a high thread count but kids very don't really care about such things. They want bedding that looks interesting, is brightly colored and is smooth and soft. While high thread count sheets are soft, just about any bedding made from percale, which has a thread count of 180 or more, will be soft and smooth. Even sheets with thread counts of 120 are readily accepted by most kids. Kids care more about the patterns and designs on their bedding.

The material quality used to create bedding for kids depends on the quality of the raw materials used, the density of the fabric weave, the finishing processes involved and much more. The quality of the final kids product depends on how the bedding is sewn, hemmed or, in the case of comforters, how and what is used for fill material.

While there is no need to purchase extremely expensive bedding for kids, many of the cheaper choices are made using shortcuts. If you buy fitted sheets that are not sewn securely at the corners and don't have quality elastic that extends far enough, the fitted sheet will quickly come off the mattress as your kid moves about on the bed.

If comforters are made with fabrics where the weave is not dense, the filling can begin to work through the outside fabric. Buy purchasing well-respected kids brands of bedding, you can avoid these problems.

It is important to obtain bedding in the correct size. Trying to keep a standard fitted sheet on a thick mattress is nearly impossible. Select deep pocket fitted sheets for thicker mattresses such as pillow-top and those that have egg-crate padding added to the top.

Kids sometimes have allergy problems which must be considered. If your kid is allergic to dust mites or has asthma, you'll want to select bedding that is mite-proof and anti-allergy. Top quality mattress covers and pillow covers can be a great help in controlling allergies. While this certainly won't solve all the allergy problems, it will make a big difference in allergic reactions. Some kids are also allergic to the latex used in some bedding. Most bedding does not include latex in their fabric, however those rare selections containing Lycra do. Also, the elastic used to hold fitted sheets onto the mattress has latex. Consider allergic reactions when choosing bedding for your kids.

The next issue to consider when choosing bedding for your kids bedroom is cleaning. Children often spill things on their bedding, no matter how careful they try to be. Stains can result from kids becoming ill or having an 'accident'. Choosing kids bed sheets that are machine washable and states that clearly on the label will ensure that the inevitable spill or accident will not ruin the bedding your kids love.

Always read the cleaning directions on the label so that you wash the bedding properly. Using hot water on bright colors can result in fading even the most fade-resistant dyes. If the label directions state that no bleach should be used, it is very important to follow that direction. Beautiful, brightly colored bedding that your kids love can be ruined very quickly if laundered improperly.

Kids often remove tags or repeated launderings may result in missing laundry instructions. One way to prevent this is to note the bedding description and laundry instructions on a note card that you keep on file or tape to the wall inside the linen closet. This will remove any possible guess work should a label be lost.

There are so many great designs in bedding for kids. Olive Kids, Dan River, California Kids, Kids Line and dozens other fine bedding companies create beautiful bedding ensembles for kids.

You can find Bed-in-a-Bag bedding selections that feature your kid's favorite action hero or other themes or you can select the bedding for your kids' ala carte. Design names like Men at Work, Garden Bouquet, Farm Friends, Hats and Purses, Moon Gaze, Watercolor Hearts give you an idea of the whimsical, colorful designs you'll see in the broad selection of bedding for your kids.