Healing Herbs and Spices

A guide to the healing herbs and spices that are useful and commonly found in your kitchen...

Chores for Kids

A question I hear a lot from parents is: "what household jobs can my child do at this age?"

Here is a chore/age appropriate chart from: thehappyhousewife.com

The ABC's of Good Moms

BIRTH ORDER OF CHILDREN

Something funny on fb, to share with all.

1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your doctor confirms your pregnancy.
2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.
_____________________________________________________
Preparing for the Birth:

1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.
2nd baby: You don't bother because you remember that last time breathing didn't do a thing.
3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your eighth month.
_____________________________________________________
The Layette:

1st baby: You pre-wash newborn's clothes, color coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby's little bureau.
2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.
3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can't they?
_____________________________________________________
Worries:

1st baby: At the first sign of distress--a whimper, a frown--you pick up the baby.
2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.
3rd baby: You teach your three-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.
_____________________________________________________
Dummy:

1st baby: If the dummy falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.
2nd baby: When the dummy falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby's bottle.
3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.
______________________________________________________
Nappies:

1st baby: You change your baby's nappy every hour, whether they need it or not.
2nd baby: You change their nappy every two to three hours, if needed.
3rd baby: You try to change their nappy before others start to complain about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees.
_____________________________________________________
Activities:

1st baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story Hour.
2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.
3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.
______________________________________________________
Going Out:

1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call home five times.
2nd baby: Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a number where you can be reached.
3rd baby: You leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.
_____________ ________________________________________
At Home:

1st baby: You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.
2nd baby: You spend a bit of everyday watching to be sure your older child isn't squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby.
3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.
______________________________________________________
Swallowing Coins:

1st child: When first child swallows a coin, you rush the child to the hospital and demand x-rays.
2nd child: When second child swallows a coin, you carefully watch for the coin to pass.
3rd child: When third child swallows a coin, you deduct it from his pocket money.
______________________________________________________

Feeding Toddlers: 8 Common Mistakes Parents Make

By CookingLight.com | Team Mom – Tue, Feb 26, 2013 11:38 AM EST

Feeding Toddlers

A picky eater or a toddler that won't eat at all can be frustrating for a parent. You may have read a stack of books or asked fellow parents what they have done, but feeding your child is not a one-size-fits-all process. Here's how to avoid feeding pitfalls and keep your child on track with lifelong healthy eating habits. By: Toby Amidor, MS, RD

Mistake #1: Force Feeding

If you think forcing your toddler to eat a food they don't want is a good idea, think again. You and your little one will end up upset and confused. This tactic will backfire as they will end up disliking both the food and mealtime.

Instead: Don't make a big fuss when the child refuses a food. The less of an issue you make of it now, the less of a fuss you will get the next time. Wait a little bit, and try again with a happy, positive attitude.

Mistake #2: Being a Short-Order Cook

Many parents fall into the trap of being a short-order cook to please a table of picky eaters. Concerns about starving their children, and stunting growth and development in the process drive the urge to cater to their every mealtime whim. But cooking on demand sends the wrong message.

Instead: Plan meals with at least one item you know the child enjoys. Kids are more likely to partake in the meal if they helped plan or prepare it. For example, if your child loves mac and cheese, but dislikes green vegetables, have fun making a dish of broccoli mac and cheese together.

Mistake #3: Insisting on Finishing Their Plates

Parents typically give larger portions than necessary or serve snacks (especially juice) too close to meal time.

Instead: Aim for 1 tablespoon per age of your child for each dish (about 2 or 3 dishes). So a 2-year-old child should receive 2 tablespoons each of carrots, rice, and meatloaf. Also, serve snacks about 1½ to 2 hours before mealtime. Instead of focusing on a clean plate, encourage eating until they're full.

See More: Transitional Recipes for Baby 12-18 Months

Mistake #4: Ignoring Food Preferences

Toddlers have many more taste buds than adults (we lose them as we age). Something that may not be spicy or salty to you may be too much for your child. The same goes for bitter-tasting foods like spinach and broccoli.

Instead: Be considerate when they tell you they don't like a food. Also, go light on big flavors when cooking for children.

Mistake #5: Giving Up Too Soon

Don't assume that if a child rejected a food once, that he or she will never like it again. It takes about 20 times of exposing the child to a food for them to accept it. Do not give up so easily or remove the food from the child's diet.

Instead: Present the food often and allow the toddler to play with it. This includes touching the food and allowing the child to put it in their mouth and spit it out. Over time they will accept it.

Mistake #6: Feeding Inappropriate Snacks

Snacks should contain nourishment needed for proper growth and development. Serving cookies and candy bars regularly will get them used to eating high-fat and high-calorie foods.

Instead: Plan balanced snacks that include fruit, veggies, protein, whole grains, or dairy products.

See More: Homemade Baby Food Purees

Mistake #7: Using Food as a Reward

This technique typically rewards the kids by using high-fat, sugary foods. It may seem like the easy way out now, but it's sending the tot down the wrong path of not-so-healthy eating habits. Also, using sweets as a reward gives the child the idea that sweet food is desirable, where as other healthier food is not.

Instead: Reward your child for good behavior (not for eating their veggies) with non-food items like a trip to the park, a bubble bath, or extra play time.

Mistake #8: Not Regulating Sugary Fluids

It is recommended that toddlers drink a maximum of a ½ cup of 100% juice per day. Any more than that only adds sugar and may result in your child not being hungry for his or her scheduled meals.

Instead: Get them used to water early on. Or consider mixing ½ water ½ juice instead of all juice to space it out.

The Dual-Career Mojo that Makes Couples Thrive

by Monique Valcour  |   9:00 AM April 11, 2013

"The most important career choice you'll make is who you marry." This career advice from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg makes good sense based on research. Among couples, career outcomes are indeed linked to the dynamics of support and career priority within couples.

Yet many people end up in less egalitarian marriages than they expected to have, often facing a "choice" to either stay in jobs that threaten to overwhelm them and their families or to withdraw from the workforce entirely. Just as lack of consensus around finances can doom a marriage, lack of support from one's spouse can effectively sink a career. To make dual careers work, a couple needs to be on the same page regarding their career and life goals and how they will support each other in achieving them. Here are four strategies for developing and maintaining an effective dual-career partnership.

Shared vision and values. First of all, talk early and often about what matters most to both of you. What gives you a sense of value, meaning, identity, joy? Which of these things do you share? What would you not give up under any circumstances, even if it meant sacrificing in other important areas? Even though you may hope to "have it all," placing things that are important to both of you (such as career advancement, living in a certain geographic area, starting a business, both being actively involved in your children's lives, maintaining excellent health) in order of priority improves your ability to make optimal decisions. The purpose of regularly revisiting what you hope to create together is to ensure that — to borrow from the title of a now-classic Harvard Business Reviewarticle — your commitments match your convictions. In other words, you want to avoid realizing too late (e.g., when you've already called a divorce lawyer) that there is a big gap between what you say you care about most and how you actually invest your time and energy.

Mutual interest, appreciation and investment. Remember that you fell in love with this person because you found him or her interesting. Being interested in and learning about your partner's work life and sharing about your own are important ways of maintaining that mutual interest and of promoting the limitless possibilities of mutuality. In less successful couples, partners come to inhabit separate, non-overlapping worlds, with the result that they know each other less well and have fewer opportunities for mutual enrichment over time. A good guiding principle to follow is to look for solutions that reduce career-related conflicts and maximize opportunities for career enrichment between the members of the couple. In a recent HBR blog post, Stew Friedman described a relevant example of an executive who improved both his job performance and the quality of his relationship with his spouse by sharing upcoming work challenges and inviting her input. My husband and I routinely help each other decide how to approach issues we encounter in our careers by listening, asking questions, and offering a broader perspective.

A team orientation. If you've been working on the first two strategies, it should be fairly natural to help each other out and to work together to find solutions that help you to achieve your shared goals.This often means taking turns, as my husband and I did when we put each other through school. Many dual-career couples confer with each other before accepting travel commitments to ensure that both parents are never away at the same time. The most successful dual-career couples avoid consistently sacrificing one partner's career in favor of the other's. This might mean saying to one's boss, "I'd like to work from home until mid-morning the last week of next month because my spouse will be away at a conference." In less successful dual-career partnerships, each partner's interest in the other's career is often more self-referential — as in, "How will my partner's work demands or rewards affect me?" as opposed to "How do we meet the demands and enjoy the rewards together?"

Flexibility and adaptability. Both partners need to be open to change and adaptable. Plotting an inflexible dual-career roadmap at the outset and expecting that you will be able to stick to it forever is a recipe for disappointment and missed opportunities. Modern careers don't typically follow a predictable path; the road is ever-changing. Few people make it all the way through a career without experiencing an unexpected company event that affects their career prospects, a significant failure, an apparent success that turns out to be unsatisfactory, or a desire to make a significant change. Fortunately, having two careers takes the pressure off either person to be responsible for all of the material support of the family unit. Furthermore, shared goals, mutual understanding, and a commitment to helping each other are powerful resources that help dual-career couples work through career and life challenges and changes.

If you fundamentally respect each other, value and appreciate each others' careers, want to help each other succeed, and keep the lines of communication open, you'll be able to handle and quite possibly even embrace the twists and turns you encounter along the way.

More blog posts by Monique Valcour

Three Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids…and How to Correct Them

Recently, I read about a father, Paul Wallich, who built a camera-mounted drone helicopter to follow his grade-school-aged son to the bus stop. He wants to make sure his son arrives at the bus stop safe and sound. There’s no doubt the gizmo provides an awesome show-and-tell contribution. In my mind, Paul Wallich gives new meaning to the term “helicopter parent.”

While I applaud the engagement of this generation of parents and teachers, it’s important to recognize the unintended consequences of our engagement. We want the best for our students, but research now shows that our “over-protection, over-connection” style has damaged them. Let me suggest three huge mistakes we’ve made leading this generation of kids and how we must correct them.

1. We Risk Too Little

We live in a world that warns us of danger at every turn. Toxic. High voltage. Flammable. Slippery when wet. Steep curve ahead. Don’t walk. Hazard. This “safety first” preoccupation emerged over thirty years ago with the Tylenol scare and with children’s faces appearing on milk cartons. We became fearful of losing our kids. So we put knee-pads, safety belts and helmets on them…at the dinner table. (Actually I’m just kidding on that one). But, it’s true. We’ve insulated our kids from risk.

Author Gever Tulley suggests, “If you’re over 30, you probably walked to school, played on the monkey bars, and learned to high-dive at the public pool. If you’re younger, it’s unlikely you did any of these things. Yet, has the world become that much more dangerous? Statistically, no. But our society has created pervasive fears about letting kids be independent—and the consequences for our kids are serious.”

Unfortunately, over-protecting our young people has had an adverse effect on them.

“Children of risk-averse parents have lower test scores and are slightly less likely to attend college than offspring of parents with more tolerant attitudes toward risk,” says a team led by Sarah Brown of the University of Sheffield in the UK. Aversion to risk may prevent parents from making inherently uncertain investments in their children’s human capital; it’s also possible that risk attitudes reflect cognitive ability, researchers say.” Sadly, this Scottish Journal of Political Economy report won’t help us unless we do something about it. Adults continue to vote to remove playground equipment from parks so kids won’t have accidents; to request teachers stop using red ink as they grade papers and even cease from using the word “no” in class. It’s all too negative. I’m sorry—but while I understand the intent to protect students, we are failing miserably at preparing them for a world that will not be risk-free.

Psychologists in Europe have discovered that if a child doesn’t play outside and is never allowed to experience a skinned knee or a broken bone, they frequently have phobias as adults. Interviews with young adults who never played on jungle gyms reveal they’re fearful of normal risks and commitment. The truth is, kids need to fall a few times to learn it is normal; teens likely need to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend to appreciate the emotional maturity that lasting relationships require. Pain is actually a necessary teacher. Consider your body for a moment. If you didn’t feel pain, you could burn yourself or step on a nail and never do something about the damage and infection until it was too late. Pain is a part of health and maturity.

Similarly, taking calculated risks is all a part of growing up. In fact, it plays a huge role. Childhood may be about safety and self-esteem, but as a student matures, risk and achievement are necessities in forming their identity and confidence. Because parents have removed “risk” from children’s lives, psychologists are discovering a syndrome as they counsel teens: High Arrogance, Low Self-Esteem. They’re cocky, but deep down their confidence is hollow, because it’s built off of watching YouTube videos, and perhaps not achieving something meaningful.

According to a study by University College London, risk-taking behavior peeks during adolescence. Teens are apt to take more risks than any other age group. Their brain programs them to do so. It’s part of growing up. They must test boundaries, values and find their identity during these years. This is when they must learn, via experience, the consequences of certain behaviors. Our failure to let them risk may explain why so many young adults, between the ages of 22 and 35 still live at home or haven’t started their careers, or had a serious relationship. Normal risk taking at fourteen or fifteen would have prepared them for such decisions and the risks of moving away from home, launching a career or getting married.

2. We Rescue Too Quickly

This generation of young people has not developed some of the life skills kids did thirty years ago because adults swoop in and take care of problems for them. We remove the need for them to navigate hardships. May I illustrate?

Staff from four universities recently told me they encountered students who had never filled out a form or an application in their life. Desiring to care for their kids, and not disadvantage them, parents or teachers had always done it for them.

One freshman received a C- on her project and immediately called her mother, right in the middle of her class. After interrupting the class discussion with her complaint about her poor grade, she handed the cell phone to her professor and said, “She wants to talk to you.” Evidently, mom wanted to negotiate the grade.

A Harvard Admissions Counselor reported a prospective student looked him in the eye and answered every question he was asked. The counselor felt the boy’s mother must have coached him on eye-contact because he tended to look down after each response. Later, the counselor learned the boy’s mom was texting him the answers every time a question came in.

A college president said a mother of one of his students called him, saying she’d seen that the weather would be cold that day and wondered if he would make sure her son was wearing his sweater as he went to class. She wasn’t joking.

This may sound harsh, but rescuing and over-indulging our children is one of the most insidious forms of child abuse. It’s “parenting for the short-term” and it sorely misses the point of leadership—to equip our young people to do it without help. Just like muscles atrophy inside of a cast due to disuse, their social, emotional, spiritual and intellectual muscles can shrink because they’re not exercised. For example, I remember when and where I learned the art of conflict resolution. I was eleven years old, and everyday about fifteen boys would gather after school to play baseball. We would choose sides and umpire our games. Through that consistent exercise, I learned to resolve conflict. I had to. Today, if the kids are outside at all, there are likely four mothers present doing the conflict resolution for them.

The fact is, as students experience adults doing so much for them, they like it at first. Who wouldn’t? They learn to play parents against each other, they learn to negotiate with faculty for more time, lenient rules, extra credit and easier grades. This actually confirms that these kids are not stupid. They learn to play the game. Sooner or later, they know “someone will rescue me.” If I fail or “act out,” an adult will smooth things over and remove any consequences for my misconduct. Once again, this isn’t even remotely close to how the world works. It actually disables our kids.

3. We Rave Too Easily

The self-esteem movement has been around since Baby Boomers were kids, but it took root in our school systems in the 1980s. We determined every kid would feel special, regardless of what they did, which meant they began hearing remarks like:

• “You’re awesome!”
• “You’re smart.”
• “You’re gifted.”
• “You’re super!”

Attend a little league awards ceremony and you soon learn: everyone’s a winner. Everyone gets a trophy. They all get ribbons. We meant well—but research is now indicating this method has unintended consequences. Dr. Carol Dweck wrote a landmark book called, Mindset. In it she reports findings about the adverse affects of praise. She tells of two groups of fifth grade students who took a test. Afterward, one group was told, “You must be smart.” The other group was told, “You must have worked hard.” When a second test was offered to the students, they were told that it would be harder and that they didn’t have to take it. Ninety percent of the kids who heard “you must be smart” opted not to take it. Why? They feared proving that the affirmation may be false. Of the second group, most of the kids chose to take the test, and while they didn’t do well, Dweck’s researchers heard them whispering under their breath, “This is my favorite test.” They loved the challenge. Finally, a third test was given, equally as hard as the first one. The result? The first group of students who were told they were smart, did worse. The second group did 30% better. Dweck concludes that our affirmation of kids must target factors in their control. When we say “you must have worked hard,” we are praising effort, which they have full control over. It tends to elicit more effort. When we praise smarts, it may provide a little confidence at first but ultimately causes a child to work less. They say to themselves, “If it doesn’t come easy, I don’t want to do it.”

What’s more, kids eventually observe that “mom” is the only one who thinks they’re “awesome.” No one else is saying it. They begin to doubt the objectivity of their own mother; it feels good in the moment, but it’s not connected to reality.

Further, Dr. Robert Cloninger, at Washington University in St. Louis has done brain research on the prefrontal cortex, which monitors the reward center of the brain. He says the brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. The reward center of our brains learns to say: Don’t give up. Don’t stop trying. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards,” Cloninger says, “will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

When we rave too easily, kids eventually learn to cheat, to exaggerate and lie and to avoid difficult reality. They have not been conditioned to face it. A helpful metaphor when considering this challenge is: inoculation. When you get inoculated, a nurse injects a vaccine, which actually exposes you to a dose of the very disease your body must learn to overcome. It’s a good thing. Only then do we develop an immunity to it. Similarly, our kids must be inoculated with doses of hardship, delay, challenges and inconvenience to build the strength to stand in them.

Eight Steps Toward Healthy Leadership

Obviously, negative risk taking should be discouraged, such as smoking, alcohol, illegal drugs, etc. In addition, there will be times our young people do need our help, or affirmation. But—healthy teens are going to want to spread their wings. They’ll need to try things on their own. And we, the adults, must let them. Here are some simple ideas you can employ as you navigate these waters:

1. Help them take calculated risks. Talk it over with them, but let them do it. Your primary job is to prepare your child for how the world really works.
2. Discuss how they must learn to make choices. They must prepare to both win and lose, not get all they want and to face the consequences of their decisions.
3. Share your own “risky” experiences from your teen years. Interpret them. Because we’re not the only influence on these kids, we must be the best influence.
4. Instead of tangible rewards, how about spending some time together? Be careful you aren’t teaching them that emotions can be healed by a trip to the mall.
5. Choose a positive risk taking option and launch kids into it (i.e. sports, jobs, etc). It may take a push but get them used to trying out new opportunities.
6. Don’t let your guilt get in the way of leading well. Your job is not to make yourself feel good by giving kids what makes them or you feel better when you give it.
7. Don’t reward basics that life requires. If your relationship is based on material rewards, kids will experience neither intrinsic motivation nor unconditional love.
8. Affirm smart risk-taking and hard work wisely. Help them see the advantage of both of these, and that stepping out a comfort zone usually pays off.

Bottom line? Your child does not have to love you every minute. He’ll get over the disappointment of failure but he won’t get over the effects of being spoiled. So let them fail, let them fall, and let them fight for what they really value. If we treat our kids as fragile, they will surely grow up to be fragile adults. We must prepare them for the world that awaits them. Our world needs resilient adults not fragile ones.

10 Things I Learned When I Stopped Yelling at My Kids

Here are the top 10 things that I learned but trust me, there are many many more!

1. Yelling isn't the only thing I haven't done in over a year.

I also haven't gone to bed with a gut-wrenching pit in my stomach because I felt like the worst mom ever. I haven't bawled to my husband that I yelled again and again. And I haven't heard my sons scream, "You're the meanest, worstest, mommy in the whole world, I don't love you anymore!"

2. My kids are my most important audience.

When I had my "no more yelling epiphany," I realized that I don't yell in the presence of others because I want them to believe I am a loving and patient mom. The truth is, I already was that way... but rarely when I was alone, just always when I was in public with an audience to judge me. This is so backwards! I always have an audience -- my four boys are always watching me and THEY are the audience that matters most; they are the ones I want to show just how loving, patient and "yell-free" I can be. I want my boys to judge me and proclaim, "My mommy is the bestest mommy ever!" I remember this whenever I am home and thinking I can't keep it together; obviously I can... I do it out and about all the time!

3. Kids are kids -- and not just kids, but people too.

Like me, my kids have good days and bad days. Some days they are pleasant and sweet and listen really well; other days they are grumpy and difficult. By the way, I am always sweet and never difficult. Always. Ha! And like all kids, my boys are loud at times, they refuse to put their shoes on, and they color on the wall, especially if it is covered in brand new wallpaper that mommy loves. So, yeah, I need to watch my expectations and remember that my boys are kids: they are still learning, still growing, and still figuring out how to handle waking up on the wrong side of the bed. When they "make mistakes" I need to remember that not only does yelling not help, but like me, they don't like to be yelled at!

4. I can't always control my kids' actions, but I can always control my reaction.

I can try my hardest to follow all the parenting tricks of the trade for well-disciplined children, but since my kids are just kids, they sometimes won't do what I want. I can decide if I want to scream "Pick up your Legos!" when they don't listen or if I want to walk away for a second, regain composure by doing some jumping jacks, and then return with a new approach. P.S. Walking away and taking a breather can actually get the Legos picked up faster than yelling.

5. Yelling doesn't work.

There were numerous times when I wanted to quit my Orange Rhino Challenge, when I thought yelling would just be easier than finding deep breaths and creative alternatives to yelling. But I knew better. Early on, I learned that yelling simply doesn't work, that it just makes things spiral out of control and it makes it hard for my boys to hear what I want them to learn. How can they clearly hear me "say" "Hurry up, get your backpacks, your shoes, your jackets, don't touch each other, go faster, you can do it yourself!" when it's all a garbled, loud mix of intimidating orders that are making them cry?

6. By yelling you might miss out on life-changing moments.

One night I heard footsteps coming downstairs well after bedtime. Although infuriated that my "me-time" was interrupted, I remained calm and returned said child to bed. As I tucked him in he said "Mommy, will you love me if I go to heaven first, because if you go first, I will still love you. In fact, I will always love you." Tears still come to my eyes just writing that. I can guarantee if I had yelled "GET BACK IN BED!" we never would have had that sweet, very important conversation.

7. Two words you should always remember are "at least."

I am not going to say not yelling is "easy peasy," but getting creative with alternatives certainly made it easier and more doable. And after yelling into the toilet, beating my chest like a gorilla, singing Lalala, Lalala it's Elmo's world, and using orange napkins at mealtime as a reminder of my promise, it certainly got a heck of a lot easier. Sure, I feel silly at times doing these things, but they keep me from losing it. So do my new favorite words: "at least." These two small words give me great perspective and remind me to chill out. I use them readily in any annoying but not yell worthy kid situation. "He just dropped an entire jug of milk on the floor... at least it wasn't glass and at least he was trying to help!" I also use them readily when I want to give up:"'Okay, this is hard but at least there are only three hours until bedtime, not 12."

8. Often times, I am the problem, not my kids.

The break-up line, "It's not you, it's me" rings uncomfortably true when learning not to yell. I quickly realized that oftentimes I wanted to yell because I had a fight with my husband, I was overwhelmed by my to-do list, I was tired or it was that time of the month, not because the kids were behaving "badly." I also quickly realized that acknowledging my personal triggers by saying out loud: "Orange Rhino, you have wicked PMS and need chocolate, you aren't mad at the kids, don't yell" works really well to keep yells at bay.

9. Taking care of me helps me to not yell.

I was always great at taking care of others; I was not, however, always good at taking care of myself until now. Once I realized that personal triggers like feeling overweight, feeling disconnected from friends, and feeling exhausted set me up to yell, I started taking care of me. I started going to bed earlier, prioritizing exercise, trying to call one friend a day and most importantly, I started telling myself it's OK to not be perfect. Taking care of me not only helps me not yell, but it also makes me happier, more relaxed, and more loving. Ah, the benefits of not yelling extend far beyond parenting! There is no doubt that I am in a better parenting AND personal place now that I don't yell. Just to name a few unexpected benefits of not yelling: I do more random acts of kindness, I handle stressful situations more gracefully, and I communicate more lovingly with my husband.

10. Not yelling feels phenomenal for everyone.

Now that I have stopped yelling, not only do I feel happier and calmer, I also feel lighter. I go to bed guilt-free (except for the extra cookie I ate that day, oops) and wake up more confident that I can parent with greater understanding of my kids, my needs, and how to be more loving and patient. And I am pretty sure my kids feel happier and calmer too. I know everyone wants to read, "I stopped yelling and not only do I feel great, but also my kids are now calmer AND perfectly behaved." Well, they aren't. They are still kids. But, yes tantrums are shorter and some are completely avoided. Now that I am calmer, I can think more rationally to resolve potential problems before meltdown mania. But forget perfectly behaved kids for a second. My kids are most definitely more loving towards me, and now tell me quite often "I love you Orange Rhino mommy!" and that feels more than awesome, it feels phenomenal.

9 Reasons Not To Walk Babies

I can understand the urge to walk babies. After all, they seem to like it so much. When we help our babies walk, they are gleefully entertained — enjoying us enjoying them — while we’re getting a preview of one of life’s major milestones. Sometimes we’re compelled to walk our babies because we think they need help developing their motor skills and believe it our duty to teach them. We worry that our children will fall behind if we don’t give them a hand or two (literally).

So, why rain on this innocent parade and suggest not walking babies?

1.  Body wisdom

“Only a baby knows just the way his joints should align,” notes Carol Pinto, a longtime RIE Associate, Feldenkraispractitioner and friend. In other words, when it comes to motor development, babies are self-learners — they really do know best. By holding a baby’s hands to mobilize him, position and reposition his body, we hinder his natural ability to find balance, sense spatial relations, and judge what he can and cannot do.  Better to trust our babies to walk when they are ready, and by doing so encourage mental and physical awareness.

2.  Safety

Awareness and safety go hand-in-hand, and walking babies makes them less aware — gives them a false sense of balance and of their abilities — which can be dangerous.  (In Don’t Stand Me Up I describe an unfortunate incident at our home involving my unwitting husband and a friend’s toddler who was accustomed to being walked down steps.) But babies who are given freedom to move and develop in their own way gain a self-knowledge that keeps them safer. Their inner sense of balance and judgment intact, movements are carefully calculated, and they tend to make fewer reckless moves. In a 1971 study on natural gross motor development at the Pikler Institute (as reported in The RIE Manual) researchers described the children’s movements as “well-coordinated, economical and cautious”. They also noted that “the children, without exception, attained age-appropriate skills.”

3.  Habits, dependencies

Walk babies, and they’ll probably want to do it again and again. Not only does this create an unhealthy dependence on an adult for body balancing, it makes a habit of an activity that the baby will likely be much more interested in continuing (and doing far more often) than we are. Babies are extremely fond of repetition. And, personally, I’m not fond of having more situations with babies where I have to say, “No”. Babies who are not walked or otherwise positioned never ask to be.

4.  Parent’s backache

Enough said.

5.  Thwarts independent play

The walking habit creates an unnecessary and unproductive dependency on the adult for entertainment. Engaging the parent to repeat the activity becomes a distraction when the child could be happily working on developing motor skills his way, or engaged in other more educational, creative and exploratory self-generated activities.

6.  Restrictive

Although we probably believe that our well-intentioned manipulation of a baby is helping him learn to move freely, we are actually restricting him (just as we do when propping him to sit and holding him to stand). Babies need lots of practice moving freely to attain new skills. It is best to encourage that freedom and trust them to be inner-directed. Only babies know what they are ready to do and what they’re working on.

7.  Loss of transitional movements

Researchers at the Pikler Institute also noted in their observation of the 722 children raised in this model orphanage (the only place that I’m aware of where natural gross motor development has been officially studied) that the children maintained a “stable high activity level during the whole period of learning new motor skills and changed their postures on average of at least once per minute. This indicates that a child restricted from moving freely is deprived of the long hours of exercising in transitional postures before mastering the next developmental skill.” (From The RIE Manual.)

These wonderful transitional postures are one of the striking differences I’ve seen over the years between babies who are allowed to develop without interference and those who aren’t.

There is an agile 7 month old boy in my new class who spends the majority of the class in perfect straddle splits when he isn’t sitting (a recent development) or scooting across the floor. The parents (neither of whom are dancers, gymnasts, or even circus performers) and I were marveling at him just last week, wondering if, and for how long he will maintain this astonishing flexibility.

Transitional postures are building blocks, each one having a distinct and valuable developmental purpose for our child. When we, however subtly, nudge our child to sit or walk, we believe we are helping, but the child ends up losing out on experiencing a healthier developmental process which includes the wide array of naturally strength-building postures.

8.  Trust + Mastery = Self-Confidence

Basic trust in our baby means allowing him to drive his development. When a baby feels our trust and is allowed to experience his appropriate self-chosen struggles and then eventually to own his independent accomplishments (like walking), self-confidence is nurtured. Instead of, “Now I can finally do it without daddy’s hands holding me.” It’s “Wow, look what I can do!”

9.  I’m enough

When we’re dating, everyone wants to know when we’ll be married. Then we get married and it’s, “When are you having a baby?” Then, “Is the baby smiling? Sitting? Walking? Talking? When are you having baby number 2?” Why is it so hard for us to appreciate what’s going on right now?

Babies need to know that they are appreciated, enjoyed and loved for what they are able to do at this moment.  Generally, they never need our help for the basics like sitting, standing and walking. Our interference only confuses the process, and in many ways corrupts it. They really don’t need our help, as much as we’re driven to give it. AsMagda Gerber writes in Dear Parent – Caring For Infants With Respect, “If infants are ready to do something, they will do it. In fact, when they are ready, they have to do it.”

The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind

By NICK BILTONSpending time with devices instead of interacting with people may hinder communication skills, researchers say.

We were sitting in a restaurant, trying to have a conversation, but her children, 4-year-old Willow and 7-year-old Luca, would not stop fighting. The arguments — over a fork, or who had more water in a glass — were unrelenting.I recently watched my sister perform an act of magic.

Like a magician quieting a group of children by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, my sister reached into her purse and produced two shiny Apple iPads, handing one to each child. Suddenly, the two were quiet. Eerily so. They sat playing games and watching videos, and we continued with our conversation.

After our meal, as we stuffed the iPads back into their magic storage bag, my sister felt slightly guilty.

“I don’t want to give them the iPads at the dinner table, but if it keeps them occupied for an hour so we can eat in peace, and more importantly not disturb other people in the restaurant, I often just hand it over,” she told me. Then she asked: “Do you think it’s bad for them? I do worry that it is setting them up to think it’s O.K. to use electronics at the dinner table in the future.”

I did not have an answer, and although some people might have opinions, no one has a true scientific understanding of what the future might hold for a generation raised on portable screens.

“We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet,” said Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.” “Children, like adults, vary quite a lot, and some are more sensitive than others to an abundance of screen time.”

But Dr. Small says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.

So will a child who plays with crayons at dinner rather than a coloring application on an iPad be a more socialized person?

Ozlem Ayduk, an associate professor in the Relationships and Social Cognition Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, said children sitting at the dinner table with a print book or crayons were not as engaged with the people around them, either. “There are value-based lessons for children to talk to the people during a meal,” she said. “It’s not so much about the iPad versus nonelectronics.”

Parents who have little choice but to hand over their iPad can at least control what a child does on those devices.

A report published last week by the Millennium Cohort Study, a long-term study group in Britain that has been following 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001, found that those who watched more than three hours of television, videos or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not. The study, of a sample of 11,000 children, found that children who played video games — often age-appropriate games — for the same amount of time did not show any signs of negative behavioral changes by the same age.

Which brings us back to the dinner table with my niece and nephew. While they sat happily staring into those shiny screens, they were not engaged in any type of conversation, or staring off into space thinking, as my sister and I did as children when our parents were talking. And that is where the risks are apparent.

“Conversations with each other are the way children learn to have conversations with themselves, and learn how to be alone,” said Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of the book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.” “Learning about solitude and being alone is the bedrock of early development, and you don’t want your kids to miss out on that because you’re pacifying them with a device.”

Ms. Turkle has interviewed parents, teenagers and children about the use of gadgets during early development, and says she fears that children who do not learn real interactions, which often have flaws and imperfections, will come to know a world where perfect, shiny screens give them a false sense of intimacy without risk.

And they need to be able to think independently of a device. “They need to be able to explore their imagination. To be able to gather themselves and know who they are. So someday they can form a relationship with another person without a panic of being alone,” she said. “If you don’t teach your children to be alone, they’ll only know how to be lonely.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

A version of this article appeared in print on 04/01/2013, on page B9 of the NewYork edition with the headline: The Child, the Tablet And the Developing Mind.