Knowledge is Power

Being a parent, your kids’ well being means everything to you. And why should it not be so? After all, they are the biggest blessing of God. To keep their little angels smiling, many parents can do anything. Fulfilling the wishes of kids seems to be their biggest priority. Whether it is a candy or any expensive toy, they are ready to buy anything their kids point at. And when it comes to playing outdoors, you would not compromise on their safety and pleasure so you would not let them go without helmet covers and properly padded knees. With their favorite helmet cover kids will never forget to put it on. But even after loads of care, a child smile can waver if they do not feel happy.

Though a child is a bundle of joy and can make any place come to life, in reality you cannot possibly imagine how fragile they are. There is not much to worry here. You can be a good parent with more effort. You will know how this can be done as you will read on.

Your child can get hurt with just about anything. They want your time and devotion but, it is tragic that some parents relegate their kids to the back of their mind when working. Well honestly, this is a serious mistake that can adversely affect your child. Surely, you do not wish to end up in sour relations with your kids. This can be a possibility if you are not available to your child most of the time. Moreover, always be ready to lend an ear to what they have to say.

It appears that kids prefer their own little world when you wish them to understand something but you are wrong here. They are more observant than you can imagine. Rather than shouting at them frequently, try setting examples for them. Perhaps, teach them to help an elderly lady cross the street, or to be good role models for younger children in the neighborhood.

Have you ever broken out in cold sweat while wrestling out sweets from your little angels? However, there is no real need to get anxious. Candies can harm your kids only when consumed too much. Offer them a promise of a candy after finishing their chores or even after completing their meals. In case your kids are in a bad habit of eating too many sweets then it is virtually impossible to reverse this habit.

Often you feel like gritting your teeth when you have to run after your kids to make them eat healthy. However, you can make this process hassle free. Camouflaging the food will make your kids eat almost any food. For instance, try preparing fruit smoothies and shakes and make sure they pour it down like water! You can even incorporate a certain green vegetable into the mix with your kids none the wiser.

Developing hygiene habits in your kids is another challenge. Instead of shouting at them to brush their teeth, try brushing your own teeth with them. For one, this will tell them exactly how to brush and when trained in this way, they will never get lazy in brushing teeth.

Stewart Wrighter recently purchased a specialty helmet cover online for their daughter

For nine long months, you gave up your body for the sake of your child. You avoided your favorite Cokes, made sure you did not intake too much salt, stayed away from shellfish and resisted that beautiful glass of red wine that you used to enjoy with your bubble bath each night. And all of this was okay, because you knew the end result; a healthy baby was worth it. Now, you are holding your precious baby – struggling to get 8 hours of sleep and are excited to have your body back to yourself. Except for you have decided to take the road to health and breastfeed. Doctors and books are now telling you again what you can and cannot eat or drink in order to not compromise your baby’s health. Alcohol, of course is one of those things.

But recent research and information provided by the La Leche League is now trying to help nursing mothers to understand that they breastfeeding is not all about self-sacrifice. Scientific research into the effects of alcohol and breastfeeding has even indicated that having a beer or glass of Chablis while you are breastfeeding is not going to hurt your baby. Here’s why.

Alcohol enters the breast milk in the same way it does the blood stream. Similarly, when the alcohol has left the blood stream it is also out of the breast milk. Your milk might be left with a sour after taste from your drink of choice, but the effects of alcohol are no longer a threat to your baby. What many nursing mothers do after indulging in an adult beverage is pump and dump their breast milk like a mad woman, ridden with guilt and worried that they will intoxicate their baby. Research suggests that this not necessary. In fact, what they do recommend is that you pump milk prior to drinking so that your baby will have fresh, untainted breast milk while you are enjoying your favorite wine or mixed drink. Then, to flush your body with plenty of fluids and allow the alcohol to leave your blood stream and breast milk.

Now obviously, this is not to suggest or recommend that breastfeeding mothers now have the right to become alcoholics or over indulge in alcohol. This is simply talking about having a drink in moderation. It is also about the realization that just because you are breastfeeding, does not mean that you are necessarily greatly restricted as you were during pregnancy. For many women, the choice to not breastfeed is due to the fact that they do not want to be restrained from enjoying things that they enjoy in life, such as a cold beer or glass of wine. Being tied down to your baby for feedings can be compounded when you are also limited about what you can enjoy.

What you should know if you are breastfeeding is that during the first two months of your infant’s life, their liver is underdeveloped. This means that drinking and breastfeeding CAN hurt your baby. But as mentioned above, once the alcohol is out of your blood stream and breast milk, your baby will be fine. If you are still concerned, then you should go ahead and pump and dump your milk after wards so that you will not feel guilty after having a drink.

If you have chosen to breastfeed, you should be careful what you eat and drink. Spicy foods can cause stomach upset that is more debilitating than what a glass of wine would cause. The key is to keep things in balance. You should never breastfeed your baby while you are in the midst of drinking, because this would ensure that they would get some alcohol content from your breast milk. Also, if you are planning to drink make sure that there is someone sober to watch your baby. But the bottom line is that sometimes a small drink in the evening as you spend some time with your spouse can really take the edge off of life and make you feel like an adult again. If you are skipping out because you are afraid that you will hurt your baby, don’t! Breast feeding is a huge sacrifice and one that you will never regret, but you don’t have to feel that you have to avoid all the things in life that you enjoy.

David Beart runs the Professors House.Our family based site covers everything from marriage advice and dating to caring for babies.

From a young age, you just knew you wanted a house full of children. You could imagine your spouse, playing ball with the kids in the yard and the black lab that would be chasing tennis balls in the midst of everything. You and your spouse would be cooking meals together, taste testing the soup, snuggling in bed on Sundays morning and listening for the pitter-patter of little feet to rush in your room. You had it all figured out. Then you spent the next few years changing your dating habits hoping to find the perfect spouse. He now likes the girls who can cook a mean ham, and she is in love with any guy that is the perfect uncle to his nieces and nephews. You bought the ring and now….you are here. Happily ever after.

Let’s move forward a few years now. You are both exhausted, stressed about money and the kids, still cute – are often annoying and bothersome. Your entire life has been turned topsy turvy and is little more than a platform designed to make the little lives in your life happier than your own. Sex declines, you barely speak to your spouse, and you live on the constant brink of something that feels like irritation. As if at any moment, you could explode. Of course, you don’t because you have become well equipped to handle stress and the constant changing of plans and dreams. For most however, the picture perfect life that they imagined is lost in a sea of constant doing.

Raising kids is difficult. At some point, you have to wonder why people don’t truly prepare you for it. Why no one stood up at your wedding and said, “Don’t do it!” You have to wonder why when you had kid one, kid two and then kid three there wasn’t some well meaning soul there to tell you that you were ruining your life. Not really of course. Kids do add a lot of things to your life and it is the natural progression of humanity to have children. But it definitely isn’t a happily ever after affair like it is depicted. And then, as further insult you, just like every other mom and dad propagate this ‘ideal’ by posting posed pictures on Facebook, writing Christmas cards that talk about your kids as if you don’t exist anymore. You know, painting the perfect picture of family life. All smiles, when the reality is that inside your home a secret war is taking place. The war of being who you want to be and being the perfect parent and spouse.

While all of this may seem a bit pessimistic, it is fairly spot on. Married couples everywhere are so used to adjusting their dreams and rolling with the punches that they effectively have whiplash. And once the cute phases of babyhood and toddlers are replaced by hormonal tweens and ungrateful teens, you too will wonder how you got sucked into this life for yourself. You spend every moment of raising kids waiting for the next and trying to prepare yourself for something that is impossible to predict. You hope like hell that your spouse is still there somewhere waiting in the wings and then you begin planning your life together, with the empty nest – praying that your kids will visit you and not be too demented from your inexperienced parenting skills.

You have regrets, you have mistakes, you feel like you missed out on a lot of important things because you were constantly busy and then you start thinking about grand children. Ah-hah! Now you get it. You realize in that epiphany moment that no one warned you, no one told you about how hard it was to raise children because they, just like you do now, wanted grandchildren to right all the wrongs they felt they made as parents. They wanted to take all their living experiences, erase all their mistakes, and throw it into enjoying something so beautiful, so innocent, and so precious that no one under 45 could truly appreciate. Children! Your children. And there you go….the truth about raising children.

David Beart runs the Professors House.Our family based site covers everything from marriage advice and weddings to raising children.