Teen Parenting

Being a teen parent would be tough. You must juggle your school, work, and having your baby. Although being a teen parent is tough I would say it is one of the best options when you get pregnant by accident, I personally would say the best option is adoption and the worst option would be abortion. Getting pregnant as a teenager closes many doors but it also opens many doors too. Having children as a teenager forces a person to grow up way faster than they should. As a teen parent if you are between the ages of 16 and 18 and not the custodial parent, child support is around $50 per month. Nearly one million young women under age 20 become pregnant each year, that means close to 2800 teens get pregnant each day. Approximately 4 in 10 young women in the U.S. become pregnant at least once before turning 20 years old. Teen parenting costs U.S. taxpayers roughly $7 billion annually for social services and lost tax revenues. Teen parenting statistics show that while it has become socially accepted for teenage mothers to stay in school, unfortunately, an alarming 80 percent of them either choose or feel the need to drop out and only fifty percent of teenage parents who had their first child during the early teenage years will finish high school before they reach 30 years old. Teen parenting statistics also indicate that it is more likely for someone who has had a child between 20 and 24 years old to finish college than someone who becomes a parent before the age of 19. Women who had children after the age of 20 earn twice as much as women who were teenage mothers.

Foster Care and Families

There are 88000 foster care children in Canada. Every foster care child has their own background and reason for being in foster care, a main reason is abusive parents who are not able to give their child the care and love they need. Alcoholism is also a major reason for a child being forced into foster care. It would be hard if you were put into foster care and not understanding why you can no longer be apart of the family you belong to. It takes time to get use to being with people you don’t know and people who don’t know you. It is also not easy to care for foster kids because of emotional or behavioural issues due to abuse, poverty and neglect. When a child enters foster care they have a lot to deal with lots of people asking personal questions about their lives that they may not feel comfortable sharing. Very quickly counselling becomes a big part of the Childs life. It is important that the child knows that it is not their fault they are in foster care and a child who has that stuck in their head has a hard time understanding that it is not. These kids need love and understanding. They need to feel welcome and safe where they are.
When a child gets adopted it is another huge change. They then have to readjust to another new living environment with new people and new rules. In my opinion people who adopt foster children have to be a special type of person. Raising a child who has been through so much would be a difficult task. Diane is waiting to adopt a foster child: http://www.fosterfamilytalk.blogspot.com/ . 81.5 million people has thought about adopting a child. According to the new National Adoption Attitudes Survey, If just one in 500 of these adults adopt 134,000 children in foster care would have permanent, loving families who they could count on. People who are welcoming a foster child into their home need to be aware of the things they may have to deal with. Even though most of these children have gone through counselling the problems that they had to deal with are still on mind and take time to heal.

parenting.

Discplining your children has been a touchy subject. whether or not it is safe to physically discipline your kids. some people believe to keep there household in shape with an iron fist so to speak. Then others do not believe in physical discipline at all. the parents both have to have an agreement on there views of how to discipline there kids. If they dont agree on the same way to discipline kids it can effect them in some ways. you also have to be consistent with your ways of discipline. When the child does something wrong and say you take away there favorite toy, then when they do it again you cant let them get away with it. it will confuse them. you have to be smart while discipling your child you cant get overwelmed and get mad and then like snap you have to take a minute or two and collect yourself. then go back explain what they did wrong and then tell them why and what there punishment is.

http://www.child-discipline-with-love.com/
http://www.parentwithpassion.com/
http://www.parentwithpassion.com/2009/12/child-discipline-mistakes-parents-make/

Daycare

Daycare is a huge thing to consider. You start by considering if you want your child being raised by someone other than yourself or if you want your child to grow up with other children from a daycare. Your child will be influenced by people and experiences with you not there. Good things that you gain from daycare are that your child learns to interact with other children. They learn to share and excel faster in school. Children should have some interaction with other children when they're young. Daycare is a good way to get your child to play with other kids and have more experience with people. They become more independent at a younger age. The important thing is to have a good quality daycare. Daycare is a necessity for a lot of families they need to provide for their family. A working parent needs to be able to work with out worry. Knowing that you have a quality daycare can ease a parents mind. Studies have shown that children do very well in daycare. A parent should also be able to have a career and children. Continuing to work after having a child is a personal choice if your career is important. More and more parents are working and placing their children in daycare. Statistics show In 2000/01, 85% of children aged six months to five years who lived with a single parent who worked or studied were in some form of child care. This was a significant increase from 78% in 1994/95. Among children who lived in households with two parents who worked or studied, two-thirds (66%) were in child care in 1994/95. By 2000/01, this had increased to nearly 73%. Whatever a person circumstances are, daycare is more and more popular and positive.

Resources:

http://blogs.trb.com/features/family/parenting/blog/2010/05/day_care_yes_no_or_maybe.html

http://www.amotherinisrael.com/over-parenting-and-daycare-dilemmas/

http://twinmommusings.blogspot.com/2010/05/day-care-is-it-risky-stop-guilt-already.html

By: Brooklynn

Single Parenting

Single parents are becoming more and more common these days. In fact, approximately one in five parents today are single parents, and the United States currently has the most single parents in the world, with about 13 million. According to statistics, it is much more common for the mother to take the children during a divorce/break-up, with 84% of custodial parents being mothers and only 16% being fathers. As well, of all households headed by a mother, 44% of them are divorced, 33% were never married, 22% were woman who had remarried, and only 1% were widows.

Being a single parent can really affect a person. Financial factors can become a big issue when the parent is trying to work a full-time job and take care of a child at the same time. There can also be a lot of stress trying to determine how to properly raise the children without the help or opinion of another adult.

The children can be greatly affected when their parents split up. Divorce almost always affects the children for at least a year or two. Immediately before and after the divorce, the child typically shows signs of depression, rebellion, and stress. Whether the distress lasts for a short or long amount of time depends on the stability of the child's life, and the adequacy of the caregiving. However, if the family's income remains stable, the parents don't fight too much, and the caregiving by both parents stays pretty much the same, then the children may not be affected as much.

On the other hand, single parenting can have positive effects. Single parents often spend more one-on-one time with the children, so they can develop stronger bonds with the child than if they were married. The children may also learn how to handle conflict after watching their parents set aside their differences to raise them.

For more information, check out the following websites.
http://singleparenting.suite101.com/article.cfm/single-parent-and-counseling
http://singleparents.about.com/od/parenting/a/cope_divorce.htm
http://www.singleparentingtips.net
http://single-parenting.families.com/blog/
http://www.successfulsingleparenting.com/blog/

Tough Love

You see them lots of places, at the mall, restaurants, parks etc, the parent who is yelling and spanking their child just to embarrass them in front of everyone. Some call this cruel, some call it tough love. But what is tough love? Originally, tough love was developed for use by psychologists to deal with adult drug and mental patients. This was a good method to use with adults at their worst, but what about children still learning about life? How can a child really differentiate love from an act of aggression? They cant, and if this act is repeated enough, the child will believe it. A humiliated child is a emotionally crippled child who can confuse love with cruelty.


When you look back in history you can really see how this parenting style is not the best, for example, Hitler was said to be raised in this "tough love" type of parenting, while Albert Einstien was said to be spoiled, i think everyone is getting where I'm coming from.


Punishment and humiliation are never the answer because they create anger and resentment in the child.
Punishment interferes with the child's ability to learn from experience, if you treat your child with tough love, he/she will more than likely fear new things because they fear if they do wrong they will be publicly embarrassed.
That is why i think that the tough love approach to parenting should be drastically reconsidered.

Discipline

When it comes to disciplining your child it is hard to make a decision on how to do it and when the right time is. When your child breaks the rules that you have set down, they should have consequences for their actions. When he/she does, you have to be patient with them and talk to them about what they have done instead of immediately yelling at them and making unreasonable consequences that you will not follow through with. Research studies have shown that this kind of discipline is harmful to your child. Children who have had this sort of discipline find that it is okay to react back by yelling and causing a fit. Instead, you need to hear the reasoning that they have behind why they missed curfew or why they did something. After you heard them out, you take away something that they enjoy or assign chores that will take them awhile. After they have these consequences, they will learn to the rules that you have set for them and that there is reasoning why you have set these rules. Another way is if you have a young child you can firmly say “no” to them so then they know that what they are doing is not appropriate behavior.

When a child is young, it is more difficult to decide on how to discipline them because they sometimes will not fully understand what you are trying to explain to them. If you take a special toy away they will know what happens when they do not listen. If you’re a parent that believes in spanking their child when they do something wrong, the spanking should be only to teach your child a lesson so he/she understands. But, you should not spank your child just out of anger.

Disciplining your child is not always giving out consequences. It is also about rewarding your child after they have done right and followed the rules that you have set down for them. If they see what happens after you have taken something special away from them, they know not to do it and if you reward them for doing something good, they will try hard to do so. By disciplining and rewarding your child it will help them how to respect others and act appropriately.

Resources:

www.howtodisciplineyourchild.net

http://www.howtodisciplineyourchild.com/

By: Zoey