Author Archive
Hum Mum’s Zine November 2009
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on November 1st, 2009
Relationships
Download November 09 Issue pdf
What is the best “investment” you can make in your child’s life? Among the winning answers seems to be focusing on the quality of your relationship with your child. A highly responsive parenting style called attachment parenting centers around building a loving and secure relationship between parent and child. Research has shown that children who have at least one parent or caregiver who “responds appropriately, promptly and consistently to needs” (also called secure attachment), do better in nearly all areas of development and gain healthy traits that help them throughout their lifespan.
Here are some of the benefits of secure attachment by age as compared to children who did not experience secure attachment (from Attachment 101 By Willemsen and Marcel):
- 0-3 years: more independent and have an easier time separating from parent without anxiety, positive sense of self, increased self-awareness, enhanced sensorimotor skills
- Preschool years, Ages 3-5: better able to play in non-destructive and socially acceptable ways with peers, more readily able to learn from environment, advanced language development
- Middle Childhood: better relationships with teachers and peers, early reading skills, more socially competent, fewer behavior problems
- Adolescence: more likely to be socially well-adjusted, better able to regulate their own emotions, stronger internal sense of what behaviors are appropriate, more able to cope with stress
- Adulthood: higher relationship satisfaction with partners/spouses, more likely to form secure attachment with his/her own child, less likely to abuse his/her child, higher self-esteem, greater job satisfaction
Fostering attachment with your child can start at birth. Dr sears offers what he calls the 7 Baby B’s tools, for promoting healthy attachment in the earliest months in a child’s life:
Hum Mum’s Magazine October 2009
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on October 4th, 2009
Focus on Feelings
Download the October 09 Issue of Hum Mums
As you know, there’s much more to your child than reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are monumentally important areas in your child’s learning and development as are the observable milestones such as learning to sit up, crawl, walk, talk, etc. However, they aren’t the whole picture. While most parents stay on top of tracking junior’s motor skills, knowledge of the alphabet, and homework completion, there’s a critical and related part of the child that is constantly engaged, emerging, and evolving- often without much guidance. A child’s emotional life and development, though harder to observe with the naked eye or during a well-child check-up, underpins major components of their personality and can shape their functioning, social interactions, worldview, and behavior.
Hum Mum’s Magazine July 2009
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on July 1st, 2009
Nature
There is mounting evidence that connection with nature makes children healthier, happier, more likely to care about the environment, and less prone to problems such as obesity and ADD. Though the importance of nature may seem obvious to many of you, frequent interaction with nature is not a part of life for the majority of families in this country. Kids are spending less time playing outdoors and for many families, accessible green space is nowhere to be seen. When you add in the time crunch faced by hard working parents, tech-fed kids, and parental fears about letting their kids play outside, we see what author Richard Louv calls “nature-deficit disorder.”
