Schedule:
Wednesday November 21, 2007 - 8:00-8:30 PM EST
PIVTR - Passionate Internet Voices Talk Radio
Show: AuthorB-Known
Host: Lillian Cauldwell
You can listen live at http://www.pivtr.com
Tuesday November 27, 2007
Blog interview with Teresa Morrow of Key Business Partners
http://www.keybusinesspartners.com
Thursday November 29, 2007 11:00 AM EST
Interview for Business and Learning
http://www.businessandlearning.com
December 7, 2007 - Time to be announced
Mom’s Coffee Break
Ellsa was so excited. Today was the first day of school. This was the day she started grade one and got to play with the big kids.
Ellsa got up early and put on her best outfit. The one her mom got her just for this day. Very carefully, she took her new china doll off her shelf and packed it safely in her backpack. She smiled, today would be a good day. Show and tell was her favorite part of school. In fact she enjoyed everything about school. Playtime, story time, music time, craft time, she couldn’t understand why her big brother hated school so much.
Ellsa closed up her bag and went down to breakfast. It was her favorite cereal, Peanut Flakes. She tried to eat too fast and got a stern look from her mother. “You have plenty of time Ellsabelle Elephant,” She said with a shake of her head, “The school house won’t disappear you know.” Ellsa made a face that said she didn’t quite believe that, but did eat a bit slower.
By the time she was allowed to leave the house, she practically flew down the street, her mother yelling after her to remember to look both ways when she crossed over. This was also the first year she was allowed to walk to school by herself, even if her mother watched her all the way from their doorstep. When Ellsa reached the corner she glanced back at her mother and then very carefully looked both ways, twice just so her mother would know she was doing it properly. She crossed the street and headed straight to where her friends were playing in the playground after carefully placing her backpack in the line up along the wall.
Ellsa was having so much fun playing with her friends that she almost didn’t hear the bell and then it was a rush to get her bag and line up with the others. As she was waiting in line, she was fairly bouncing in her excitement. She wondered what her new classroom would look like.
The first thing Ellsa noticed when she got to her classroom was that there was a coat rack outside instead of a cloakroom inside the room. It confused her for only a moment. She hung up her bag, changed her shoes, and skipped into the classroom. It was then she stopped dead in her tracks. Instead of a nice carpet with a semi-circle of mats and water and sand tables there were these strange little tables that were only big enough for one person. In fact, each table had only one chair, and they all faced the same direction.
Ellsa slowly walked the rest of the way into the classroom and sat at a table that was near her friend Betsy. “Where are all the toys?” she asked. Betsy shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. Ellsa looked around the classroom thoughtfully. There was a blackboard on two of the walls, a row of windows along one wall and… She smiled and started to feel better. There, along the back wall where she would expect to find the cloakroom, was a bunch of cupboards and drawers. The toys HAD to be in there, but she just had to check to make sure. Ellsa got out of her seat and started to walk towards the back of the class.
That’s when the teacher walked in. “Everyone take your seats please.” She called out in a musical voice. Ellsa hesitated, looked at the cupboards, back to her desk, and then over to the cupboards again. She sighed, turned around, and went back to the chair she had chosen. There was no song to say good morning. The teacher asked everyone to be quiet and started writing on the blackboard at the front of the room. “My name is Mrs. Blank.” She said, and then handed out cards and pencils to everyone in the class. She wanted everyone to write his or her name.
Ellsa was a little put out that she didn’t have any crayons. She liked drawing pictures and it would be nice to add some pretty flowers to her name. But she made the best of it and very carefully wrote, “Ellsa Ellaphant” across the card. The teacher came by and smiled, “That’s not how you spell Elephant,” and gave her a new card. She then wrote it on the blackboard for Ellsa to copy. Ellsa was starting to get frustrated. This was too much work. She got up and started to walk to the back of the classroom. She got halfway there when the teacher called her name and asked her to sit back down.
After lunch, Mrs. Blank found Ellsa out by the coat rack. She had her backpack open and she was fingering the lovely china doll. She had little tears in her eyes. “What a lovely doll!” Mrs. Blank said as she came to squat down beside Ellsa, “What’s her name?” Ellsa sniffed, “Her name is Charity, I brought her for show and tell.”
Mrs. Blank looked surprised. “We don’t have show and tell in Grade one,” She said gently, then smiled her brightest smile, “but would you like for us to do something special today with Charity?”
Ellsa looked up at her teacher and rubbed the tears from her eyes. She smiled just a little, “Really? Something special?” Mrs. Blank nodded and smiled again. She told Ellsa to put the doll gently on the big teacher’s desk and then go out to play.
While Ellsa was outside playing, she could see Mrs. Blank through the classroom window. She was sitting at her desk writing and nodding to herself. Ellsa was curious and went over to the window to see more. The teacher looked up right then and turned her head to look out the window at Ellsa. She was smiling! Ellsa smiled back, waved, and skipped off to play with her friends.
The bell finally rang and the children filed noisily into the classroom. Mrs. Blank called for everyone to quiet down and then took her place at the front of the class. “Today, since it is the first day of school, we will do something different. How many of you brought something to show the class today?” Ellsa put her hand up first, a bright smile on her face, and then five other timid hands followed hers. Mrs. Blank smiled brightly, “Today, one at a time, you may come up and tell us something about your special thing.” Six little faces brightened up. Mrs. Blank went on to explain the rest of her plan. She would split the class up into 4 groups and each week one group would bring in something that went along with that week’s theme and give a short oral report about it. The class started to talk excitedly about this and after a couple minutes Mrs. Blank asked them to quiet down again and started to ask the six children to come up one at a time to talk about the things they brought, encouraging the rest of the class to ask questions.
When Ellsa went home that afternoon she skipped into the house and sat down with her mother to have milk and cookies. When her mother asked her how her day went, Ellsa sighed but smiled, “It’s a lot of work mom, but the teacher’s really nice!” Ellsa told her about the special “Show and Tell” time they would be having each week.
Ellsa smiled to herself as she went up to her room to put her things away. It HAD been a good day after all.
I’m busy working on a new image when I hear my 13-year-old daughter talking on the phone. She’s very excited because she’s going to a dance and she’s discussing fashion and makeup with her girlfriend. I sigh and go back to work. This is the part of growing up that I find the hardest. She finally comes downstairs and out of the corner of my eye I get a glimpse of what she’s wearing, which then gets my full attention. “You are NOT leaving this house looking like that!” I find myself hollering, having a brief flashback of my father yelling the same thing. What follows is a 30-minute long screaming match. Mostly about how I’m being unfair, everyone dresses like that, and her life will be ruined if she doesn’t wear that exact outfit at this particular dance. This is actually a common scene in households all over the world.
Anyone who sees my children must think we are destitute. All their clothes are either too big or too small. I honestly do buy them clothes that fit properly; they just refuse to wear them. The end result is wasted money, arguments, and one frustrated parent. How do you stop the cycle? To be honest that depends on you and your child and will probably require a trial and error period. As my mother always said, you have to pick and choose your battles. You have to decide first off what you can or cannot live with in regards to how your child is dressed, set some basic rules, and be consistent with those rules. If it was only as easy as that!
Children, I think, are designed to rebel. Do you remember when you were that age bringing an extra set of clothes to school or a dance, or even wearing the offending outfit under the one your parents deemed appropriate? Things haven’t changed that much since you were a teenager. The first step to head off a battle of wills where you will inevitably become the loser is to understand why your child is doing this. There are a couple reasons kids choose the styles they do. One is simply to “fit in.” At this age fitting in and popularity seems like the most important thing in the world. Every time a new fad comes out you see cookie cutter copies coming out of the woodwork regardless of whether they are appropriate or not. Another is an act of rebellion and is related to showing their independence from you and creating a unique identity for themselves.
Communication is the answer to everything. Children who feel the need to follow the crowd are still searching for their own identity, but are going the easy route by allowing other people to choose who they are for them. Children who feel the need to rebel are also searching for their identity and refusing to allow anyone including you define who they should be, what they should look like, or how they should act. The answer is cultivating a healthy relationship with your child based on mutual respect and communication. Your young teenager has a right as well as a need to make some decisions for themselves. Your role now is to gently guide those decisions without being pushy as well as helping them to be comfortable with their own self-image.
The solution for me, was to come up with a compromise between what I thought was appropriate and what she thought was essential. This time of your child’s life is not going to be easy for either of you, but it can be made liveable if you remember that respect is a two way street. If you respect their right to make some decisions on their own, they will be more willing to welcome your opinion when making those decisions.
How many video Game systems do you have in your household? I have five, count them five, and that’s not including the three computers we also have in the house. Of course only three of them can be played at any given time, but in my opinion that’s still an awful lot of systems, and a lot of time wasted playing games. I must admit however, I am not immune to the video game bug. As an avid reader in possession of a creative mind my favorite style of game is Role Playing Games, or RPG. I just can’t pass up a good storyline. These games are so addictive I sometimes get my children to play them, just so I can watch and follow the storyline.
Are video games destroying our children’s minds? While it is true that a lot of games are either a total escape from reality or violent enough to make Attila the Hun cringe, video games can teach a variety of skills including decision-making and hand-eye co-ordination. If you look hard enough there are also video games with educational applications, teaching reading, math, history, and even science. The key to what your child learns while playing a video game is your supervision and participation. An informed parent can help choose appropriate games, monitor frustration levels, and guide their children in seeing their game in a different way.
Another concern about video games is the lack of social interaction as well as the lack of physical activity. Here again, it’s up the parent to regulate how often and how long their child plays. The best way to do this is to start as early as possible and set reasonable limits. My answer to this was in getting them to play the games I enjoyed watching, or so I told myself. Sometimes it would work and I’d have children begging me to be allowed to go outside and play instead, other times it would backfire and a whole day would be wasted.
Games are a great way to teach our children skills that can help them as they grow. This week we will be looking, not only at video games and how to make informed decisions, but also at board games, card games, and active games.
Do you play computer or video games with your children? Which one is your favorite?
One of the top reasons people decide to work at home is family. You can break that down even further to include; wanting to stay home to care for younger pre-school children, wanting to cut down on the cost of daycare, needing flexibility to care for ill family members, or preparing for a new child. There are many more variations on the same theme and as many reasons as there are people staying at home, but for this article we are going to concentrate on spending more time with your family.Starting and running your own business is a difficult and time-consuming proposition. Starting and running your own HOME business can be even more difficult. What starts out as a great idea to balance the needs of money and family, ends up becoming a headache with long nights, stress, and strained relationships.
The most common question I hear is how do you handle a home business and care for a small child at the same time. The difficulties are obvious. To a small child the world revolves solely around them and they rarely choose to let go of that control on your attention. Add to that the very genuine concern for your child’s safety and you have a no win situation. Budgeting your time and restricting your work hours to when your child is asleep can work, but also can leave you with little or no sleep and a crabby spouse which is a whole other mess we’ll explore at a later date.
The best solution I’ve found is to simply keep the child with you, either in a playpen or at a table within your sight. Now you’re probably thinking, “Oh I could have thought of that,” but there’s a bit more planning involved than just locking yourself and your child in a room for 8 hours. First of all if possible you need a fair sized, well-lit room with limited exits. That way you can divide your attention between your work and your child and be confident that he/she is not going to suddenly fall down the stairs, or get into something dangerous. This room could be a combination office/playroom, your living room, or your kitchen. When you start off on this adventure with your child, go over the room with a fine-tooth comb to make sure it is completely secure for your child and convenient for you. Also plan your room in such a way that your child can’t pull out plugs, mess up your filing system, or generally cause havoc while you are working.
Once you have your room picked out and the layout planned to your satisfaction, you need to stock it. Of course you need all your work materials. That would include your computer, your filing system, a portable phone, as well as anything else that is essential to your particular business. You also need to consider the needs of your child. The key idea here is to save as many steps as humanly possible. Set aside a corner of your chosen room just for your child and include his/her favorite toys, books, games, and craft materials. For younger children, include a playpen for naps. In your part of the room also include non-perishable snacks and juice boxes or ready-made bottles. You may also want to include a coffeemaker or cordless kettle set up somewhere safe to attend to your own needs. One other item I included in my own room was a television and dvd/vcr player along with a large arsenal of educational videos.
Now that you have chosen your room, planned the layout, and stocked it fully, you can start to work right? Wrong. You’ll never get any work done without a little time-management and planning. The next step would be to come up with a flexible schedule for the day, and I emphasise flexible. Estimate how much time you are going to need for work that day and balance your schedule between that and the needs of your child. Plan out your child’s activities, snack breaks, and down time. Remember to add in down time for yourself as well as time at least once a day for some physical activity.
Typically a young child’s average attention span is directly proportional to their age. Meaning, a five year old will have an average attention span of five minutes. This of course is not a hard-fast rule but a guideline, as every child is unique with different needs and temperaments. For the child with a shorter attention span, giving them one activity at a time could drive you crazy. Better to give that child a choice of two or three activities at a time, giving you at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted work time. Longer if his/her attention is recaptured by the choices available. You need to take into account your child’s particular temperament and attention span when creating your schedule. I would not however recommend giving your child too many choices at one time. The end result may well be that your child will run through all the activities at a much faster rate or even worse, create a mess of epic proportions resulting in less work time and more clean up time for you.
While we are on the topic of cleaning, children as young as two are capable of learning basic clean up rules. For instance, a two year old can be taught to put one toy away before taking out another toy. This is a habit you can easily instill, without interrupting your work, with a simple reminder at regular times.
What kind of activities can you plan? Playtime is a given. Encourage your child to use his/her imagination to create various scenarios for their favorite toys. You can schedule story time to coincide with your downtime and just before naptime (if your child still takes naps).
As a side note to naps and sleep patterns, remember that consistency is the key to happy slumbers. That part of your schedule should be set in stone. Even the most active child can still have naptime up to five years of age without affecting their nighttime sleep patterns. I know most people stop naps because their child will not sleep properly at night, but I can tell you with experience that, though bedtime may be delayed for a short period of time, if you are consistent in your nap and night rituals it will return to normal before you know it.
Craft time is a popular activity with the preschool and kindergarten set. You can find age appropriate crafts online or at your local library. Coloring is a great craft that takes little preparation and encourages imaginative play. Play dough is also a great way to occupy your child’s attention. You can find recipes for play dough all over the Internet as well as at your library, or you can simply buy it. I buy mine at our local dollar store. Saving ordinary household items for crafts not only sparks your child’s imagination, but also saves your local landfill.
Quite simply, the main benefit of keeping your child in the same room with you while you work is that you have the opportunity to bond and spend time with your child. Planning ahead and keeping your schedule balanced and flexible will help you spend time with your children and get your work done.
