While we are all looking for things for our kids to do at home, your local Austin businesses have you covered. From story times to learning about honey bees and WWII, there are loads of learning opportunities that you can find online. Scroll through to plan your week!
Austin children’s theatre company Pollyanna Theatre has developed a free series of educational activities based on its productions of Through the Slumber-Glass and Everything is Round. Designed for distance learning, the activities incorporate video clips from Pollyanna’s performances to reinforce educational objectives for children in both pre-school and grade school.
Originally from Austin, Red Yarn will be bringing music and puppets to your home three times a week. Head to the Red Yarn Facebook page on Mondays & Wednesdays at noon, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
In kids bee club, your kids can join the mission to find worker bees, drone bees and the one queen bee. Some activities will be viewing only (watch beekeepers light a smoker! Find a queen bee in a hive!) others will be hands on and kids can follow along at home (dissect a flower! Make honey butter!)
The National Museum of the Pacific War (NMPW), located in Fredericksburg, Texas, recently launched a new Youtube series called Nimitz Minitz which brings the museum’s mission online via educational exploration for youth. Nimitz Minitz are short, three to seven minute videos geared for elementary and middle school students posted on the museum’s YouTube channel every Tuesday and Thursday.
For more virtual fun every day of the week, head to our virtual events calendar. You'll find dance classes, scavenger hunts, animal encounters, drawing classes and MORE!
We all know the importance of hand washing, especially now. If you are looking to reinforce this information with your little ones, then turn on a hand washing video featuring Elmo and the Sesame Street gang. The PSA is part of Sesame Workshop’s new Caring for Each Other initiative.
A 30-second video called “Washy Wash Song” features Elmo singing, “Wash, washy wash, washy wash your hands. Scrub em’ while you sing this song.”In addition to the adorable hand washing video, Sesame Workshop offers printable activity pages, interactive games and free eBooks.
In a second PSA called “Time to Wash Your Hands,” one of the Sesame Street chickens urges each of the characters to wash their hands throughout the day.
For more tips and helpful content, visit the Caring for Each Other page of the Sesame Workshop website. New content will be added weekly.
Have you ever wondered how the emotion used in your voice affects how your kids listen or understand what you tell them? No doubt most of us have had moments where we “lost it” with our kids and raised our voice or yelled at them. This expression of angry or frustrated emotion may have gotten your child’s attention rather quickly, but do moments like this really reinforce their memory of what you say to them?
A recent study of vocal emotion and memory may shed a little light on this topic. Although this topic did not specifically consider emotion in parents’ communication, I think the implications of this study could be applied to parenting situations.
During the study, participants listened to words spoken in either a neutral or sad tone of voice. Later the participants were asked to recall the words from memory. Interestingly, results of the study showed that people tended to remember words spoken in a neutral tone better than those spoken in a sad tone. Additionally, participants remembered words spoken in a sad tone more negatively than the other words.
This research makes perfect sense based on what we know from previous studies. As most of us know, psychologists have shown that individuals (kids included) have a much harder time remembering things or functioning well cognitively when their brain is flooded by distressing emotions like anxiety or fear. This is why children consistently exposed to stress or trauma have a hard time learning. Scholars studying the impact of poverty on children have found that this emotional stress is a common hindrance to their learning. For children living in poverty, emotions such as fear or anxiety are all too common and they can ultimately interfere with their brain’s ability to process new information effectively.
The interplay between emotion and cognitive functioning may even be more relevant for relationships between young children and their parents. Depending on their temperament, young children may be easily frightened or made anxious by a harsh tone of voice used by a parent whom they normally trust and rely upon.
All parents occasionally lose their temper or raise their voice with their children. What all this research shows us, however, is that the potential anxiety provoked by this tone of voice probably undermines any message you try to get across to your child. When distressing emotions flood the brain, it is very difficult for children (or adults for that matter) to remember and process words or information very effectively. As difficult as it may be, a calm tone of voice may actually help your children remember what you are saying in the long run.
As important as this research is, it is hard to remain calm at times when your kids are pushing your buttons. One thing I have found helpful is to understand the developmental stage that you kids are going through that may be prompting the irritating behavior. Especially with toddlers and young children, their behavior is often a sign of an oncoming developmental change.
Another big step in remaining calm is having reasonable expectations of children’s behavior. As one of my favorite child development writers, Janet Lansbury, says,
“During the toddler years, our most reasonable expectation is the unreasonable. Expecting the madness makes it far easier to keep our cool.”
I have found this type of approach to be helpful at older ages as well. Of course, it makes more sense to have different expectations for an elementary-age child, but it is helpful to understand that their behavior may have less to do with you and more to do with them just trying to mature and learn. At times, they may not be trying to intentional irritate you but simply do not yet have the emotional tools to express themselves in a more appropriate way.
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Amy is a scholar turned stay-at-home mom of two young boys. When she's not stepping on Legos, she writes at The Thoughtful Parent. With this blog she brings child development research into the lives of parents in the trenches of child-rearing.
With the tense atmosphere that has surrounded our culture in the past few weeks, I’m thinking about compassion today. As parents, most of want to instill an understanding of compassion and kindness towards others in our children. It raises the question, however, of whether compassion is innate or learned. What research tells us is that we humans do have a tendency toward compassion but it has to be fostered and practiced.
New research is pointing more and more to the idea that some level of compassion is innate in humans. The “catch” is, however, that keeping that attitude of compassion requires practice. A lack of practice of compassion is the reason many children move towards selfishness as they near the grade-school years.
You may have seen videos of those classic psychological studies often done with infants to study innate compassion. Infants are shown a scenario in which a puppet tries to go up a tall hill. In one situation, another “kind” puppet helps the other character up the hill. In a different scenario, a “mean” puppet does not help the other character or may even try to discourage him from going up the hill. Later, infants are given a choice to view either the “kind” puppet or the “mean” puppet. Astonishingly, over 80% of infants choose the “kind” puppet. These types of studies have been done numerous times with infants as young as 3 months old. The results are always pretty much the same.
It seems that we humans gravitate towards compassion. Not only that, but those of us who have young children know that a child’s immediate reaction upon hearing another child cry or fall down is to try to help them. We see this all the time. You rarely, if ever, see a toddler attempt to harm another child if they are crying or hurt; they almost always try to help.
But wait a few years when that same child is in elementary school, and you may see him/her tease another child or intentionally hit another. What happens from infancy to elementary school? Do our children become “marred” by exposure to society? Well, we do not know exactly, butresearch does indicate that children to seem to shift from an attitude of innate compassion to more selfishness around age 5.
Perhaps what is more interesting, however, is that there seem to be strategies that help children avoid much of this shift to selfishness. There are programs that have been implemented in preschools to help children focus on kindness and see its benefits. When children are part of these programs, the shift toward selfishness seems to be thwarted, at least for awhile. There are not many long-term studies of these programs yet, but it does seem to encourage kindness for the beginning of elementary school.
Among children, helping them see the benefits of kindness and reinforce it is very intentional in these programs. For example, children get rewarded with a sticker on the “kindness chart” if they are helpful to classmates. As we grow, however, we begin to learn that kindness really brings its own positive reinforcement. We all know that acts of kindness make us feel good about ourselves. New research confirms that compassionate acts do, in fact, spark brain circuits that promote good feelings and pleasure.
Ultimately, children who feel better about themselves and others will go on to be more well-adjusted adults and citizens. Promoting compassion in the classroom not only makes for a better moral atmosphere but also helps children do well academically too. We know from studies of other programs that social-emotional learning is just as important as academic learning.
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Amy is a scholar turned stay-at-home mom of two young boys. When she's not stepping on Legos, she writes at The Thoughtful Parent. With this blog she brings child development research into the lives of parents in the trenches of child-rearing.
Your children are your world—but do they know that? They don’t have crystal balls, and they’re desperate to please you. After all, to them, you represent safety, guidance—and, hopefully, unconditional love.
It doesn’t take much time to reinforce your child’s belief that you will always have their backs. A few simple words or meaningful gestures mean more than expensive toys or family trips to theme parks. Incorporate these practices into your daily routine, so that when you tuck them in at night, the last thing you’ll hear is, “I love you, too.”
1. Send Them Off with a Smile. Think about the tragic events in recent history. When you reflect on wildfires and mass shootings, most of the victims affected started their days like any other. You never know, and you don’t want the last words you say to your beloved little one to come out in anger. Plus, if you part on a sour note, you’ll spend the day ruminating over what you could have done differently instead of working productively. Even if your second-grader exasperated you with a last-minute forgotten assignment, say, “I love you, and I hope you have a fabulous day,” as you part ways in the morning.
2. Ask How Their Day Was. Do you complain that your children never talk to you? Have you checked your listening skills? Asking, “How was your day?” and genuinely listening to the response can move the conversation gently from everyday topics to more significant subject matter. Your children won’t confide in you that their friend offered them drugs or alcohol, for example, if you responded with a noncommittal, “uh-huh,” when they tried to tell you about a simple spelling test.
3. Play with Them. Play helps children manage their emotions and fosters positive feelings so get down in the sandbox and help your child build a castle. Invent a crazy story with dolls and stuffed animals.
4. Facilitate Friendships. As much as you enjoy being the center of your child’s world, they need healthy friendships. Take your kids to the park and encourage interaction with others. Coach them on how to manage stressful situations, such as asking a group of other children to play a game. Encourage empathy and inclusion toward those left out.
5. Praise Appropriate Behavior. Punishing your children for wrongdoing never works as well as praising them for what they did right. If your little one reaches out to the child sitting alone on the sidelines, applaud them for showing compassion. If they pick up their toys without you asking first, compliment how tidy their room looks.
6. Cook Dinner Together. Food nourishes both the body and the soul, so get in the kitchen together. Plus, showing your children how to prep healthy meals gives them a vital skill they’ll need later in life. What better way to show you care than to preserve their future selves?
7. Read a Story. Children with parents who read with them tend to perform better academically. Plus, you can use the power of storytelling to celebrate qualities like diversity and acceptance. Nearly every tot sleeps more soundly when their parents’ voice lulls them to slumberland.
8. Hold Their Hand. Once your child is old enough not to take off in a crowded market, you might resist holding their hand. After all, you don’t want to embarrass them. However, continuing to hold their hand reinforces their sense of security.
9. Listen without Interrupting. Too often, we listen to respond, not to understand. If your angel comes home, spewing a veritable flood about their day, listen without interrupting. You can ask questions for clarification later—for the moment, share their enthusiasm.
10. Introduce Them to New Things. Many psychologists theorize that children arrive in this world as a tabula rasa—and you, the parent, write the intro to their story. Let your children know they inhabit a vast world with tons of experiences to explore. Order a new dish at a restaurant and split it with them. Take them to the planetarium or a museum—explore this beautiful planet together.
11. Spend Time in Nature. As a parent, you probably worry about how climate change will impact your children’s future. Research indicates that children who spend time in nature become better environmental stewards. Spend a sunny Saturday hiking at a nearby nature center. Tend to your garden side by side.
12. Hang Their Art on the Fridge. Is your baby a budding young Picasso? Encourage their artistic endeavors by proudly displaying their works on your refrigerator. As they get older, have particularly creative pieces framed to hang in your living area. The world would be a drab place indeed without artists.
13. Hug Them. Finally, even older children need a hug regardless of whether they resist showing it. When the occasion calls for it, give your child a hug to show them how proud you are of them. Put your arm around them while they cry on your shoulder. Let them know that your love is non-threatening and unconditional.
Jennifer Landis is a mom, wife, freelance writer, and blogger. She enjoys long naps on the couch, sneaking spoonfuls of peanut butter when her kid's not looking, and binge watching Doctor Who while her kid's asleep. She really does like her kid, though, she promises. Find her on Twitter @JenniferELandis.
What if you could apply the concept of the Elf on the Shelf all year long? One teacher developed the Wishing Pixies to help kids practice positive behavior, even when Santa isn’t in the picture.
The Wishing Pixies are designed to be a parenting tool to help families create and reinforce positive and healthy behaviors for their kids. Through the pixie doll parents can assign tasks for kids to complete and be rewarded with pixie dust. Working in conjunction with an app, kids can interact with the pixie, which is really controlled by parents.
Just like the Elf on the Shelf, the Wishing Pixies are always close by, watching over. The idea was born when one mom who pretended to be the tooth fairy with her child, started writing notes back and forth and learned a great deal.
The pixies, which are geared towards kids ages two to 10, come in two versions: Cailin, a girl, and Gasur, a boy. The dolls are priced at $39.95 and the accompanying app, which is available on iOS and Android devices, is free.
All car accidents take a heavy toll on all individuals involved in the accident. However, things can be even more difficult when our children are involved in a car mishap. I sincerely hope and pray that your teens never run into such incidents. However, it really helps to know what a parent should do under such difficult situations. Always remember that when a teenager is involved in an accident, their emotional health is the most important factor to focus on. Everything else can be dealt with later on.
Enquire about Your Child’s Health: When you first come to know about the accident, your initial comments must be focused around your child’s health and others involved in the incident. Even if you are worried about the damage to your car, don’t talk about it right away. Accidents can be much more traumatic for a teenager than you think. In these circumstances, most of them feel that they have failed themselves, as well as, their parents. They also understand that the accident has its financial consequences that their parents will have to bear. Therefore, as a parent, your job is to reassure them that they are not a failure by any means.
Go to the Accident Scene: Get to the accident scene as early as possible because your presence will provide the much-needed emotional support to your kid. Your presence on the scene will also act as a buffer from other parties involved in the accident because these individuals are not likely to be understanding of a teenager’s mistake.
Moreover, you will also get an opportunity to inspect the accident scene and understand what actually happened. It is likely that your child will be in a state of shock. On his or her behalf, collect detailed information of the other parties involved in the accident, and take photos of the accident scene. Also, if the police have still not arrived at the scene, protecting crash site evidence is important. Once the police arrive, try to collect a copy of their accident report.
If your child is injured in the accident, take him or her to a nearby medical facility, and arrange proper care as early as you can. Don’t forget to collect the detailed examination report from the facility, because this will help you while filing an insurance claim.
Call the Insurance Company: Your next important task is to call the insurance company. Provide them all the details you have about the accident so that they can process your claim immediately. During this entire process, have your child nearby, so that he or she can hear everything. First, the insurer may ask questions that you may not be able to answer. Second, by being a part of this discussion, your child will understand how auto insurance policies work, which will certainly benefit them in the long run.
As time goes by, your child will gradually come out of the stressed emotional state caused by the accident. However, in the aftermath of the accident, the parents must do certain things.
Reinforce the value of responsible driving: Remind your child of the potential consequences of driving too fast, using mobile devices while driving, and distracted driving. This may end up becoming an emotional discussion, but will surely make your kid more responsible in the future while driving. It is also a good idea to have them enrolled in a local driving safety class.
Get them back to driving: After an accident, your teen may feel hesitant to start driving again. However, once the emotions settle down, try to get them back in the driving seat as soon as possible. If required, be with them for the first few times to provide a sense of comfort and security.
I love RedTri authors, publishing, and talking incessantly about them. My passion is partnering with authors to bring worthwhile content to publication. I started blog as a way to create a community of writers, both published and seeking publication.
There are times where parenting my teens felt like all I did was keep prodding them forward. Whether it’s encouraging my daughter to get a job or pushing my son to pick up his room, I felt like my teens would never outgrow their tendency to procrastinate.
But over time—and with a good deal of trial and error—I’ve been able to help my children move away from much of their procrastinating behavior and onto being self-starters.
Consider What Is Triggering Procrastination: It would have been easy for me to brush my children’s procrastination off as them just being lazy. For one thing, it takes all responsibility off of me to do anything but call judgment down on them, and it provides a clear solution—make my teens stop being lazy. But in reality, children often have complex reasons why they procrastinate. Some children are held paralyzed by fear of failure, much like my oldest boy when it came time to tackle his major research paper for his English class. The project counted for 30% of his overall grade and English had never been his strongest subject. Luckily, his teacher held quick conferences with each student and notified me when it turned out that my son hadn’t gotten beyond choosing his research topic. By remaining calm and talking to my son about why he hadn’t started, I was able to understand that his procrastination had nothing to do with laziness and everything with fear of failing and potentially needing to go to summer school.
Demonstrate How To Make Tasks Manageable: Procrastination can also be triggered by children feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand. In our home, Saturday mornings are usually spent tidying the house up after a long week. But while my other children managed to corral their rooms into order, my youngest daughter was crying in the middle of her messy room. She had had a full week of school performance and a small party with her friends to celebrate the end of their play. The result was that her room was a bigger mess than she knew how to deal with on her own. So, after an hour, there were only a few toys pushed around until she became discouraged. Instead of leaving her there and just telling her to hurry up and clean, I sat with her on the floor and helped her break down the task into manageable portions, from picking up all the clothes first, next the toys, and then making the bed. By helping my children see tasks as many manageable parts, rather than an insurmountable mountain, they are less likely to put off a task that seems too hard.
Provide Time Management Techniques: Time management is a tough skill for many adults to master. But once a teen has the techniques they need to properly manage what needs to be done, they are far less likely to procrastinate. Some of the things I taught my son as he approached his English paper were:
Create an outline of dates when things are due like your outline, research bibliography, first draft, peer review, and final draft.
Once you see how many days are between each step, set aside time each day to get a bit more of the work done.
Talk to either mom or dad if you aren’t sure you have enough time laid out.
Do the English work first, then go on to other homework assignments.
Providing my oldest son with these management techniques especially helped, as he suffers from several behavioral disorders and greater structure helps teens struggling with these disorders.
Help Your Teen Problem-Solve: A lack of problem-solving skills can be another thing that causes teens to procrastinate. Since I don’t want my children to become stalled by every challenge, I’ve worked to help them to develop strong problem-solving skills. My oldest son knew the basics of problem-solving when he had become stalled by his major paper, but he had allowed his fear to make him believe that the simple techniques wouldn’t work. So, I made it a point to walk him through the basics of problem-solving again:
Pinpoint the issue that is holding you back.
Start brainstorming solutions. Even if they sound dumb at first, the process can help kick out a real solution.
Choose the best solution from your brainstorming session.
Carry out the solution. If it doesn’t quite work, choose the next best solution.
With problem-solving steps broken down into manageable chunks, it is far easier to think clearly and tackle an issue that was previously a major roadblock.
Reinforce Teens With Positivity: Providing my teens with positive reinforcement can be difficult at times, especially when all I want to do is ask why they can’t just get off their behinds and take care of their responsibilities. But, taking this negative attitude with children can lead to resentment, added stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues. Instead, to help build up my children, I opt for positive reinforcement. I am a firm believer that children—and people in general—respond best to positivity and will make lasting changes with the right support. So, while a snide comment about laziness may get my oldest daughter off the couch and off to do the dishes, finding a positive frame like, “Thanks for staying on top of the dishes most of the week. Do you mind wrapping up the stuff currently in the sink?” is a better option.
Model Self-Starting Behavior: Lastly, I had to model this kind of go-getter, problem-solving behavior for my children. As I am self-employed, I usually am a self-starter, but I’ve had to step up my game a bit more when it comes to things like picking up my office and managing my own tasks around the house. Since I know that my children are unlikely to listen to anything I say about procrastination if I’m a procrastinator myself, I have done my best to continually model what I expect from them.
Now, I’m not saying my children became perfect. But, with the structure in place to help them succeed, all they need now are gentle reminders instead of the lengthy lectures and reminders that used to be required to get them moving on what they need to do.
Tyler Jacobson is a happy husband, father of three, writer and outreach specialist with experience with organizations that help troubled teens and parents. His areas of focus include: parenting, social media, addiction, mental illness, and issues facing teenagers today.
It’s well known that nearly half of all marriages in the country end in divorce. The rate is even higher for subsequent marriages. What many people are not as focused on are the children involved and how to best go about co-parenting in a way that will help them grow into well adjusted adults. July is National Child-Centered Divorce Month, making it an ideal time to place the focus of divorce on the children, and what can be done to help ensure they come out of the situation in healthy manner.
“Divorce may seem like it’s something between the adults, but it is really something impacts the whole family,” explains Reena B. Patel, a parenting expert, licensed educational psychologist, and author, who offer virtual workshops. “Children need parents who will commit to working together for the health and development of their child.”
In a study published in the journal called The Linacre Quarterly, researchers shared their findings of reviewing three decades worth of research regarding the impact of divorce on the health of children. Their research found that divorce has been shown to diminish a child’s future competence in all areas of life, including family relationships, education, emotional well-being, and future earning power. Parents can help to counter the negative impact that divorce has on the children by focusing on effective co-parenting that will help ensure their success throughout life.
Children who see their parents continuing to work together are more likely to learn how to effectively and peacefully solve problems themselves. They will also have a healthy example to follow. It’s important for parents to remember that their feelings about their ex does not, and should not, dictate their behavior. It’s better to focus on being a positive example, putting your child’s well being in the spotlight.
Patel offers some tips that will help with ensuring co-parenting success:
Commit to making co-parenting an open dialogue with your ex. Arrange to do this through email, texting, voicemail, letters, or face-to-face conversations. In the beginning, it may be hard to have a civil dialogue with your ex. There are even websites where you can upload schedules, share information and communicate so you and your ex don’t have to directly touch base.
The key is consistency. Rules don’t have to be exactly the same between the two households, but you and your ex should establish generally consistent guidelines. They should be mutually agreed upon for both households. For example, meal time, bed time, and completing homework need to consistent. This helps create a sense of belonging and creates a sense of security and predictability for children. Discuss and come to an agreement about each of these issues.
Don’t give in to guilt and try and outdo your ex by gifting you child with things, instead agree on discipline. This includes things like behavioral guidelines, rewards, and consequences, so there is consistency in their lives, regardless of which parent they’re with at any given time. Research shows that children in homes with a unified parenting approach have greater well-being.
Keep in mind that children will frequently test boundaries and rules, especially if there’s a chance to get something they may not ordinarily be able to obtain. This is why a united front in co-parenting is recommended.
Be flexible and update often. If there are changes at home, in your life, it is important that your child is never the primary source of information.
Speak in positive language about your ex. Remember, often times, the marriage is what was the issue, not the parenting style. Each of you has valuable strengths as a parent. Remember to recognize the different traits you and your ex have – and reinforce this awareness with your children.
Children exposed to conflict between co-parents are more likely to develop issues such as depression, anxiety, or ADHD. Keeping this in mind, strive to keep conflict around them to a minimal or none at all.
Keep the conversations child-focused. This will leave out problems that you and your ex have with each other. The focus now needs to be on the children.
“Effective and healthy co-parenting may be difficult at first and it make time some time to work everything out,” added Patel. “But getting this part right in the long run is going to have a huge positive impact on your children, so it’s worth it. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out for professional help to put a plan together or determine how to best put co-parenting into action.”
Reena B. Patel (LEP, BCBA) is a renowned parenting expert, guidance counselor, licensed educational psychologist and board-certified behavior analyst. For more than 20 years, Patel has had the privilege of working with families and children supporting all aspects of education and positive wellness.
When it comes to picky eaters, parents will try almost anything to get some sustenance into their little ones. Whether it’s getting sneaky with veggies or all out-bribery, mom of one and actress Melissa Rauch has been there.
That’s why she’s partnered with House Foods on her very first book, “The Tales of Tofu.” The e-book is a combination of soy-based and kid-friendly recipes combined with a sweet story about a shy tube of tofu, and your kids are going to love it!
Told with beautiful colors and amazing artistry, main character Tofu and his fruit buddies are on a mission to gain confidence after being cast in the school play. Tasty and healthy recipes are interspersed through the story and reinforce the tale at every turn.
Rauch tells Romper that she loves to introduce her own daughter to new things by storytelling and books, and wanted to share the magic with other families as well. It’s her hope that The Tales of Tofu will help reinforce the importance of family mealtime while encouraging a healthy lifestyle.
