Parenting

The 6 Steps to better Family Finances in 2013!
What goals have you set yourself for 2013? Was being better with your family finances one of them? Many of us wake up on January 1st with the hope and aim of making this year better, that this will be the year that I achieve

5 Great Outdoor Activities for the Whole Family
Here are a few ideas to help you break free of the same old routine and engineer some new fun and excitement with your spouse and kids.

Recognizing the Baddies in Baby Products
It is not uncommon for an infant to develop an allergic reaction to a whole range of baby products, and a little extra knowledge and insight can make it easier for you as a parent to identify the best and safest products to purchase.

Support and Socialisation Through Play
A growing number of young mums and dads are turning to Playgroups for young parents for peer support and valuable socialisation for their children. These parents in their teens and early twenties, are setting aside a few hours each week to attend Playgroup with their babies and before school age children.

Anti-Vaccination 'Snobs' given a serve
The first article was entitled, '‘Vaccine Snobs’ Kill Baby'. With a title like this one would expect that parents that had, by the way, refused vaccination for their child, had just been charged with murdering a baby. The article then goes on to talk about how the ‘Champaign set’ and ‘alternatives’ are not vaccinating their children and therefore we are seeing a surge in whooping cough outbreak.

‘Motherese’ important for children’s language development
Talking to children has always been fundamental to language development, but new research reveals that the way we talk to children is key to building their ability to understand and create sentences of their own.

Strategies to help encourage children’s language development.
Learning to talk is an exciting time in your child’s development, but it doesn’t necessarily happen smoothly without a little help. Lauren Beecroft Literacy Project Officer for Good Beginnings, a families charity, explains some tactics to help your child become the great communicator they’re born to be.

Smoking and cot death link discovered
We have known for sometime now that smoking during pregnancy and after birth can increase the risk of a whole range of problems. What has not been known until now is how smoking increases the risk of cot death by more than three times.

A Parents’ Guide for Skin-to-Skin Contact with Their Infants
Skin-to-skin contact is a method of caring for newborn infants that involves putting the infant on the mother’s chest skin-to-skin. Skin-to-skin contact is an important component of a method of newborn care called “Kangaroo Care”.

How to Keep Love Alive this Valentines Day for New Parents
Love is in the air and Valentines Day is just around the corner.  But, if you’ve just had a baby, romance is probably furthest from your mind.

Paid Parental Leave
Australia's first national Paid Parental Leave scheme started on 1 January 2011. Paid Parental Leave will assist approximately 148,000 eligible working Australian mothers each year.

Paid Parental Leave Scheme - Case Studies
Would you like to know more about the Australian Government's new Paid Parental Leave Scheme? The following case studies might help you understand whether or not you are eligable for the scheme.

Circumcision - A Guide for Parents
In Australia today circumcision of baby boys is rare, and the uncut penis is the normal thing among young people, but many parents are still anxious about the subject.

Information for Dads
I uncovered some great brochures for Dad's published by Good Beginnings and have been kindly given permission to include the brochures on Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond's website. I hope you find them a valuable resource.

'Good' children - At what price? The secret cost of shame.
Shame is designed to cause children to curtail behaviour through negative thoughts and feelings about themselves. It involves a comment – direct or indirect - about what the child is. Shaming operates by giving children a negative image about their selves - rather than about the impact of their behaviour.

Co-sleeping, is it part of bonding?
Article  by Pinky McKay. When my own babies were small, neither social ideology nor wakeful babies caused me a lack of sleep – my babies slept snuggled up with me at night. My choice to co-sleep wasn’t based on research studies, it was simply ‘best practice’ for our family.

Sweet Dreams – Pinky's top tips to help your baby (and you!) sleep better
Article by Pinky McKay. Just like us, babies are individuals –and this goes for sleep requirements too. It may help (or not, if you are suffering from sleep deprivation) to realise that in most infant sleep studies, ‘all night’ is defined as five hours. If you are thinking that even five hours uninterrupted sleep would be a dream come true, there are some gentle strategies you can try to help your baby, and you, to sleep better.

When a baby makes three
Most couples can anticipate the birth of a first child with joy, and then make the transition from being a couple into a family, but there are some who find this a difficult and complex step to negotiate.

How to toilet train in just one day
As you know toilet training a child can be a time of testing the patience of parents.  It can be a time of upsets, disappointments, one step forward and two steps backwards. 

So, What do you do?
One of the ways in which people have high self-esteem is through their occupation. How you feel about your occupation determines how others will view your occupation.