Parents as Teachers: Every Parent Can Be a Child’s First and Best Teacher

Parents as Teachers: Every Parent Can Be a Child’s First and Best Teacher

In this day of institutions and daycares, it’s vital to develop good habits with your child as soon as possible. Most of us understand that the first five or six years of a child’s life are the most formative in all ways, and parents have the privilege and responsibility to stimulate and shape the learning experiences more than anyone else. It seems logical, then, that parents be informed and educated in simple ways and methods that will encourage maximum healthy cognitive growth and development in their child. Here are three simple areas that parents can explore, develop, and enjoy with their child.
The first skill for parents is to learn how to observe (listen and watch) your child impartially. We all want the best for our child, but we must also be on the lookout for issues or problems. Unreasonable or uneducated expectations can cloud our observations as well as our child’s growth, but encouraging observation benefits both parent and child. The child is aware of the parent’s presence, attention, and acceptance even if the parent is not actively interacting with the child’s playtime. Parents need to take some time to observe their child keeping in mind the accepted developmental stages which can be retrieved from any pediatrician. Is my child learning, growing, and exploring his or her world? Is my child relating to the world?

Secondly, parents need special time with each child to interact individually. This also encourages growth in both the child and the parent. Plan specific activities geared to your child’s age and developmental stage and engage your child emotionally and cognitively. Remember playtime for any age child can be a fun and educational process simultaneously. One of the most adaptable activities is a “Build-a-story” game. The parent can start a story, “Once upon a time, there lived a __________ ” and the child takes over. Parent and child take turns adding content to the story. This activity can begin as soon as the child can string words together. Parents, these stories don’t have to make sense to you. Indulge your imaginations and creativity. Few activities can stimulate a child’s cognitive development more than telling or reading a story. Don’t be put-off by repetitive requests for the same story. Feel free to change a few details here and there to gauge your child’s response. The point is to interact with your child as an individual. CONTINUE READING

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There’s a New Sense of Urgency in the Air ~ Feel it?

She's seen war and peace, boom and bust. May she never see prospered distrust!

There’s a new sense of urgency wafting in the air,
Silently, secretly, swallowing all prayer,
Hanging on each dream, and tugging on each hope,
And pushing each one of us down the slippery slope.

Lies and deception everywhere I look,
From left and from right, from supposed saint and crook,
While once upon a time, Americans cared for their neighbor,
Nowadays people rebuke those who labor!

Despair and discouragement are today’s song,
While so many people rejoice to do wrong,
Even while knowing what goes around comes back,
That’s a good enough reason to give someone a smack?

What ever happened to compassion and virtue,
Not the kind of mush on TV, but honest heart rescue,
What ever happened to neighborly chat,
Caring and sharing, just chewing the fat.

Neighbor now is turned against neighbor,
All over whether they’re poorer or richer,
Do you labor in a union or wear a white collar,
Maybe you’re just lazy, or an elite scholar.

It used to not matter, we could still be friends,
But sorrowful politics now burns at both ends,
Oh that common sense would rise up in us all,
And remind us that UNITY will prevent our great fall!

The Real Reason for Obama’s Threat to Veto the Indefinite Detention Bill

The Real Reason for Obama’s Threat to Veto the Indefinite Detention Bill.

I – like everyone else – am horrified by the Senate’s passage of legislation that would allow for indefinite detention of Americans.

And at first, I – like many others – assumed that Obama’s threat to veto the bill might be a good thing. But the truth is much more disturbing.

As former Wall Street Street editor and columnist Paul Craig Roberts correctly notes:

The Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it: Should somebody determined “to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes.”

Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. [Yes, Obama is still apparently allowing “extraordinary renditions” to torture people abroad.] This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.”

The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.

By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees. READ MORE