TheWorkingMom's blog

There is so much talk these days about kids and video games. How they shouldn’t play them, how they become more aggressive, how they become couch potatoes, how their grades in school will suffer. Well, I’m here to tell you that I don’t buy it. While I do agree that massive amounts of ‘gaming’ probably isn’t the best use of a child’s time and obviously games that are not age appropriate would be irresponsible, allowing kids to enjoy video games just like we did when we played pinball and PacMan, can not possibly be that big of a deal.

My kids are 12 and 16 and they have all of the latest…Playstation II, Nintendo Gamecube, Xbox and Gameboys. They also have PC’s with games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon, Sims and World of Warcraft. You would think, with all the ‘gaming’ opportunities they have that they would spend enormous amounts of time doing nothing BUT that. However, I’m here to tell you that this is far from the truth. They excel in school, are extremely social with many wonderful friends and are active in athletics. They love being outside just bouncing on the trampoline or riding their bikes or scooters just for the fun of it. Do they play on their PC’s or their other GamePaks? Sure…but not incessantly.

read more

I don’t know about you but I have a strict bedtime for my children even though they are teenagers. According to the American Sleep Disorders Association, the average teenager needs 9.5 hours of sleep per night, possibly because hormones that are critical to growth and sexual maturation are released mostly during sleep. However, studies show that teenagers generally get an average of only 7.4 hours a night. This is definitely short of the desired quota for healthy teens. What I found most interesting is that teenagers actually need more sleep then their younger siblings (9-10 year olds) who only require about 8 hours of sleep.

read more

With teenage children now a reality in my life, school is probably the most talked about thing in their lives. Not only are they going through the trials and tribulations of their social life, the academics are challenging them each and every day.

My kids are both in the Gifted and Talented program in their respective schools. My daughter, a sophomore and my son in 6th grade. When my daughter was in middle school, I watched over each and every grade through out the school year like a hawk. If she missed turning in homework, I was all over her to get it turned in. Forgetting to turn things in such as homework she worked so hard to do, was her biggest downfall. She was unorganized and as an organized person, this drove me insane. She is extremely smart but her organizational habits were greatly affecting her grades. This pattern went on for the entire three years of middle school. Now it was time for high school. We had the talks about being more organized and staying on top of things but to no avail, we were dealing with the same exact issues. I was at a loss. It didn’t appear I was helping at all. As a matter of fact, I was starting to see a pattern of complete dependency on her part and this wasn’t good.

read more

Now that winter is in full swing, trying to find things for the family to do together so that we can spend quality time as a family was challenging. Along with spending time together, exercise during the long winter months becomes more of a challenge. The kids can’t ride their bikes due to the snow covered streets and even when the streets are cleared, the chilling temperatures force them back inside from the slightest wind against their faces.

Sure, we can go skiing but for a family of four, even the single day trips can get quite expensive. We try the board games but eventually, people loose interest and we never finish a game. Backgammon has become a good standby but how many times can you move those little round things around the board before you’re ready to hang it up and start watching TV. We’ve been through all of this and we found ourselves moving off to different parts of the house and not spending the time together that we should be to keep the flow of communication open. As well, the winter months make for many a day and night inside and quite frankly, couch-potato syndrome was setting in within my household.

Solution: Three little letters…

read more