Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink

When Stepchildren Visit

The First Time

The first time that the stepkids come over for a sleepover visit (long or short) is a pivotal moment in the stepfamily's history. As a stepparent, you may feel desperate to please the children, to woo them, to go out of your way to make sure that you're accepted. You may also just want to casually greet them and go on with life, letting the kids fit in as they can. Both these emotions may exist at the same time.

Suffocation Hazards

A baby can suffocate if something covers his mouth and nose, thus preventing breathing. Plastic bags and soft bedding are the main culprits. A portion of the deaths that have been attributed to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the past are now thought to really have been cases of suffocation on soft bedding.

Set Reasonable Expectations and Goals for Your Child

No matter your general mood, having positive, realistic expectations for your child's achievements and behavior is something to strive for. When parents' expectations for their kids are set at the right level-not too high and not too low-kids do very well in life indeed. Here then, are some specific tools for setting reasonable expectations that even the gloomiest donkey can follow.

What to Do About Clothing Battles

What kids wear, and how they wear it, becomes an issue for many families. I imagine that cave kids battled with their parents about skins (“Grog, leopard skin skirt too short!”). Hair styles, too, have always been a bone of contention (“Get gazelle thigh out of hair, Ug. You want neighbors think you too primitive to build fire?”). Look, anything can become a battleground. Clothing and hairstyles are one way kids can assert their personal tastes, independence, and choice-making abilities.

Your Child's Behavior Away from Home

You send your child out into the world (scrubbed, neat, and shining like the sun, though that's never certain), and from the time she's very little, she's got a life of her own. Friendships, rivalries, heartbreak, love—it all happens and happens again and again, beginning early in childhood. You can support your child's struggles, but you have little control over what happens in her life.

Safe Gun Storage

What Should We Play?

No matter what game you play, some kids are just not going to get into it. The trick is to start them young and keep the games alive. Try setting up tournaments and championships. Once you get them hooked, they'll come back to the table fast enough—after all, their survival instincts are sometimes even stronger than that of the tired and weary adult. Shut off the TV, computer, and video games and let the answering machine screen the calls.

Teens: Sleeping Through the Snooze Alarm

You may blame morning sleepiness on too much late-night television. But today leading researchers agree that biology plays a large role. Recent research conducted at sleep disorder clinics indicates that during puberty, kids exhibit “delayed phase preference,” meaning that they feel more active later in the day than early in the morning. (The clinicians could simply have interviewed parents to find that out!)

Joint or Sole Custody?

For the sake of the children, the goals of divorcing parents should be the same: involvement of both parents in the lives of the children and mitigation of conflict between the parents. These two factors should dominate all others when thinking about custody.

Kids, Allowance, and Chores

Some parents give allowances with no requirements on the child's part. Others make performing chores a condition of receipt.

Parenting: Developing a Unified Front

No two parents take exactly the same approach to running a household, hanging with the kids, resolving conflict, or granting privileges. That's okay. Kids easily accommodate to the differences in parenting styles and activities.

The Climate of Adoption

If you look at what experts in the field of adoption have to say, they don't think the climate is optimal for adoptive mothers and daughters. Society still sees adoption as something that is not quite normal and should be hushed up, contend researchers, Mary Watkins, Ph.D., Janet Surrey, Ph.D., and Betsy Smith, Ph.D.