Digital Nation

Did anyone watch the Frontline episode called Digital Nation?  If not, you should check it out online.  It's quite enlightening and shows how wired our kids really are.  Certainly not all kids, but a good majority of them.  It is changing everything, from the way they are taught in high school and college to interactions in the workplace in the future.  Even their hearing is being altered from being wired all ...

Time wasters - all of them!

Facebook. Twitter, MySpace, Cell phones, Blogs, iParentnetwork....

Time wasters. Time thieves.  At least that is how the media has sometimes portrayed them.  Not real.  Online friends?  Get serious.  That's not really human contact.  Those are trivial connections that take up time that we could be spent with our real friends, right?  Those using social media, such as iParentnetwork, are the lonely folks, the isolated.  Social media must adds to that sense of isolation.

Nope.

A ...

Self-assessment

Self-Assessment 14.2: (Santrock, 2008, Life Span Development)

Think back to your adolescent years, especially when you were in high school. Rate each of the items for both your mother and your father on the following 5 point scale:
1 = Knows nothing
2 = Knows a little
3 = Knows many things
4 = Knows most things
5 = Knows everything
Write your ratings one the lines to the right side. Rate the "father ...

Listening isn't the same as hearing

I read recently that business people spend roughly 40% of their day listening.  That sounds like a lot, but when you really begin thinking about it, it's probably correct.  You listen while in meetings, on the phone, in the car (to the radio?), etc.  That's a lot of time spent listening.  But how much of that time is spent really hearing.

Pondering my own two kids and their technological gadgets and gizmos like cell phones ...

What kinds of questions parents are asking when they drop their child off at a friend's house

At recent fall events, members of iParentnetwork were out meeting and greeting members of each of the three communities.  We surveyed parents on a number of questions, one of which was this question: "What kinds of questions do you ask when you drop your child off at a friend's house?"

We were pleased to report that parents are asking questions and even more pleased at the variety of questions parents were posing.  We thought it ...

Yikes! New Study Released about Kids Under 5

OMG. Wow. Unbelievable. 

A new study, underwritten by consumer products manufacturer Unilever, conducted experiments with people aged 19 - 83, measuring brand recognition and familiarity with the types of products a brand represents. Brands that were exposed to the participants early, before the age of 5 and certainly no later than the age of 10 scored higher in recognition. Among the older group of people, age 50+, even the now-defunct brands held more resonance with ...

How To Encourage More Positive Behavior in Your Children

Imagine that you did a “time study” on yourself as you relate to your child. What percent of the time are you focusing on that child’s positive traits and behaviors? What percent of the time are correcting, directing, criticizing and sometimes worse? The best self-report I have heard from parents is about 50% - 50%. The most common is 70 - 80% directing, correcting, etc. Think about how that might influence self-worth in kids.

I'm Just Sayin'....

It seems that our kids move more and more quickly from one slang phrase to another.  It's hard to keep up.  Between the instant message "speak" to inventive spellings used in text messages, it's hard to even understand them anymore.  Am I right?

Well, I'm here to help.  I have just learned that UCLA has published it's latest dictionary of slang called the UCLA Slang 6.  You can order it from them directly (sorry it's ...