National Parents Center

Staying Connected with Your Daughter When You’re Not at Home

So youre going away and leaving your daughter at home. Are you worried that youll lose your connection with your child; that somehow your absence will damage his growth and development; that your strong, positive relationship will diminish while youre gone?

Well, worry if you must. But set the timer for five minutes and stop when the buzzer goes off. Worry gets you nowhere, and it even cuts off your creative juices, preventing you from thinking of ways to maximize your time away and coming up with strategies that will benefit your child as well as yourself.

Of course, you wont be wandering off into the wild blue yonder.

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Tags: Home

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A List of Printable Decodable Books for Preschool

Save time and money by using these free printable preschool decodable books for in your language arts curriculum. These sites also include supplemental activities to accompany each book.

Decodable books are those filled with simple words that children can sound out. Sight words are few and far between, as the purpose is to practice phonic sounds. Early decodable books are filled with simple consonant-vowel-consonant (c-v-c) words, such as mat, dig, pug, hot, peg. Short vowels are introduced first, followed by consonant digraphs, and then long vowels and combinations.

Phonics readers can help children practice their reading skills as they also teach vocabulary and comprehension skills.

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Tags: Decodable Books, Preschool

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Moving at 10 Weeks

We are currently in the midst of loading the seventeen foot truck we rented this morning to move across country. While we were filling out paper work for the truck, there was a light breeze and a pleasant temperature. Now it’s just hot! Loading a big truck in the heat is never fun for anyone, but it is particularly nausea inducing at near ten weeks of pregnancy. I knew this was going to be a tough move. Thankfully, my parents flew one of my sisters out to help us and she and my husband have been doing all the heaving lifting while I continue to pack and bring out smaller items. I have to stop and eat something ever forty-five minutes or so to keep the more severe nausea away.

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Work makes breastfeeding a chore

The sooner a new mother goes back to work after giving birth, the less likely she is to breastfeed her baby, researchers have found.

Mothers in the study who went back to work within six weeks were less likely than other women to start breastfeeding – and when they did start, they were less likely to continue.

By comparison, moms who stayed home for at least nine months, or even 13 weeks, were more likely to predominantly breastfeed their babies for three months or more.

There are many reasons why returning to work can make it harder for women to keep breastfeeding, said study author Dr. Chinelo Ogbuanu of the Georgia Department of Community Health.

For example, she said, the more women breastfeed, the more milk they produce.

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Tags: Work, Work Makes

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