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At some stage every child will have the upset of a loss of a friend, loved one or pet. For my kids, it happened just last week.

We were dog sitting for friends and somehow the dog got inside (I’m not quite sure how it happened, no-one has owned up to it yet). But the thing was the bird was out of the cage on it’s perch.

The details are a little fuzzy about what happened next. I’m guessing the budgie flew off it’s perch to the ground and the dog got it. Whatever happened, I was in the bedroom when I heard the kids screaming hysterically.

Now this wasn’t any normal scream – I was sure that someone was dying. So I sprinted out to the kitchen only to find the bird lying motionless on the floor. The dog had run out the back door, and just as well or I think the kids would have killed him.

I picked up the dead budgie and put him on the kitchen table. and we stared at it. We just looked at him and didn’t say a thing. We were all crying and just staring at him for at least an hour, maybe longer…

I didn’t know what to do so I just sat there with the kids. We sat in silence, except for a few little comments.

After a long time, my son Kieren, who owned the budgie, said that it was time ot bury him. He went to the garage and grabbed my spade, went outside to the middle of my back yard and started digging a hole.

I didn’t try to stop him; he was pretty upset so I thought I would just put up with the hole. We all gathered around as Kieren lay the bird to rest in the grave site. Then he filled the hole in and we sat down around it once again.

The kids started talking about the fun times they had with the bird and I listened to them. This went on for ages. We sat and we talked. Then, finally the kids went inside.

A few minutes later Kieren said to me, “I’m going to make a plague for Bluey”. So he drew a lovely picture and poem for the budgie, laminated it and put it outside, sellotaped it onto a stick and put it over top of the grave site. Two of the other kids decided to do the same thing.

My youngest child, Becky (9 years), went and picked some flowers from a neighbour’s yard (sorry neighbour, it was an emergency). She came home and gently placed them over the grave site. It was very touching to see my kids act in this way.

I didn’t try to talk about Bluey unless they bought up the conversation. But when they did bring him up I listened and sympathised with them. I even shed a few tears myself.But each of my four children grieved in their different way. The boy who was closest to the budgie was the saddest at the loss.

I think what I learned from this experience more than anything was just that as parents we need to be there for our kids in whatever way they require. My 14 year old son needed to talk about his beloved budgie more than the others. He had to start planning immediately to buy his next bird.

My advice to parents when there is a death in the family is to take their queues from the individual child as all chidlren grieve in different ways. What might be good for one child may not be good for the next child.

Some times kids will need a time lapse before they are willing to open up and talk about death in a meaningful way. Don’t rush this – kids will talk when they are ready. Just let the kids know that you are there to support them.

Kim Patrick is a single mother with four children, living on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. She is author of the book, “Get Your Child To Behave In 30 Days Or Less”. Her web site is:

http://www.mychildcanbehave.com

There are five secrets to keeping your child safer today immediately. The first two secrets, confidence and empowerment, set the foundation for kids that can keep themselves safe when Mom and Dad are not around.

The third secret to keeping your child safe for an entire lifetime of safety is, “Catch Them Being Good.”

When your child makes a bad choice, it’s important for you to stay calm about it. Yes, this is easier said then done. However, it is critical in your child’s ability to keep themselves safe, that you learn to take their mistakes in stride.

We want you to spend more time and energy catching your child being good.

A subtle prodding towards better choices is more effective than highlighting, in a big emotional way, any bad choice they make for themselves. If you have to highlight negative behavior, be very careful in saying, “That was a bad choice,” rather than “You are bad.” Take care to say, “You can make better choices,” instead of saying, “How stupid!” Things like, “You’re a great kid but that choice could have been better,” keeps your child’s image of themselves solid and highlights the choice only, not them, as being bad. Your child is good, the choice is bad.

Building confidence, building a solid self image in your child, builds safety. Capitalize on this and highlight the good things they do more often than the bad things. As a matter of fact, focus on highlighting as many good things as you can rather than making a big deal about the bad things they may do.

When you highlight the negative aspects of your child’s behavior, studies have shown that you actually undermine their self esteem and ability to try new things. You kick in the fear factor of failure and start down a path you may not be able to reverse.

We call it, “Catch Them Being Good.”

We think positive reinforcement is a much stronger teaching tool and technique for child safety than negative reinforcement. Praise your child when you see them doing good behaviors. Lavish the praise and adulation onto them when they do really great things.

This is also positive mentoring. This is channeling your child into learning how to make good, solid and positive choices for themselves. It builds and fosters that ever-so-critical confidence in themselves.

It is easier to notice the bad behavior. We are tuned by society to notice the negative and bad things people do. It is very easy to notice the bad things your child does. It is a focus of many parents, naturally. Reverse the trend and make your focal point the things your child does well. Positive reinforcement will teach your child to repeat those behaviors you want and make it easier for you to
guide them into those good choices.

Joyce Jackson is a child safety expert, #1 bestselling author, consultant, speaker and trainer. For her extensive website and information see http://www.KeepingKidsSafeToday.com.

There are a huge number of craft sets on the market today, and it is very good to see that this market is thriving. All too often it is easy to see toys which are ready made, and require no assembly, and no effort. But children love to stick and glue and make things, whether simply making a spaceship out of an old toilet roll insert, a washing up bottle and a sheet of paper, or whether more complex items such as clay models, decorations or jewellery. It is easy to forget just how satisfying it can be for a child to design and create a product which was achieved through their own effort, dedication and skill.

The range of craft kits varies tremendously, from the early sets available for toddlers and young infants, right through to kits that teenagers will find relevant and fascinating. For the younger child, kits will usually include coloured paper, possibly sticky paper or stickers, and glue. These kits will not usually need anything to be cut out, and will be based on colour and collage. This allows them to have tremendous fun, whilst still managing to enjoy a sense of personal achievement.

It is important for a child, of any age, to be able to feel the sense of satisfaction that comes with completing a craft project themselves, and having a product which they can admire, and which can be admired by others, helps them to feel that they have achieved something worthwhile, and that they are recognised by others as having achieved it too. Recognition of a job done well is something we all feel is helpful, even as adults. Ad a child it is highly important that they be given praise for these sorts of tasks, and what better way of being able to give such praise than admiring the end product – perhaps even displaying it, or wearing it?

As children become older, more skilled, more independent and more inquisitive, so do the craft kits available grow, and the wide range available today is staggering. In fact, there are more craft kits sold today, and across a wider range of skills, than there have ever been. There are kits for girls which allow them to design and make their own jewellery, and kits which appeal more to boys which allow them to design and make anything from model cars that fit their own design, to electric circuits and even robots. Some of these kits have a defined end product, which it will be necessary to follow instructions in order to achieve, and others simply provide a range of tools and base materials, along with examples and suggestions.

Of course, some of these kits will focus on particular areas which will require a fair degree of practice, and in some cases it is even possible that this sparks a lifelong interest in craft work, or a particular field within it, and it can also be the case that these kits can be shared by other members of the family, providing something which is absorbing and fascinating, and which can provide experiences and successes which can be shared by other people. This helps children to feel that what they are doing has great value, and will help to increase feelings of self worth and success.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about kids toys, dolls, and video games. You will find the best marketplace for kids toys, dolls, and video games at these sites: http://www.4kidstoys.info , http://www.dollsgamestoys.info , and http://www.usedvideogamesell.com .

There is a surprisingly wide range of puppets available in children’s toy shops today, and the theatrical representation is not limited merely to characters, but to accompany the puppets it is now possible to purchase a full theatre, complete with curtains and scenery in which to play out a life upon the stage.

The smallest, cheapest and most easy performed are the old fashioned finger puppets – literally single finger characters. These puppets are small and simple in design, and fit onto a single finger. The degree of performance is largely dependent on the acting expertise of your finger; a little waggling and bending is generally all that is required, but is unlikely to win many awards. These puppets are delightful for small children, and can be used in a number of ways.

Most puppet sets like these come in character groups from famous nursery rhymes or fairy tale stories, such as Little Red Riding Hood. These puppets can be used by the parent to help bring a story alive to a young child, who will delight in the characters being animated in this way. Eventually the child can take over one or all of the puppets and play out the story themselves as the parent reads it to them, or play out the full story to themselves at any time. It is also wonderful for children who are young, but not the youngest in the family, to have a chance to use these character puppets themselves to tell the story to a younger brother or sister.

Of course, these sort of puppets are really only suitable on their own for younger children, and can easily be made at home if you are fairly adept at sewing. However, the relatively cheap cost of these puppets means that it is unlikely to be worth your while.

Moving up the ladder of complexity are hand puppets, or glove puppets as they are sometimes known. These usually just fit over the whole hand, down to the wrist, and allow one or both arms of the character to be waggled and waved using your thumb and little finger. The remaining fingers fit up into the puppet’s head and allow for nodding and shaking. Sooty and his friends were well know examples of these sorts of puppets, and children will not only enjoy talking to these creatures, but actually using them themselves.

It is worth noting that often children will happily chat away to a puppet character on a parent’s hand and completely forget the fact that the parent is there. Often conversations can take interesting turns which wouldn’t otherwise be possible. I am not aware of any investigation to find out the benefit of puppet for psychological analysis, but I am almost certain that it would result in interesting findings!

An alternative type of hand puppet is one which usually fits further down the arm, sometimes right down to the elbow, and instead of having animated limbs, has an animated mouth instead. The thumb is inserted into the lower jaw, the remaining fingers in the upper jaw which also serves as the head. The mouth can then be animated, and often the children will be so distracted and absorbed by the creature that you need not worry about your ventriloquial skills!

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about kids toys, dolls, and video games. You will find the best marketplace for kids toys, dolls, and video games at these sites: http://www.4kidstoys.info , http://www.dollsgamestoys.info , and http://www.usedvideogamesell.com .

There was once a time when all young children would have a farm set of one type or another. Some were elaborate sets with buildings and barns, fences and countryside furniture, others were simply a big box of wooden or plastic animals, with the box becoming the farm house and the patterns on the carpet representing the fields and paths. Although farm sets and the animals that go with them are still widely available today, how relevant are they for today’s child, when you consider in particular the fact that very few children have even seen a farm, let alone expressed any interest in leaving the city when they grow up and becoming a farmer?

Whilst many children, perhaps the majority these days, have no personal experience of farms or farming, it is unlikely that they will escape the concept since farms and the animals within feature frequently in stories and tales that they will be familiar with. Even many nursery rhymes cover the concepts, such as ‘Old Macdonald’ and ‘Little Boy Blue’. The fairy tales such as Jack And The Beanstalk feature farms and farmers at the centre and children may be familiar with seeing them from a distance as they race by on long journeys.

But why do these farms still hold an interest for young children? Perhaps we should be asking this differently, and rather than wondering whether children are interested them, instead we should question why we should encourage such an interest.

Today, farming is big news, and rarely do we find a paper or a television bulletin not raising an issue that concerns farming. Whether it is to do with organic products, animal welfare or illnesses, genetically modified products or just simply crop cost and availability, we cannot ignore the fact that farms are a very important part of our society. Additionally, it is important that we all realise where our food comes from, and take an interest in this for our own sake, and that of the animals, the workers and the environment.

It is valuable for children to have an understanding from an early age of where their food comes from. Children are fascinated to see cows in a field and know that their milk comes from them, and to see chickens strutting about and know that they are the animals that lay the eggs. It is important for children to appreciate that the food we buy in the shops is not simply manufactured from nowhere, or in big factories, but that it all starts in those fields, with real animals that we need to care about and think of.

An early understanding and appreciation of this can only help to strengthen the long term understanding and support we need to foster as a society to ensure the long term welfare of us all.

Of course, an understanding of the way farms work also provides a chance to begin to understand the life cycle, and seeing new born lambs skipping about gives you an ideal way of introducing the idea of birth and parenting from a different point of view. Children love the idea of seeing animals and babies younger than themselves of course!

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about kids toys, dolls, and video games. You will find the best marketplace for kids toys, dolls, and video games at these sites: http://www.4kidstoys.info , http://www.dollsgamestoys.info , and http://www.usedvideogamesell.com .