Posted in Activities for Children, Baby Clothes, Boys Clothes, Children, Children's Clothes, Dad, Father's Day, Just for Fun, Le Top, Le Top Online Boutique, le•top, tagged arts and crafts, crafting with kids, Father's Day craft, Father's Day gift, Father's Day Notepad, le top blog, letop, office gift on June 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
When daddy’s at work, have him think about the kiddos and the family! Let kids redo this basic office staple as a gift for Dad — their messages will last well beyond Father’s Day.
How To:
Wrap a rubber band around a notepad cube and have kids write greetings and make drawings on two sides with a broad, pointy marker. (Fine tips will get caught between the pages.) Move band, and decorate the other two sides. Tie the notepad with a colorful ribbon. As an added gift, slide in a pen.
Posted in le•top on June 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Every parent understands that divorce is between adults — but the breakup of a marriage can have profound effects on children too. Divorce is stressful for the entire family. Your child might feel as if his or her world has turned upside down.
New research suggests divorce, not the conflict leading up to it, can negatively impact a child’s performance at school. Essentially a new study states that young children of divorce are not only more likely to suffer from anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem and sadness, they experience long-lasting setbacks in interpersonal skills and math test scores.
“Somewhat surprisingly, children of divorce do not experience detrimental setbacks in the pre-divorce period,” noted study author Hyun Sik Kim, a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “From the divorce stage onward, however, children of divorce lag behind in math test scores and interpersonal social skills.”
Kim used data from a nationally representative long-term survey following kids who entered kindergarten in 1998 until eighth grade. He followed kids whose parents got divorced between their child’s kindergarten and third-grade years, finding 142 kids of divorce compared with 3,443 kids in intact homes. (Kids whose parents had been widowed or already divorced and remarried were excluded from the study.) The study is published in the June issue of the American Sociological Review.
After controlling for factors such as socioeconomic status, teen parenthood and parents’ marital satisfaction, Kim compared the kids of “stable” and “split” households on measures including math and reading tests, teacher ratings of social skills, and teacher ratings of behavioral problems. The research is the first long-term study to break down the effects of divorce by the pre-divorce, during-divorce and post-divorce phases.
Kim found that while a divorce is in progress, first, second and third-graders experience a dip in math test scores — a decline that holds steady once the divorce is final. Interpersonal skills also suffer during divorce, affecting a child’s ability to make and keep friends, and the ability to express feelings and opinions in a positive way.
On a positive note, however, Kim found that reading scores remain unaffected, and that children do not seem to be at a higher risk for “externalizing” problem behavior such as arguing, fighting or getting angry.
I agree that math requires more concentration that other subjects. For example, it doesn’t rely on memory, but rather requires attention and mental agility to add numbers quickly, etc. If I was a child and feeling anxious and depressed, it would be easier for me to remember memorized facts than try to go through a complex math problem. Divorce can feel like the end of the world for kids and parents should assume their divorce is affecting their children, and do everything they can to make the transition as smooth as possible.
Keep your child out of the fight
Respecting your child’s relationship with the other parent can help your child adapt to the divorce. Keep these general “don’ts” in mind:
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