Essay about First Time Parent

Looking to spend some great time with your kids? No matter how crazy your schedule is, you should always try and create some quality time to spend with your children; it's important for their personality development. Try these activities that are not just fun, but healthy too.

No matter how young or old children are, quality family time is a very important factor in a child's life. Children get a lot of positive reinforcements from quality family time, so this is an important part of a child's development. Spending family time does not mean that you have to take a major amount of your time every day for your child, but every moment and word does count. Even for a family on a tight budget there are things you can do with your child or children for quality time. Quality family time can be anything from sitting down and playing a board game together, going to the park and taking a walk, or going on a special summer vacation. It does not take a major effort or a large amount of money to take an hour or so out of a hectic day to give children the positive reinforcements they need for positive emotional development. Even just a few quick words can make a big difference in a child's self-efficacy or self-esteem. When you come in from work or your child comes in from school and he or she shows you that A he or she made on his or her spelling test, take out 5-10 minutes to give him or her positive feedback. This will make him or her feel he or she is a major part of your life and that you are proud of him or her. Just the small things like this matter a huge amount to a child. Quality family time and positive feedback are important to a child's emotional development. Additionally, if you set aside specific times or dates for your child, this is also positive reinforcement for him or her. If you set aside a Saturday once or twice a month to just spend that day with your child or children, this will give them something to look forward to. You can also use this to encourage good behaviors because children do not want to have special outings taken away because this is something they really look forward to.

The goal of this parent interview is to learn about different parenting approaches and the rewards and challenges of parenting. I choose to interview my coworker Eleanor Pratt*. She is 42 years old, and has three children. Her children Olivia*, Jacob* and Sarah* are ages 17, 14, and 10. Her household is composed of herself, her husband John* who is 44 years old, and her three children. This interview was conducted at our work place in a quiet office. The interview was about fifty minutes long and took place on two different days.

No matter the age, children are always precious human beings in this world and leaving them for just a few minutes can be a life changer, such as something unspeakable that can happen to them at any given time. When having a tight schedule parents don’t tend to think clearly, especially if they’re in a rush. Any parent would want their children to have a safe healthy life, knowing that they are in good hands. Leaving a child from the ages 0-10, by themselves shouldn’t be an option to consider. Children at those ages like to explore and figure out no things, even like to wander off, that isn’t safe for anyone, especially as little as they are.

More than 25 percent of all children in general and not only infants but also teenagers and high school students experiencing various forms of sleep disorders, from short-term difficulties with falling asleep and sleepwalking to long-term problems of sleep apnea and narcolepsy (Owens, Judith A .; Mindell, Jodi A. Take charge of your child's sleep. The all-in-one resource for solving sleep problems in kids and teens Da Capo Press, 2005). Moreover it has been shown in recent studies of long-range infants from 17 weeks gestation until 5 years of age, children who slept less than 10 hours at night or woke frequently tend to have more problems . emotional and behavioral five years (Sivertsen, Børge, et al Later Emotional and Behavioral Problems Associated With Sleep Problems in Toddlers: A Longitudinal Study JAMA Pediatrics, 2015, Vol 169, No. 6, p 575-... 582).

Kurt Bruner and Steve Stroope begin chapter 1 of their book titled It Starts At Home: A Practical Guide to Nurturing Lifelong Faith, with the following two sentences, “If you’ve ever been part of a loving, healthy family you have smelled the sweet aroma of heaven. If you’ve ever lived in a troubled, broken home you have breathed the foul stench of hell.” For many couples, having children can be the most pleasing experience they will ever have in their marriage. Unfortunately, for many others—those that are unable to cope with the stressors children bring to a marriage—will view the experience as a detriment to their marriage. For some just deciding when to have children can be a marriage stressor. For others, an unexpected pregnancy can cause tremendous stress in a marriage. Parenting requires a change in lifestyle and brings with it many challenges to a marriage. Those couples that think they are prepared soon find out that there is no way to prepare for all that raising a child entails. For those that are not prepared or did not get the chance to adequately prepare, there will be times when their commitments to each other will be tested.

In the United States there are more than $35 billion dollars in child support payments owed and “one out of every four parents who are owed child support gets nothing; and parents who owe it reportedly pay less than 60 percent of their debts on average, according to the National Center for State Courts. When parents don’t get the money they need from noncustodial parents, they often look instead to government welfare programs to help make ends meet”. [2]

Dysfunctional Beliefs About Child Sleep Scale, (DBACS). Parents dysfunctional beliefs about children's sleep were analyzed using a an instrument adapted from a DBAS scale for adults. The original had 28 items that were modified to tap into parents dysfunctional beliefs about their child's’ sleep. Two changes were made from the original version, items pertaining to growing older were excluded as they are not relevant to children; word substitutions, the second change, were made to the remaining 22 items. The Child Sleep Habits Questionnaire, (CSHQ), was used to measure the reports made by parents on children with SRP’s. Mothers and fathers were asked to observe their child's sleep behaviors for a week. The CSHQ consists of 45 items forming 8 subscales determine fundamental sleep domains: bedtime resistance, sleep-onset delay, sleep disordered breathing and daytime sleepiness. Parents were asked to rate items on a 3 point scale, and indicate whether they felt there was a problem for their child. Another way to measure an SRP is the Self Sleep Report (SSR), used to measure self reported SRP’s by the children. Sleep diaries and the use of Actigraphs, are used to measure sleep objectively, Actigraphs are motion loggers and it records when the wearer is active or inactive, the periods of inactivity are later logged as rest or sleep. Using Actiwatch-64 and Actiware-CT 5.2, this device and software have shown good concordance against polysomnography in children. The sleep variables measured were: Sleep Onset Latency, Total Sleep Time, and sleep efficiency percent. participants recorded the information a sleep diary; the time they went to bed, lights out, time spent asleep and the time they got out of bed.

The online article poses an inquisition on whether babies should be left to “cry it out” at bedtime. Using data provided by a study conducted in Australia, this American news/talk show tells the viewers that the infant is better off if the parent ignores the crying to the point of exhaustion, something the article called "graduated extinction". The different techniques proposed in the article show all the different methods that a parent can use to get their child asleep and stay to stay that way longer. Many new parents would deem this information invaluable, considering that most newborns are up crying every couple of hours during the night. New parents and infants need sleep to function, and for the infants, major developments occur during the sleep cycles. Any parental training interventions are encouraged, as long as the adjustments have a proven basis for the change.

I woke my boyfriend up and called my mother and we rushed to the hospital. I was nervous and excited at the same time. After eight hours of labor, the baby wasn’t cooperating at all. I wouldn’t dilate past eight and I already had three epidurals. I was in so much pain. After being in labor for twenty three hours, the doctors said it was time for a cesarean. I was so scared. All of a sudden, I heard my son screaming. My heart melted and I couldn’t keep the tears from coming. That was the best moment of my life. Justin and I named our son, Bentley Michael McCartney. He weighed eight pounds and thirteen ounces and he was twenty one inches tall. He was beautiful and healthy. Seeing my son made me realize that I was now an adult and I would be the best mother I possibly could be.

Previous research includes a study of 328 mothers all of whom were reporting significant sleep problems in their infants. The report states that some of the mothers were "randomly allocated to a program (treatment group) where they received consultation from a maternal and child health nurse." (Raising Children Network, 2012) The mothers were assisted by the nurse in the development of an individualized sleep management plan which was inclusive of positive bedtime routines, controlled comforting or camping out, and strategies for phasing out night-time feeds and dependence on dummies." (Raising Children Network, 2012) The control group did not receive the program assists and received information instead on normal childhood sleep. The mothers kept diaries and a postnatal depression

Critique: The research done on whether child sleep disturbances affect the maternal sleep quality and daily functioning was a valuable study. It was done very well in the family’s normal environment with no one observing to disrupt the sleep patterns. The results show parents how their child’s sleep can affect their own, especially the mothers, lives. Families can see the results of their child’s sleep disruptions on the mother and hopefully get treatment before serious episodes of depression, fatigue, or stress affects their lives.

A community survey (Blader, Koplewicz, Abikoff, & Foley, 1997) of 987 parents of elementary school-aged children reported the following problems related to children's sleep behaviors: Bedtime resistance (27%), difficulty with morning wakening (17%), complaints of fatigue (17%), delayed sleep onset (11%), and nighttime wakenings (7%). Rates are even higher in studies examining clinical child populations, with restless sleep (43%) and night wakings (47%) affecting a substantial number of children (Simonds & Parraga,

Bedtime problems and night waking’s in infants and young children are established, persistent, and associated with a variety of impairments in youth and their families (Moore, M., 2010). Many parents have struggle with their children to develop appropriate sleep scheduling and bedtime routines. Learning how to sleep soundly is a normal part of development. It is typical for children to wake during the night. However, returning to sleep may be difficult at times for children. Children who get little sleep are more likely to have behavioral problems, be prone to general moodiness, and have difficulties living up to their potential. Having a child that is not getting restful sleep

At night, you lock the house down, tuck the kids into bed, clean your home, and you might even finish some last minute work. I bet you never thought about the things that can happen at night. As we kiss our children goodnight, our favorite line is “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite”. You never thought about your son sleepwalking through the night or even your daughter screaming out her sleep. What about your twins, who are both, having nightmares! Let us think about one more thing, did you even know that this could happen to anyone at any age, even you. Many Americans around the world lack the knowledge of realizing how important sleep really is. The lack of sleep can cause short-term and long-term health problems.