November 5, 2019 - Raising World Children

New to Being a Stepdad? 4 Ways to Find Support in Your New Role

Even though divorce is a heart-breaking experience, many people are finding love on the other side through remarriage and blended families. While this is a beautiful experience, it can be a challenging one with the children. If you’re in a position where you get to become a stepdad, you’ll want to make sure you have supportive people in your corner when things get tough. Consider the following ways you can get support.

Keep close contact with friends and family

Communication is key. When you have a close friend or family member that you can use a sounding board, you’ll be a blessed man. Furthermore, make sure that the person who serves as a sounding board can understand the importance of confidentiality.

Consult with healthcare professionals

When you’re dealing with growing children, there are a lot of nuances like hormones and puberty. You have to consider those factors when you’re dealing with them. It’s also important to factor in your own trauma and baggage that you bring to the relationships. Find a trusted doctor and counselor to take about issues like child-rearing and development.

Find online forums with other stepdads

Though the internet can be a treacherous space, the internet can also be a safe space within forums. If you find a forum of step-fathers who support one another and send each other encouraging stepdad quotes, you can maintain a sense of anonymity by creating an alias name. Use different names to protect the privacy of your family members. At the same time, offer wisdom and receive advice from those who seem to provide positive insight.

Keep open communication with your wife

Always maintain a strong connection with your wife. You two are the ones who are glued for the rest of your lives. The children will grow up and move out. It’s extremely wise for the two of you to maintain a united front. If you’re having issues with ways to deal with one of the children, get on one accord regarding how you two will handle the children together. When you two support one another, the children will have no choice but to fall in line.

It’s also important to remember that there will be days when you feel the need to throw in the towel. When those times, it’s okay to take a time-out to go for a walk, exercise, or do something to cool yourself down. Know how to handle yourself so that you don’t make a mistake you regret. After all, it’s an awesome responsibility. Focus on making a positive impact with every chance you get.

Helping Autistic Children Cope with Dentist Visits

A first visit to the dentist can be challenging for any parent. If your child is on the autism spectrum, you may have unique fears about how your child will handle this kind of visit. Fortunately, there are things you can do to make your appointment with the dentist a little more successful.

Talk to Your Dentist

The first step in helping your child cope is to make those around him or her understand exactly how he or she might react to the dentist. Talk to your dentist and the office staff about your child and the concerns you might have. Your child is likely not the first on the spectrum to visit the office, and your dentist might be more than happy to discuss recommendations to make the process easier for your child.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Your next step is to normalize going to the dentist. Drive by the dentist in your area when you can, telling your child about what is done there. If your child enjoys television, watch developmentally-appropriate shows that feature dentists. If your child receives speech or occupational therapy, you may even want to let your child practice having his or her teeth touched. Normalization of the basic aspects of the dental visit can be quite helpful.

Provide a Comfort Item

It’s also a good idea to make sure that your child has access to items that help to calm him or her. Bringing along a stim toy can be a great idea, as can bringing along a weighted vest or blanket. Many pediatric offices also let children watch television or even play video games during their examination, so ensuring that your child has something soothing to watch and/or play can be incredibly helpful.

Minimize Waiting Time

Finally, make sure that you keep the process as short and sweet as possible. Talk to your dental staff about your child and let them know that you’ll be there as close to the start of the procedure as possible. Fill out all the paperwork ahead of time and consider having the office call you as soon as they are ready for you. This gives fewer chances for meltdowns in the waiting room and keeps things moving for everyone.

Going to the dentist is largely a process of adaptation. Talk with everyone involved and help calm your child when you can, then provide adaptive tools to help your child cope. The visit will be over faster than you think, and you and your child will know that you’ve conquered another challenge.

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan

Helping Kids Do Homework in a Language Not Your Own

“Why has it been accepted as gospel for so long that homework is necessary? The answer, I think, lies not in the perceive virtues of homework but rather in the clear deficiencies of what happens in the classroom. Homework becomes necessary because not enough learning happens during the school day… The broadcast, one-pace-fits-all lecture… turns out to be a highly inefficient way to teach and learn.”

― Salman Khan, The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined

Homework…. Whether you agree it is a useful tool for setting up good habits for your children’s future education and work ethics, or subscribe to the “afternoons should be for play” school of thought most of us end up with afternoon homework supervision of some sort or another. Reading books with kids… that is my favourite kind of homework, but I digress!

Now let us take this one-step further. What happens when the homework is in a language that you do not fully understand or your children are studying at a level you cannot yourself comprehend? This is regularly my dilemma.

http://localhost/raisingworld/2018/01/05/7-easy-steps-teach-kids-goal-setting-perseverance/

Let the games begin! Literally! Our children attending bilingual school was pretty much a given because whilst we lived in Australia my husband’s entire overseas family speak only Arabic. When the first homework arrived home during our first week of our first year of school, identical sets in English and Arabic, I was so excited. We were learning:

[English: A a is for apple ] and 25 more letters
[Arabic: أ (a) is forأسد (asad) which means lion] and 27 more letters
We made extra cards and played games of match, fish, snap and anything else I could think of. We made a larger set to have an Arabic and English word wall. Everyone was having lots of fun /learning whilst laughing’. We decided that if “making it fun, got it done” then that is how we would approach our whole school journey.

Aim: Our children will speak to their grandmothers in their own language.

Six years on, we have changed sides of the globe and we now are in a majority language Arabic and minority language (second language at school) English situation. Catch, whilst we learnt Arabic for six years in Australia and studied determinedly… our academic vocabulary is limited and the set of words learnt from a textbook for Arabic speaking children in an English speaking country is very different from the set of words needed to survive in an academic environment.

To compound our issue, my older two children, grade 4 and 8, surpassed my knowledge in Arabic about two years ago and our youngest just started grade 1. Whilst I try very hard every day to be of assistance, I really struggle. Luckily, their dad is an Arabic/English teacher so it takes him very little time to keep us all on track.

But, how do you help your kids when you realize the academic vocabulary you carefully organized for them, and the study you insisted on every single day is actually a whole other vocabulary than used in an Arabic culture setting. Even the fruits and vegetables you eat have a different set of names. Add in dialect and hey, I am ready to throw in the towel some days.

I have learnt to insist my husband gives a very clear set of instructions by page number in study to be covered. We approach much of our learning as you would a university textbook:

Copy the introduction to the topic/summary into your notebook and translate (or write in own words)
Find the key words in the introduction and underline in the chapter.
Now with a better understanding of the work we are trying to complete…
Read the introduction and notes of ‘what is covered in the topic’.
Translate to English as required. (or change unknown words on the page to known words)
Read the conclusion (if there is one) and translate
Read the chapter questions and translate
Now we are ready to investigate the rest of the words in the chapter. (My children are able to read them and understand about half of the words but with careful preparation, much of the rest is comprehensible – with a bit of dictionary assistance.)

http://localhost/raisingworld/2019/10/29/raising-self-regulated-focused-kids-who-listen/