Kids and Technology

By Stacy DeBroff 

Set limits on TV, computer, and electronic games to get your child to
engage in more active, rather than passive, play. Even educational
television and games limit your child’s imagination. When the TV goes off,
your child can rediscover imaginary play with Legos, blocks, toys, and board
games.

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Text Talk

By Stacy DeBroff

While giving us a new way to communicate, the world of IM has also given usa new language. IM (instant messaging), IMs (the messages themselves), IMing (sending IM messages), and its past-tense form IMed are now verbs and nouns commonly found in our children’s vocabularies. IM’s extensive lingo is based on an ever-growing list of acronyms (POS = parent over shoulder, LOL = laughing out loud, BRB = be right back, L8R = later), icons such as smiley faces and frowns to express emotions, and deliberate misspellings. Instant
messaging has become the high-tech version of passing notes, as students with computer access in the classroom use the Internet to zip messages to each other during the school day.

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Confidence to Make Friends

By Stacy DeBroff 

Before you step in to confront the problem yourself, it’s better to see if you can help your child to do it herself. Learning how to stand up for one’s self is a skill important for dealing with many situations in life.

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How to Deal with Rejection

By Stacy DeBroff 

Not making the cut for a sports team can be a major let-down to kids, who are used to when they're little endless praise and being told that they can
accomplish anything they wish. These moments become even more painful when the child has spent years training and rising within his sport, only to be
cut at the elite, competitive or later levels. Additionally, this can have a major impact on the friendships he has formed, and drastically change a social world that is so often formed around sports.

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Kids Need to Fit in

By Stacy DeBroff 

Teaching good social skills is especially important for children who have
difficulty making or maintaining friendships. Often these children have
characteristics or personalities that make them difficult to get along with,
like short tempers, difficulty cooperating with others, or trouble knowing
how to respond to social cues. Teaching good social skills and appropriate
behavior in social situations is especially important for these children.

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Cyber Bullies

By Stacy DeBroff 

In the past two years alone, IM has gained worldwide recognition for its revolution of interpersonal communications—and kids have led the movement in adopting all this innovative technology has to offer. But as parents we struggle to plug into the instant messaging world that has become as much second nature to our kids as it is foreign terrain to us!

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