Parenting

Children under the age of five should be limited to one hour of screen time a day, while under-twos should not be watching screens alone, new government guidance says.

It advises parents to steer clear of fast-paced videos and use screens together where possible. The guidance also suggests "screen swaps" - taking screens away to read stories together or playing simple games at mealtimes.

The guidance is the first evidence-backed, practical advice issued by the government, but ministers say it will be kept under review as more evidence emerges.

For many women in the U.S. and around the world, motherhood comes with career costs.

Raising children tends to lead to lower wages and fewer work hours for mothers – but not fathers – in the United States and around the world.

As a sociologist, I study how family relationships can shape your economic circumstances. In the past, I’ve studied how motherhood tends to depress women’s wages, something social scientists call the “motherhood penalty.”

I wondered: Can government programs that provide financial support to parents offset the motherhood penalty in earnings?

A couple of weeks ago, a video posted on TikTok by Paige Carter, a mother in Florida, went viral. Carter explained that she had thrown her daughter’s iPad out of the window when she had been misbehaving on the way to school, and she films herself retrieving the tablet, now with a cracked screen. The video has been watched 4.9m times, and Carter was congratulated in the comments, with one person writing “Learning Fafo at an early age: top tier parenting.” Welcome to the parenting trend that doesn’t seem to be disappearing: “Fuck around and find out.”

In another video, when a small child announces he is going to leave home, his mother says “see ya”, shuts the front door behind him, and turns off the outside light – then opens the door to him screaming and pounding to be let back in (it has been liked 1.5m times). He had learned, said his mother, “the meaning of Fafo”

Researchers have linked spending more time playing video games with a boost in intelligence in children, which goes some way to contradicting the narrative that gaming is bad for young minds.

While the difference in cognitive abilities was a small one and isn't enough to show a causal relationship, it is enough to be notable – and the 2022 study was careful to factor in variables including differences in genetics and the child's socio-economic background.

Meanwhile, watching TV and using social media didn't seem to have a positive or negative effect on intelligence. The research should prove useful in the debate over how much screen time is suitable for young minds.

geteilt von: https://feddit.org/post/23883263

People seem to like it (German): https://chaos.social/@markusseifert/115837668962928429

Paywall Bypass Link https://archive.is/7qwuZ

Because of time’s arrow, my daughter, who was once a toddler, is now a preteen. A new question thus arises: When should I let her get a smartphone? This problem isn’t new to me. I have two older kids, now in their 20s. Back in the day, I bought each of them an iPod Touch—essentially, a smartphone without the phone—when they were about her age, and then the full device at around the start of high school. But online life was different then. There was less pressure to be smartphone-connected all the time. Social media wasn’t yet as ubiquitous, or worrisome, as it is today. Now the stakes seem higher.

Today smartphones are as widespread as the concerns about their effects on young people’s brains. Psychologists have written best-selling books about how bad phones are for kids, and many schools have banned their use. Despite all this, no one can dispute the fact that phones and phone apps have entered every aspect of contemporary life. Even Jonathan Haidt, who aims to end the phone-based childhood, floats policies that would allow for a phone-based adolescence. The question is not whether your kid will ever get a smartphone, but rather how to manage its adoption in a way that will preserve the integrity of child, parent, school, and home life. And to that end, I believe I’ve found a good solution: Get your kid a watch.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/54748203

Just when I thought I couldn't love Bluey anymore I go to see if anyone has come up with a unicorse pattern and low-and-behold its the show itself.

tl;dr: Starting as toddlers, let them help without micromanaging. It will take too long and their results will be terrible. Be okay with that.

These complex, multistep activities require sustained focus, planning, problem-solving, and a commitment to working toward a goal—all valuable skills for anyone to develop. Put together, these skills may lead to strong executive function. For young children, chores can also be intrinsically rewarding. When a kid folds a pile of laundry, they’ve created order out of chaos. Seeing their success, children can start to develop a sense of self-competence and self-efficacy—the belief that they’ll succeed at a given task—which may boost their confidence.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/21039964

Does anybody here have any experience with the T-Mobile syncup watch 2? Any dos/donts/tips/tricks/lessons learned with regards to kids smartwatches? Please share your thoughts.

Hi! Tired father of a two year old here! I'm the primary caretaker of our daughter after preschool ends at 2:30. My wife and I both work during the day and really struggle with finding the time to make dinner at the end of a long work day. Does anyone have any recommendations on meal box services that aren't overly complicated? We tried Green Chef and another one which I can't remember, and while we liked the idea of cooking at home more, the recipes were too time intensive for one of us to be in the kitchen while the little one is running around the house. I often found their prep/cook time estimates to be incredibly inaccurate. Usually add on 15 additional minutes to what they quoted on the recipe cards.

Are there any other services out there that are more simple in their prep? Bonus difficulty, I'm a carnivore and she's a pescaterian who hates anything with carbs. I don't require meat for every meal, but like it from time to time.

I'm sure most parents here will understand the delicate dance that is walking the dog at 4, start dinner at 5, bath at 6:30, bed by 7:30.

We're expecting our first in a little over two months so I'm getting a bunch of qualified well wishes, and wanted to wish you all a great day as well! What are you doing today to celebrate?

Gopuff and candy company, Mars, have partnered to deliver free candy to homes on Oct. 31. The main link covers it somewhat like a 'news' story, but hey! Free candy! Direct link to corporate promo: https://mmshalloweenrescuesquad.com/

List of states/communities with gopuff service: https://www.gopuff.com/delivery/us

I'd like to introduce my app which I have been working on for about half a year, it's called Baby Journal and it's an end-to-end encrypted app for tracking your baby activities, like feeding, diaper changes and so on.

On iOS you can install it to your homescreen as a webapp, on Android you can either install it as a webapp or directly from Google Play. On both you can just run it from your browser. Neither has any advantage over the other, the content will be the same.

Links:

• baby-journal.app - the (optionally installable) webapp
• Google Play Store
• Backend source code
• App source code

Now onto the app itself!

The biggest feature is that it's entirely end to end encrypted and I as the server operator have no access to your unencrypted data. I'm of the opinion that the privacy of your kids should not be compromised for some company to make a quick buck.

What activities can the app track?

• feeding tracking - nursing (left and right breast separately), bottle, solid foods
• diaper changes - wet, poopy or both, you can also select the color and amount
• breast pumping - left and right breast separately
• sleeping
• temperature taking
• weight
• length
• milestones - with cute descriptions!
  • with ability to add custom milestones

And some cool features!

• tracker - just hit start on your activity and let the app count how long it takes
• multiple babies - if you have more than one bundle of joy, you can switch between them easily
• sharing with multiple other accounts - you can easily share your data with as many people as you want without compromising privacy
• shared tracking - if you use the app with multiple people, you can enable shared tracking - start tracking on one device, finish tracking on another
• data at a quick glance - on the main screen you can see when was your baby fed for the last time, when they had a diaper changed and so on
• various fine-tune settings - do you want to calculate the time since last feeding since the beginning of the feeding or since the end? Do you want to ignore small gaps between multiple feedings (for example 10 minutes while you switch from nursing to bottle) as one feeding session? Does water count as feeding? All configurable!
• daily summary - you can get a nice summary where you can see all the important data in a concise format

Currently the data can only be tracked in metric units, but imperial support is coming.

Note that the encrypted nature has one downside - if you don't export your account code and lose access to the app (for example your device breaks), there's no way to recover your account. I advise you to securely store your account code as soon as possible.

For advanced users there's also a self-hosting option! You can run your own backend and app. Or you can just run your own backend and point the official app to it. Currently there's not much documentation on how to do that, but if you need that, I can write something up.

Do let me know if you have any questions!

A spokesperson for the company responded to CBS News, however, saying that Infinant Health is planning to continue distributing its "Evivo powder product" for consumers to buy and intends "to work with the FDA toward approval of the use of our MCT oil product in hospital settings."

As of today, I have a 1 month old. She is amazing and I love her so much, but she's boring! Don't get me wrong, she's difficult and my wife and I haven't slept a good night in a month, but all she does is eat, sleep, and poop. There's basically no interaction.

I'm so looking forward to being able to laugh with her, play with her, and generally start teaching her the world.

How do you feel? What's your favorite stage of child development?

There's a big protest being organized across Canada to protest SOGI being taught in schools, and I'm fed up with it. There are so many vulnerable students who need to know that what they're experiencing is normal, and right-wing extremists are politicizing human rights and spreading manufactured controversy about children being shown pornography in schools.

The linked article is just one of many anti-SOGI protests happening across Canada on Wednesday.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up here is that some of these right-wing anti-SOGI [redacted; unkind] are parents of kids in our kids' classes, and a couple of them are close friends with my kids.

How do you handle that? Kids shouldn't be held accountable for their parents' beliefs. But what about playdates and birthday parties and such? Should we discuss the friendship? It feels wrong to ostracize the child. They deserve to feel safe and have friends.

Also, I'm thinking of taking time off work to counter protest, and making a sign like this one:

Not really related to parenting, but I think it's important kids feel supported and bigots are told their archaic world views are unwelcome. It'll be super awkward if a parent I know is standing on the other side of the protest.

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As my oldest goes into pre-k, in a formal school, it's a big transition to how we approach our family's relationship to the teachers, administrators, and the school as an institution. It's clear that the other parents are also in the same boat, with some unspoken undercurrent of competitiveness that I don't personally want to participate in.

Parents of older kids, what do you think other parents should know as their kids transition into elementary school?

My kid (8) isnt enrolled in any summer camps, and we've been doing our best to keep him active and entertained both at home/outdoors. But we're always looking for ideas for new fun stuff to do.

How do you and your kids do for fun summer break activities?

Our 2yo has sensitive skin, so we've always been really particular about drying his butt during a diaper change before putting the new diaper on, and we haven't had much problem with diaper rash since he was only a few months old.

But sometimes when he comes back from an afternoon with grandma and auntie, he'll have a good bit of diaper rash - well when we watch the change him, I noticed they don't bother to use the drying rag we include in the diaper change kit, just wipe clean and then strap up.

We also got some friends with a similar age kid, and they also don't dry, but they are big fans of baby powder, and out some of that on with every change. Their kid is a little bit younger but it sounds like they deal with rash fairly often (despite less sensitive skin generally).

So that brings me to the title - are people just really out here not drying butts? Is it weird that we always do? Is this not a normal part of the diaper change process?

What do yall think?

I'm not sure if this is the best place for this cross-post, nor do I know how many users here occupy the parent+tech-savvy/sysop intersectional space. But for anyone with a child and privacy focused, this webapp made by Rikudou_Sage might be of interest?

Keep in mind, it doesn't come with any instructions on self-hosting. It seems to leverage the serverless framework, though.

If this post is a bad fit, feel free to remove!

The github repos and the link to the Play Store app (it's a wrapper) can be found under the original post spoiler section below.

Our little one (18 months) started swim lessons about a month ago, so we're learning all about swim diapers and trying to avoid an accident until we get to the pool. We've changed in the locker rooms and got in the habit of just putting the swim diaper on in the trunk upon arrival. With a wiggly kid, that's just a pain but we dealt with it.

Last week, my wife was in the water and I stayed in the chairs where I overheard two of the other moms talking and one had an awesome suggestion we hadn't thought of. Put on the swim diaper at home, then put a regular diaper on over the swim diaper and take off the regular diaper upon arrival. Keeps everything contained, makes changing a lot easier, and we're in the pool a lot faster.

Curious to see what the community has and see if we can get some knowledge sharing in! What else have you got?