Parenting Toddlers Mistakes: Potty Training, Food, Siblings, and More

Got a toddler? Avoid these 9 parenting mistakes.By David Freeman
WebMD Feature

Children don't come with owner's manuals. Alas. Toddlers -- full of energy and eager to test your limits as well as their legs ---can be particularly tricky to parent. Here are nine parenting mistakes every mom and dad of a toddler should avoid.

Toddlers do best when they know what to expect, whether it's what time they bathe or go to bed or what consequences they'll face for misbehaving. The more consistent and predictable things are, the more resilient and agreeable a toddler is likely to be.

Fix it: As much as you can, keep regular routines for your child. Consistency can be a challenge when parents (or other caregivers) don't see eye to eye.

Not sure how best to react if your child dumps food on the floor or ignores bedtime? Sit down with your partner ahead of time to decide on an appropriate response -- and stick with it.

"You don't want to send mixed messages," says Tanya Remer Altmann, MD, the author of Mommy Calls: Dr. Tanya Answers Parents' Top 101 Questions about Babies and Toddlers and a pediatrician in private practice in Los Angeles. "You really want to be consistent."

It's delightful to spend time with the whole family. But some parents go overboard on family time.

"Kids cherish time alone time with one parent," says Thomas Phelan, PhD, a clinical psychologist in suburban Chicago and the author of several parenting books, including 1-2-3 Magic. "One-on-one time is fun for parents too, because there's no sibling rivalry to contend with."

Fix it: What's a good way to spend one-on-one time with a toddler? Phelan recommends simply getting down on the floor together and playing. At bedtime, enjoy a book or tell stories to your child.

Some parents jump in to help a toddler who is having trouble doing something. Before you do, consider the possibility that by helping your child complete a puzzle or put on a shirt, you may be sending the message that he/she can't do it alone -- in other words, that the child is incompetent.

"Parents who offer too much help may be sabotaging their young children's ability to become self-reliant," says Betsy Brown Braun, the Los-Angeles-based author of You're Not the Boss of Me.

Fix it: "We need to teach children to tolerate struggle," Braun says.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with offering praise and encouragement. "Be a cheerleader," Brown says. "Say, 'You can do this!'"

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Training of Teachers Is Flawed, Study Says

The National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group, is to issue a study on Thursday reporting that most student-teaching programs are seriously flawed. The group has already angered the nation’s schools for teachers with its plans to give them letter grades that would appear in U.S. News and World Report.

The council’s report, “Student Teaching in the United States,” rated 134 student-teaching programs nationwide — about 10 percent of those preparing elementary school teachers — and found that three-quarters of them did not meet five basic standards for a high-quality student-teaching program.

When the U.S. News rankings are published, the student-teaching programs will count for one-fifth to one-third of an education school’s grade, according to Kate Walsh, president of the council.

“Many people would say student teaching is the most important piece of teacher preparation,” Ms. Walsh said. “But the field is really barren in the area of standards. The basic accrediting body doesn’t even have a standard for how long a student teacher needs to be in the classroom. And most of the institutions we reviewed do not do enough to screen the quality of the cooperating teacher the student will work with.”

Many of the nation’s 1,400 education schools have taken issue with the council’s ranking project.

“This report will generate some attention and discussion, but we don’t know how valid the analysis is,” said Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “They ask for a lot of documents, reviewed by people we do not know, against rubrics we are not privileged to see.”

In some areas, like the length of student-teaching placement, Dr. Robinson said, the council’s standards are less rigorous than what many education schools require. In others, she said, the standards actually go against the current direction of education overhaul.

“A school can lose points for not having absolute control over the selection of the cooperation teacher,” she said. “But we think these clinical experiences should be crafted in partnership with the schools, not dictated by either the principal or the education school.”

This year, officials from 35 leading education colleges and graduate schools wrote to the editor of U.S. News, criticizing the council’s methodology, and complaining about the “implied coercion” in the initial plan to use open-records laws to get information the schools would not supply voluntarily — or, if the information was unavailable, give the schools an F.

Among the 134 schools in the report, 12 asked not to be included; the council included them anyway, using public records requests to get information about the public institutions, and indicating with an asterisk institutions for which some information was unavailable.

The ranking plan is more popular among state education officials. In 10 states, the chief education officer has specifically endorsed the council’s project.

“This is shaping up to be quite a battle royale, not just between the education schools and us, but between K-12 education and higher ed, since state school officers want this information, but education schools are fighting it,” Ms. Walsh said.

The pushback might delay the rankings, which were to be published late next year, she said.

“Our schedule was predicated on schools voluntarily complying, as they do with all other U.S. News and World projects,” Ms. Walsh said.

Because some of the standards on which the education schools were ranked are subjective, some institutions ranked “poor” said they disagreed with that rating. Ten programs, or 7 percent, were rated as having “model” design; 17 percent had “good” design, and the rest were rated “weak” or “poor.”

Fayneese Miller, dean of the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont, the largest teacher-training school in the state, said she could not understand why her school got a “poor” — worse than the other two Vermont schools ranked — when hers is the only education school in the state that exceeds all state standards, the only one with national accreditation and the one with the longest student-teaching placements.

“We have no problem about being evaluated, but as you can imagine, I am not at all pleased about the way they conducted the study,” Dr. Miller said. “This has major implications for us in terms of our ability to attract and place our students.”

The council, however, said that, like many education schools, the University of Vermont’s did not meet its standards because it left principals too big a role in choosing cooperating teachers, and did not do enough to ensure that they are effective teachers who will be good mentors.

At New York University, rated “weak” — along with CUNY Lehman and SUNY Cortland, the other two New York institutions included in the report — Mary M. Brabeck, dean of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, also took issue with council’s methodology, saying that she would grade the report “poor.”

“It relies on standards that appear arbitrary and unsupported by research, and it uses them to draw incorrect conclusions,” Dr. Brabeck said in an e-mail.

For example, she said, N.Y.U.’s elementary education students must have four different placements, and 15 weeks of student teaching, more than required to meet the council’s standards. But because of the way the placements are structured, they are counted as not meeting the standards.

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The Significance of Solar Training Courses

There is an increasing need for energy and power supplies in the modern world. More and more technological advances and innovations have enhanced the need for more supplies in different countries of the world.

The most common source of power supply in the present times is that of electricity. There is a great deal of stress on this however due to over consumption and even a further increasing one. As a means of recourse to alternate sources of power, there are several forms of renewable energy forms that are harnessed for productive uses.

Renewable Energy Training

Several courses are available in this sphere. There are different institutes across countries where comprehensive training programs are imparted in the different areas of alternate energy sources.

There are various renewable sources like wind, solar energy, waterfalls, tides and several others. However, there are techniques that have to be employed in harnessing these sources for the production of power and redirecting the same for domestic or industrial usage.

A comprehensive training program will equip a learner with all the relevant theoretical and practical knowledge to set up installations and produce power supplies to fulfill the need for commercial and domestic establishments in different regions of the world.

Solar Training Course

One of the chief sources of power in this world comes from the Sun. the heat and rays of the Sun in the right proportion is chiefly responsible for the possibility of life on earth. That is why for several decades there has been research and a constant struggle to use the solar heat for the production of energy supplies.

There are is a successful system of photovoltaic panels and heat engines that can be installed and utilized for a constant and steady source of power generation. The important aspect is that the cost for this is much less than what you pay your power supply companies for your usual requirements.

There is sufficient heat and electricity generation capacity in solar energy source that can be put to use in your entire commercial establishment as well as domestic requirements. In addition, to help you in this process there are solar training courses in different institutes of your country.

These courses are a comprehensive theoretical and practical guidance programs that will equip you with necessary knowledge as well as training.

You will need to know in detail about the PV panels that will have to be set up for solar energy sources and supply. Apart from that, the sizing of the panels will have to be done in an appropriate manner to optimize heat production.

The solar panel installation training which forms and important part of the course teaches you about its maintenance and upkeep also. There are accessories in this process like batteries, chargers and invertors, which will need to be maintained and kept in order.

A successful solar energy supply system can adequately take care of all your energy requirements by a substantial amount. It is less in cost and pollution free in addition to a steady source of supply as well.

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Atia Training - Be A Smart And Sound Technical Assistant

Have you any time called any technical support call center for getting your computer corrected? If so how about the response you got from the technical support agent who warmly greeted and attended your call? Were you really satisfied with the response and the solutions you got through the call or were there any gap that must be filled to get better solution or remedies to the problem? Most of them are answering to this question in a very doubtful manner regarding the level of satisfaction that can be got out of the process. It is true that most of the technical agents are recruited without actually testing their knowledge on the recruited process and about their actual previous skills. This can be considered as the serious issues as most of the non technical people in the world require strong help from those technical people in order to move normally in their way without many troubles with the help of their electronic gadgets.

Also the people recruited to the post of the technical support staffs must have some botheration on the skills they are possessing and must find some alternate ways by which they can definitely go ahead with great improvements in their skill set. There are many programs available online that are actually provided with the aim of helping people to get more knowledge on any respective field without costing much. There are many people who are actually very fond of learning many new things in order to shape up their career to the most secure platform. There are many certification test conducted by various educational bodies in both the technical and non technical fields in order to help the person to be confident on certain sectors of their career. It must be made compulsory that all those aspiring to make a career on the technical field must get through the certification exam so that they can serve the clients with the greatest hospitality. You can search on internet to find many such certification examinations that cover various topics like hardware, software, networking, security, operating systems, and laptops and so on. You should definitely take an initiative to enroll in at least one certification test to get through at the highest score so that you can really shine in your profession with good promotional grades.

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Article Submitted On: November 09, 2010

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Managing Change Effectively - Utilizing eLearning for Corporate Training Programs

Change is one of the most talked about topics in business. This is probably because there are few things that are more important to the continued success of an organization. As Retired Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Eric Shinseki, put it, "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." Change is an integral part of all organizations. It is like oxygen to a person; it is absolutely required to keep organizations alive. The biggest challenge with change is the poor reputation that surrounds it. People often complain about change. Some people fear it. Others fight, resist, or even secretly work to undermine it. Is change really that bad?

The truth of the matter is that people do not really dislike change. Most people would not resist change if they believed it would benefit them. Ask yourself this question: would employees of an organization resist change if the change provided them double their salary with twice as much time off? Not likely. They would probably be willing to take one for the team and accept without a fight. So it is important to consider why some change is resisted. Resistance to change commonly occurs when people think the change will negatively impact them in some way. Change that requires people to stop, start or change a habit is also often met with resistance. So, how do organizational leaders minimize resistance to change?

The most practical solution for overcoming resistance to change is effective online corporate training programs. Many times organizations send out memos and hold meetings or training sessions to try to communicate change information to employees. Unfortunately, many employees do not get the memos or miss the meetings and training and, therefore, are left in the dark. Soon afterwards, fear and resistance grows. A more effective method is to use an online solution that allows for the delivery and subsequent tracking of all important communications and training related to the change. Whether companies want to share documents or training videos with employees, the information is ready and waiting for the employee when they need it. Following dissemination, managers throughout the organization are able to use the system to track who has or has not reviewed the information. The key to decreasing resistance to change is to provide information long before the change occurs. With an online solution, important training and information can be developed and sent to employees early. They can then provide training for the changes will benefit the organization. Additional training can be offered on the benefits of implementation. There can be updates as to how the change is being received by the organization. What positive benefits are coming from the change? In addition, it becomes possible to receive feedback from the field using online training systems. This is incredible valuable as it will allow companies to slightly alter course if needed. It can act as an early warning system or feedback system.

Our organization offers a turnkey system to implementing an online learning solution which can effectively communicate information throughout the entire organization. Online corporate training programs like BIStrainer can train thousands of people per day, in multiple languages, in different countries to bring focus to effectively implementing change within your organization.

If your organization is looking for online learning solutions contact us and learn why thousands of users prefer our online system. You satisfaction is virtually guaranteed!

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