I know there is a lot of violence in games these days, and it kind of disturbs me. I know, I know, I am the mom that lets her nine year old daughter watch ‘Alien’ movies. Video games are different, though!

I personally think movies are less likely to cause problems with violent behavior. This is because the child does not get drawn into the movie as much as they do with the games. My kids know they are watching a movie, they know it is pretend, and I very seldom see them act violently or copy stuff out of scary or violent movies.

I have pretty smart children! Video games, on the other hand, well, lets just say that I don’t let them play the ones that have role playing. We like the animations, like Crash and PacMan and Turbo racing games, but the role playing ones are very dark and encourage the child to pretend they are in the game.

This is where I think the problem is, and the difference between movies and games. A movie just is there. It is a story, a show being put on. A violent role playing video game really encourages you to BE the violent person IN the game, and I think that can mess with kid’s heads.

Also, you get the feeling that fighting is no big deal, that you can hit someone and keep hitting, and get hit yourself and it won’t really hurt. I don’t think that is healthy. What about you?

I know when I was a kid it was all Sesame Street, Mighty Mouse and Tom and Jerry. Then when we got bigger maybe we would watch Little House on the Prairie or Full House. Star Trek TOS was about as cutting edge as it got.

Today, however, cartoons and youth oriented shows aren’t confined to Saturday mornings and one hour in the afternoon. We have Sponge Bob, Ben Ten and Avatar the Last Airbender at all hours, and the Disney channel runs non stop.

Hannah Montana and the stars of High School Musical have replaced Mary Kate and Ashley as today’s role models for girls. Drake and Josh rule the boys tube, with the Naked Brothers Band running a close second. (The WHAT Brothers Band??? Yeah, that was MY reaction, too.)

I got in a disagreement because my husband was watching ‘Alien’ the other day, and my almost ten year old was home. My friend said in a shocked voice “But - they say the ‘F’ word!!! And it’s scary!!!!”

I looked at her and shrugged. “My daughter knows better than to copy that,” I said. “I am more worried about her watching that stupid Raven, iCarly and Zoey 101. Do you hear the way those kids talk on those shows? They are mean and disrespectful, and they are ten years old going on nineteen. All they care about is their hair and their clothes, and who is dating who. And anyway, my daughter knows the aliens aren’t real. My real problem is Miranda Cosgrove! At least Sponge Bob doesn’t say anything worse than ‘Oh, barnacles!’ SHE calls her brothers ‘the boobs’.”

Needless to say, that didn’t go over so well. My friend thinks I am a horrible mom for letting my daughter watch ‘Alien’. I hold that it is no worse than watching the teenybopper shows, and at least it doesn’t pretend it’s real.

I don’t forbid my kids from watching their fave shows, but I DO try to give them a balanced idea of how far they are from reality. Ten year old girls don’t usually live in loft apartments with artsy older brothers. Twin boys don’t get to grow up in a hotel suite. And don’t you EVER tell me to ‘talk to the hand’. My hand will be talking to your bottom!!

Play-date rules are a necessary part of staying sane. How many of you have nearly sat down and cried at the end of a play-date, and vowed never to have another one?

Rules for children are important, but you can’t guarantee the other parents will feel the same way. You need to make it clear that the rulses of the house apply to their children too before they drop them off at your house for an afternoon or a sleepover.

Make a card with the basics:

Our House Rules -

No hitting
No cursing
No calling names
No running in the house

And so on

I’m sure we all have certain hard and fast rules!  Don’t be embarrassed to hand the parents a card letting them know how children in your house are expected to behave!

Thing about kids, they will try and push it. Mine already know I don’t care if we have company - if they deserve a time out or a spanking, they will get one!

Of course I wouldn’t spank anyone else’s kids, but I will demand a time out for bad behavior, or I will call their parents and send them home if we have a serious problem.

Guess what? Play-dates at my house go quite smoothly. My kids tell their friends that I am dead serious if I have to threaten, and everyone behaves pretty well!

Have you found the first month of school to be stressful for both you and your kids?  See if you can pinpoint the problem areas and deal with them one at a time.

I know my daughter is a slow riser in the morning. We had a few battles over it, and I finally decided we do everything the night before - pick out her clothes, pack her backpack, even assemble her lunch and brush and braid her hair.

In the morning all she ahs to do is slip into her clothes, unbraid her hair and put it in a wavy ponytail (almost no brushing) and eat a quick granola bar and a piece of fruit or a bowl of cereal. Toss her lunch in her pack, and she is good to go!

My son has his rough time when he gets home. Since they have trampoline and tumbling after school, he is exhausted and starving when he gets home, and has an hour to wait until dinner.

We deal with that by letting have some of his veggies for a snack! Carrots and dip are a great way to take the edge off of his hunger without spoiling his appetite, and then he can relax and watch a cartoon until dinner.

Once you fine tune your daily routine, the stress will go away! You just have to figure out the little details to make each school day stress free.

It’s only a few short weeks until school begins! Here are some terrific tips to make those first weeks run as smoothly as possible.

Make sure bedtime is firmly established. I let my children stay up later in the summer, so we have to get back in the habit of going to bed at a decent hour as school days approach!  A simple way is to drag them out of bed at dawn every day for a week. I tempt mine with a special breakfast, and follow up with a trip to the park in the afternoon. By dinnertime they are starting to get droopy eyed! They are more than happy to crawl into bed, and I don’t have to listen to “But Mom, I’m not sleepy!”

Put all the school supplies in order, and label them for the first day of school. Decide on an outfit ahead of time, and decree it is not to be worn before then. I always make sure my kids get a brand new outfit a few weeks before school starts! I let them wear it once to make sure we have no surprises (the collar is itchy, or the sleeves are uncomfortable) then I wash it and hang it up until the big day.

Try to find out what time lunch will be served at their school, and start serving lunch at home around the same time. This will get them used to eating at that time each day, and you can see how much breakfast they need to hold them over till lunchtime! By the way, my daughter hates breakfast, but we have come to an understanding - she eats a small one and I stock her favorite cereal and granola bars!

If your child prefers a sack lunch like mine, check into a thermally insulated lunch pack! I swear by these - I can feel assured that their food will still be cold when they get ready to eat, and have a lot more options for their lunches since a frozen gel pack keeps it all refrigerated. My kids watch the school menu, and generally pick one or two meals a week from school, and I pack a nutritious lunch for them on the other days.

Go ahead and lay down rules for after school. Have a place set aside for them to study if they bring work home, and hooks for backpacks by the front door so they can hang their stuff up right away. I keep a big box for completed homework under my desk so they can save their favorite school projects; they can bring them to show me but then they go in the box. At the end of the year they get to pick out a few keepers!

Bugs are terrific for teaching your child to love nature and respect good qualities at the same time. You can show your kids an ant or a bee, and watch them demonstrate teamwork and industry. This makes a great lesson for any child!

My kids catch bugs with abandon, all summer long, and I myself used to run a tidy summer business as a child, keeping the local science shop stocked with insects for the high school kids’ entomology projects!

A favorite present for any child is a bug catching set. A wide mouthed butterfly net and a jar are basic, while a magnifying glass to look at tiny details is a bonus. Fireflies are always a winner. These little black bugs with their light up tails make a great nightlight for one night - just remember to leave air holes, and set them free in the morning!

My daughter has a ladybug passion - she has insisted that every birthday cake since age two be adorned with the little red bugs sporting shiny black spots! Her quilt has ladybugs too, and she is pestering me for the matching rug.

Teach your children to love nature, and see it in the smallest bug that crosses their path!

Has the novelty of being out of school for the summer worn off? Are your kids bored and cranky?  I know mine are!

I have had to be inventive, and come up with ideas to keep my youngsters busy!  Printable activities off of the web are proving a good way to keep their minds sharp and some sort of study habit going. They sit down for an hour every afternoon in the heat of the day, and ‘study’.

Activities for preschoolers are so simple - go for a walk and see how many leaves you can find, or take a trip to the park on a nice day and take a picnic lunch. Invite a few friends for an impromptu party! Many churches also have a free bible school summer program for all ages of children.

I am a firm believer in teaching children that bored is a naughty word! Did you know, some household chores might seem fascinating to kids - I let mine scrub the tile kitchen floor with sponges taped to their feet, and they have a blast! They know the word ‘bored’ coming out of their mouth means chore time.

If I lived nearer the beach, summer camps might be an option - but here in town I found that the local pool has one night a week that is ridiculously cheap for admission - and they show a free movie. Like a drive-in, but I guess it’s a ‘swim-in’!

Look for free or cheap kids summer activities in your area - you might be surprised what you could find!

When it comes down to kids, outdoor fun is sometimes the only answer. It keeps them occupied in the morning, and wears them out enough for bed at night!

Stock up on some fun outdoor toys for your kids!  All of mine can play croquet, even as little as they are. We throw the Frisbee and skip rope, too!

If you can, invest in a little badminton set or a volleyball net. You can start with it close to the ground for the little ones, and raise it as they grow.

Try to find a book of old outdoor children’s games. Remember ‘Red Rover’ and “Capture the Flag?” These games are in danger of extinction as television and video games continue to sap away our kids’ energy and brain power.

As Fall arrives and it gets cooler, my kids are always outside!  They are playing with the basketball hoop or kicking a soccer ball, and I am glad they get good exercise.

We make a rule about TV and video games in my house, and they only can have so much, so I try to keep it off until late in the afternoon when the outdoors is too hot.

If you have a minute, join your kids for a quick game of catch or freeze tag - you might be surprised how much fun it still is!

When our babies are little, we want to hold them every minute! It never seems too much, and our little ones grow so fast we don’t want to miss even a second. As they get older, however, we start to ask ourselves, do we hover too much? It is important for our children to learn how to be content by themselves.

I was a prime candidate for over-mothering. I held my daughter all the time, and she probably would have ended up spoiled. Once again, my husband came to the rescue. He tore a ligament in his knee when our daughter was four months old, and I had to go work outside the home for several months while he played Mr. Mom!

We lived in a pretty big house for just the three of us, and the nursery was a large room in the front of the house with a door that opened into the living room. He would feed her breakfast, put the baby gate in the doorway, and plop her on the floor with her toys. She played happily while he did household chores.

I had no idea she had learned to occupy herself. I had a day off, and was carrying her around on my hip, and my hubby said, “Why don’t you put her down? It’s her baby!”

I was amazed to see that she didn’t cry when I set her down, but scooted over to her toys and sat up to play! I asked how he got her to play by herself, and he said that he had started out just putting her down on the floor for a few minutes, while he did a little chore like hang up the laundry.

After a while, she got used to her playtime in the morning, and would crawl and play in the nursery for over an hour before coming to the gate and fussing.  I couldn’t believe it; most of my friends’ children followed them around and cried constantly to be picked up and held.

My husband still does a lot of the child care to this day; he is not the ‘softie’ Mommy is, and all our children are independent thinkers and able to entertain themselves very well!

Most parents don’t even consider starting to teach their children about colors and shapes until they are able to talk. I found out that my children knew the difference in colors at a very young age - almost by accident!

I thought my daughter was a genius when she could pair her socks by color at eighteen months. This year, my son amazed me even more!

My little boy is thirteen months old. He knows the difference between red, blue, green, orange, purple and yellow. He can’t talk yet, but he knows! How can I tell? You won’t believe me if I tell you, but here goes…

I first found out when he was only eleven months old, and had just discovered Fruit Loops. I noticed that if I gave him a little handful, he would eat all the red ones first. Next was blue, then green, and on until only the yellow ones were left! I couldn’t believe it.

The story gets better though. Last week, Fruit Loops came out with a special edition of their cereal. Included is a new ‘berry flavored’ loop, which has blue, red and purple swirls. I didn’t think anything about it, until I gave him his morning handful on his tray.

I was working at my desk, and heard a growling sound! I turned around, and he was leaning over the tray with his nose almost touching it, poking at one of the new ‘berry’ loops with a finger and going ‘Grrrrrrrr!’

He looked up and gave me a glare, then picked up the offending loop and threw it across the room! I laughed so hard! He then started off as usual, eating all the red loops, and whenever he found one of the new multicolored ones, he would stare at it and growl, and overboard it would go! I guess he didn’t like that he couldn’t put it in a category…

I know, this sounds like a made-up story, I probably wouldn’t believe it myself if it hadn’t seen it myself - but it’s true!

Watch your kids every day, even when they are tiny - you might be surprised at the things they have learned, even if they can’t tell you about them!