Noah was Sick and Child Health Tips

This past weekend Noah hit two milestones. I am not happy about these milestones but I knew it was going to happen at some point. The first milestone that makes you a worried parent was his very first ear infection. He also had Pink Eye.  It’s common to get an ear infection and Pink eye at the same time because everything is so close together. He was miserable. His eyes were so red and he screamed about his ears hurting. I had to take him to the doctor after keeping him home two days from school. Sure enough he was sick. The doctor basically looked at him and said he has pink eye and looked in his ears and he had an ear infection. That was that. She handed me a prescription for Augmentin aka the super expensive antibiotic, that no store includes in free antibiotics.  So this is milestone number two, he had his very first prescription. Any other illness he has had was treatable with over the counter stuff. He is extremely healthy. *Knocks on wood twice*. The two different places I went the pharmacists were impressed when I said it was his very first prescription when they asked me if he had been there before. 

I thought I would share some tips on keeping your children healthy.

Wash hands after going to the bathroom and before you eat. You can also wash your hands when you come home from the grocery store.

 Parents you are the example, if you start a routine your child will follow

If you are eating something with nuts wash your hands after, so you don’t accidently make someone else sick.

Take multivitamins every day

Eat healthy and drink a lot of milk and water

Keep your hands to yourself, don’t share hairbrushes, lip balms etc, with your friends. They may be sick.

Be aware of what sicknesses are going around where your child goes to school

Keep doctor’s appointments and well checkups.

If you choose to vaccinate, keep up to date on their shots

Don’t share drinks or share food with others

If your child gets sick, remind them to:

Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze and throw away used tissues.

Stay home from school or daycare until you don’t have a fever or at least a day or two with a cold.

Sometimes when you are sick you miss out on fun things like field day or a trip to the playground but you don’t want to make your friends sick too.

Rest as much as possible, even if you think you feel better, you still need rest.

Even if your mom pays extra for them to flavor your meds and it tastes bad, you still need to take it.

Parents don’t stress, sickness happens. It’s usually just a germ they picked up. Remember the more
children your child is in contact with, the more likely they will get sick.

For more health tips and great information about health check out Molina Healthcare.

The opinions in this article are my own. I do not work for, or with, any brand mentioned in this article, nor do I have any official relationship with them.  I have a relationship with GigaSavvy, for whom I create original editorial content. 

Take Charge of your Child's Screen Time with iParent.TV

As a mother I am very cautious about what Noah is exposed to. I am always worried that he is going to see or hear something that will scare him.  He likes to watch shows that aren’t on Disney Jr. or Nick Jr. sometimes and I often wonder if what he is watching is good for him. He likes to watch the Science Channel.  We are a Christian family, so I try and make sure he doesn’t believe that we evolved from monkeys or that the Big Bang really happened. It is easy just to have him watch those shows with me or to kind of tell what it is about by reading the description.  Noah also likes to have time on my tablet.  He loves downloading new apps to play.  I have noticed before that some of the apps he downloads don’t have nudity or violence, but some of them have questionable ads on them. My son doesn’t need to be exposed to dating sites. He has downloaded apps that have some violence. Those apps were removed. He doesn’t understand the dangers of those games. I don’t have parental controls on it. It is connected to the internet and even my Facebook account.  I need to know which apps are ok and which ones are not.  Thankfully there is iParent.TV.  It will help give parents a piece of mind when it comes to apps, smart tv or social networks.

I have had the internet since I was 12. I am 32 now. I was exposed to some pretty unsettling things in my 20 years online.  When I was first online, there were only message boards. Chat rooms didn’t even exist yet. I remember being ten years old and a guy asking me what my bra size was. I was a naïve kid and I had no clue about bra sizes. Even then there were dangers. Chat rooms don’t really exist anymore, now there is Facebook. Those creeps out there are still targeting children. They aren’t doing it in public anymore. They are sending messages to children and trying to groom them. I was a 13 year old girl and I knew what it felt like to just want to fit in. Noah will not have any social media until he is 16. I know that sounds crazy but it’s not a risk I want to take. Even then I will have the password. Unless Noah gives me a reason not to trust him, I will. I just don’t trust the creatures in the computer. 

Here is more information from iParent.TV:

What is iParent.TV? If kids are awake, they are probably on a smartphone, in front of a smart TV, downloading apps, or posting to social networks. And most likely parents have no idea what they are doing. Founded by author, pastor and father Craig Gross, iParent.TV is a yearly, subscription-based website for teaching and informing parents on all things tech, mobile, devices, websites and apps for kids. The site is currently in development and expected to launch in July 2014.

The Problem is most parents don’t have an inside track to tech or social media dangers, let alone how to safeguard their kids against them.

58 percent of 10- to 12-year-old kids believe they know how to hide their online activities from their parents.

46 percent of kids said they would change their online behavior if they knew their parents were paying attention.

iParent.TV is designed to keep parents ahead of the tech curve. It will help parents understand, get involved and safeguard their children in the ever-evolving tech world. iParent.TV educates parents with all the latest trends via websites, social media, apps and devices.

 It started with a group of dads who felt like their 9 year olds knew more about tech than they did. They were right. But their idea will help change that forever for all parents. Once launched, iParent.TV will have hundreds of videos and product reviews that are current, cutting edge and trending, keeping parents who subscribe ahead of the tech curve.

How it will work? iParent.TV will be a subscription-based site costing $49 per year for parents to access videos, reviews, how-tos, and live chat support. It will be the largest website on the Internet helping parents understand what’s safe and what’s not in the world of tech. The founders of iParent.TV are currently raising funds through Indiegogo, offering interested individuals the opportunity to become early adopters with special subscription rates through mid-March. The website is scheduled to officially launch in July 2014.

I consider myself to be very tech savvy but I can always learn something new or be reminded of something I may have forgot. So even if you think you know everything, consider iParent.TV as an investment to your child’s safety.

You can save on your iParent.TV subscription by becoming an early bird subscriber. The early bird price is $29. 

Order your subscription early  iParent on Indiegogo 

For more information visit the iParent.TV website 

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Check out iParent.TV's YouTube channel for great videos and information.

How To Monitor Your Kids Online – Gecko Monitor

We all know of the dangers lurking around the digital corners of the internet, especially when it comes to letting kids loose online. Of course, sometimes we can do everything we can do avoid these unwanted websites, but occasionally there's no avoiding them. There's also another side to the issue – Kids curiosity. Whether children mean to click something or not, curiosity sometimes gets the better of us all, which means sometimes those dangers are unavoidable.

But luckily, help is at hand. When I talk to people about how to introduce kids to the world of the internet I talk about a 3 step process; Control, Monitor and Trust. The first step – Control, is the first introductory stage to the web. It means controlling what your kids can access and filtering what they see. Applications like Net Nanny can put a lock on internet browsing, meaning any webpages that contain profanity, adult material or a number of other questionable topics are blocked, and on some 'allowed' websites swear words and marked out.

Of course, there's no right age at which you should allow your children free reign over the net, and every parents opinions will be different. But at some point it is going to happen, and this (along with a few other situations) is where is recommend stage two – Monitor. Monitoring your kids online is a great way of letting them have their digital freedom, while at the same time maintaining some control and peace of mind. You can check over what they've been looking at at any time, even without them knowing if you wish.

Gecko Monitor makes this process easy and manageable. The software, once installed, will run silently in stealth mode (or visible if you wish) monitoring everything that occurs on the computer. When you wish to review the activity logs, you can open the software with a secret key combination and password.

When you view the logs you'll be able to see everything that has happened while you've been away from the computer. Gecko Monitor, will monitor and report on all of the following:

• All applications used.
• All websites visited.
• All documents opened, created, saved and deleted.
• Anything copied and pasted.
• Any documents printed.
• All keystrokes entered.

The software will also log the times and dates of all activities. You can either review the logs on your home computer or have them sent to your email address to view from a remote location. Gecko Monitor has a free trial available on the website.

The third and final stage is of course – Trust. At this point (as hard as it may be!) trust must prevail over monitoring and control. Hopefully with the help of the above software getting to that stage might be a little bit easier!

Local News Shows Commercial for Adult store during 5 pm News

Today, started out like any other normal day. I was watching the news at 5 pm on RTV6, cause that is the same channel Judge Judy is on. I noticed a commercial, I think it was the music or something but I was watching it and I was appalled at what I saw. It was a commercial with a man and a woman wearing lingerie, I am not talking some little nightie, like a baby doll, but trashy lingerie, almost see through. It was disgusting. The man and woman were all over each other too. At first I as thought it was like a cable glitch or something, til I saw that it was really a commercial!

It was like Sugar and Spice and Everything nice. It was an ad for an adult sex store. Yes, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. That’s really what it is. Really? Really? It’s just after 5 pm. This is a local station, not cable, during the news none the less. How many times have you watched the news with your children in the room? Maybe while you were cooking dinner? Yeah probably all the time, like me, I like to know what’s going on in the world besides where Dora is going to that day or what kind of math Team Umi Zoomi is going to use to help the kids in Umi City.

I am very protective of what my four year watches. I keep the filth of the world away from my son’s eyes. You know there is a ton of it on TV. I really am upset that RTV6 would accept advertising for the adult store and show it when 99% of kids are awake when their parents watch the news at 5 pm. Ok maybe 11 pm news would be ok….not that I want to see that, but seriously. It would be more likely that a ton of kids wouldn’t see it. Think about it, We all watch the news, we don’t put our kids in another room to do so. It is really disgusting that they have to be exposed to that trash. Seriously it was bordering on soft core porn. Isn’t there some kind of law against this? Something to do with the FCC I believe. I think RTV6 should be ashamed of themselves for exposing our children to lewd and sexual commercials.

Thankfully, my son wasn’t in the room at the time. If he would have been I would be on the phone with the station, giving them a piece of my mind. I am sure thousands of kids saw that commercial. There are only 3 news stations. They have things like Call 6 for Help. Who am I gonna call when they show SMUT? Their slogan is On your side…. More like on your side to morally corrupt your children.

Do you have ID cards for your children?

As I mentioned before, I love going to the county fair, one year we went they had a booth for children to get ID cards made. I thought that was a great idea so, baby Noah and I got in a long line and waited for our turn. They handed me a free ID card with Noah’s fingerprint on the back. They say to update it every year so he needs a new one but I still carry it in my wallet. ID cards have become a very popular thing, just think about how many different places have ID cards beyond the scope of the state you live in. Schools have started having the students wear ID cards and teachers too. Employers have their employees wear them for security reasons. I am sure if there are many other places that require ID cards.

There seems to be a large turnover rate in employees so it would be smart for them to invest in id card software so it is easy to input new information makes a new one every time someone decides it is time to move on from a workplace. It might be a good idea for daycares to have ID cards for both the parents and the kids so the right child goes home with the right parent or caregiver. Some daycares are so big that it could be hard to keep track if someone was new or was filling in another class. I think it would be cool to have a picture of the child and the parent on both of the cards. You never can be too careful. If a business had a printer that would definitely be possible, I think. Do you have to carry an non state issued ID card? Do you have ID cards for your children?

Cyber Safety Tips

Everything we do these days is on computers; we get a great deal of our information from the internet. Growing up we were one of the few families that had the internet I knew of. I remember being in the basement when I was in 5th grade sitting on the internet message boards, back before chat rooms, talking to strangers about different things. Not everything I came across was appropriate for my age but I was naïve and I didn’t even know what they were talking about. It wasn’t really crude but it was like what is your bra size. I was definitely not sure how to answer it. The internet was newer back then, there wasn’t as many things going on as there is now.

I think that it is important to teach your children about cybersafety. I think it is as important as teaching them not to talk to strangers in real life. I think that the internet is a very valuable tool if it is used properly. I thought I would share with you some tips I have learned throughout the years of being on the internet and keeping our kids safe. As you all know I am big on safety and protecting kids from the dangers in the world.

Tip #1 Place your computer in a common area so you can know what is going on at all times with your child. That is really important to know who your child is talking to.

Tip #2 Teach your children to not talk to strangers online no matter how nice they sound. Kids are extremely trusting and it is important that you limit their buddy lists, friends lists etc, and NEVER meet someone they talk to on the internet.

Tip #3 Use Parental Controls and monitor what your kids do online. Some people would think that is invading their child’s privacy but I feel that the internet is a privilege that needs to be earned.

Tip #4 Be open with your child about the internet. If they seem to become upset or withdrawn after spending time on the computer, make it a point to find out what happen. They could be the victim of cyber bullying or have some other problem going on.

I think with these 4 tips you can make the internet a safer place for your children. There are many wonderful websites out there where you can learn anything at your fingertips. Just think of all the libraries you would have to visit to have the access to all the knowledge of the internet. I hope you all share these tips with your family and if you have any to add please comment.

I went to Wal-mart

Tonight, I went to Wal-mart. I thought it would be like any other of my many Wal-mart trips I had been on before. I was wrong. Nothing terrible happened but, it could have been really scary. I was shopping with Noah and we were getting ready to head to the check out. I observed a little girl who was no more than 5 if that, running around the store yelling Mommy? Mommy? I started to carefully watch her and see what she was doing. After a few minutes of waiting to see if she was claimed by a grownup I started following her. I was so scared that something would happen to her. I noticed no one was stopping her and asking any questions. After pretty much chasing her with my shopping cart and Noah in the cart. I asked her where is your mommy honey? She responded Chicago. I asked her where is the grown up that was with her? I didn’t understand what she said so I told her to show me.

Well after about 10 or so minutes she found the grown up she was with, who by the way was shopping like it was no big deal that she had no idea where the child was. She wasn’t even looking for her. I kept thinking what if I didn’t follow her? What if I didn’t ask her? Someone could of taken that little girl and been long gone by the time “grandma” would of known the child was gone. I couldn’t find any employees around either. I was half tempted to call 911. It all thankfully worked out, and she found her grandma and hopefully she will keep an eye on her during the rest of their shopping trip and every other trip they take.

Keep an eye on your kids; especially your young kids at the store. If you see a young child without an adult or looking for their parent, please stop whatever you are doing and help the child get back to them safely. I know it might be a nuisance but it is worth it. You could even save that child’s life.

Halloween SAFETY TIPS and REMINDERS!!

It’s almost Halloween. I love Halloween it is such a fun holiday. I am so excited to take my son out Trick or Treating on Saturday. I love candy so I am hoping he will share his goodies with me. I just want to take some time to remind everyone of some important safety tips.

1. Please go with your children when they go Trick or Treating.

2. Go in groups especially if your child is old enough to go alone.

3. Bring a flash light with you for when it gets dark.

4. Be aware of your surroundings and the people around you, stay away from people that are acting strange or look like they want to cause trouble.

5. Bring a whistle with you. It sounds weird but it will get peoples attention in an emergency

6. Wear reflectors on your costumes and on your treat bag

7. Encourage your children to wait till you get home before they dig in to their goodies so you have a chance to look over the goodies in a well lit area. Pack a snack so if they get hungry they will have something.

8. Bring hand sanitizer with all the door bells your children will be touching to help cut down on germs.

9. Only go to those houses with a porch light on.

10. NEVER go in to a strangers home

11. Stay away from homemade treats and loose candy or loose candy in a Ziploc bag.

12. Make sure your children can see clearly and speak clearly through their costumes.

13. Watch out for cars and use sidewalks

14. If you are driving remember that kid’s dart and watch out for kids and don’t assume they see you.

15. Never get in a strangers car even if they seem nice.

16. Parents check out your state's sex offender registry and stay clear of those homes in your area. It is a great idea to know exactly where they live and work anyway.

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween!