The Gerber Life Parenting Blog

Children tend to absorb everything around them. As much as you may think your baby or toddler isn’t paying attention, he or she is likely absorbing any background activity or noise. That’s why it’s so important to be conscientious about how much and what kinds of media your child consumes at each stage of development, regardless of whether done actively, such as watching a movie on TV, or passively, such as playing the radio. The programming you select, including any adult media, can influence your child.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) suggests that TV and other media should be avoided for children age 2 or younger. Instead, the AAP emphasizes that children should learn from play and from human — not screen — interaction.

It’s therefore important for parents to determine how to regulate, limit, or monitor the media impact on children. Here are some tips:

As a new school year begins, parents may be facing the problem of how to get their kids to go to bed at a reasonable hour. A solution: Kids will go to sleep if they understand why it’s important, studies have found.

Despite marriage jokes to the contrary, marriage can actually be associated with good health. Don’t laugh!

For years, research has tied marriage to a lower risk of cancer, heart attack, and of being diagnosed with dementia. Various newer research, however, has found that the picture is not as clear-cut and that various factors can play a role in the relationship between marriage and health, such as stress and the quality of the marriage.

It’s not unusual for babies and toddlers to learn gross (larger movements) motor skills – such as rolling over, sitting and walking – more quickly than fine motor skills. Precise hand, finger and wrist movements, as well as grasping objects and picking them up with pinched fingers, are tasks that toddlers need to practice and perfect over time, and in different ways than their gross motor skill counterparts.

There is a lot you can do in any given day of play, however, to help fine-tune these fine motor skills. Following are some activities to consider integrating into your toddler time:

There can be something very special about the bond between two people who decide to embark on life – and maybe a family – together. Also likely is that each of the two may not always see eye-to-eye on every issue, which is OK.

These tips can help with working toward a successful resolution, as a team: