Stress at Home

Dr. Archibald Hart answers how stress at home and parents’ attitudes affect their children.

by Ask the Expert with Dr. Archibald Hart

Q: Does the attitude we take as parents have a dramatic effect on our children? We’re getting them up in the morning with “Hurry up. Get ready. I’ve got to go to work and you’ve got to go to school. Take a bite and eat quick, hurry, get ready!”

A: I think that’s absolutely true. Children are being taught to live at a hectic pace in today’s society. The home — the family environment — creates the stress problems that so many children experience later in life. It’s in the home, therefore, in the family, that the solution to the problem lies. What we model to our children teaches them the values that will determine whether they’re going to live a stressful life or not.

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Twenty Toys You Don’t Have To Buy

By Colleen Moulding

Fed up with forking out for the latest piece of over-hyped plastic? Answer “What can we do now Mum?” by making toys from items you will already have around the house.

1. Shops. Save all your empty grocery cartons for a week or so and you’ll soon have a shop any aspiring grocer would be proud of. Gluing down the flaps makes cereal boxes, jelly packets etc. look unopened. Clothes, shoes, and toys can all be used as “stock”. Paper bags and real or play money add to the fun.

2. Paper balls. When the kids keep arguing suggest that they throw something at each other! Paper balls are easily scrunched up from torn out magazine pages to make “ammunition”. When it’s time to tidy up, stand the waste paper basket in the middle of the room and see who can throw the most in. A rolled up magazine makes a good “bat” too.

3. Doctors/Nurses. A roll of white toilet tissue makes this game much more fun as Dads, Grans, teddies or dolls are mummified before your eyes. Plastic medicine spoons and cardboard box hospital beds for toys are extra props that make the game last longer.

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