A lot of parents have given up on ever having a clean house again…or at least until their children have grown up and moved out on their own. But your child can help you have a cleaner house.

Most kids want to help, at least until they reach their teen years (but by that point you can usually motivate them with rewards).

Here are some ways to get your child to help you clean your house.

• When you give your child a task to do, make your instructions as specific as possible, and not open to interpretation. “Clean up your room” is a far different instruction from “Take all the dirty clothes from your room and put them in the laundry hamper.”
• Help your child break larger jobs down into individual steps. Using the above example again, “Put away all of your books and video games in their proper places,” will have far better results than the amorphous “Clean up your room.”
• When possible, give your child a choice. For example, “Would you like to put away your books first, or put away your video games first?”

Here are some considerations for you to make.

Summer is here and that means it is time to keep your kids fit and active.

Step one is to turn off the television. It is too easy for kids to sit passively and watch TV for hours on end.

Limit the amount of time your children can spend watching television, or eliminate it entirely.

Don’t let your children swap one electronic babysitter for another. You will also want to limit computer time, cellphone time, and video game time as well.

Encourage your children to play outdoors. Your child should have sunscreen on when playing outdoors, and should avoid playing outside during the hottest part of the day, usually 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.

Playing in the water, whether it is swimming or just splashing, is a wonderful way to be active and stay cool. Remember that water washes away sunscreen, so reapply as needed.

Summer is a great time for new indoor activities, like dancing or martial arts classes. Summer is also a perfect time to attending various camps that are usually filled with all types of fun activities, even new ones like canoeing or hiking tours.

Did you know that nearly 7 million children have been diagnosed with asthma?

Asthma can be hard to diagnose in children, because what is considered the definitive test—spirometry—cannot usually be properly performed on children until they are about 5 or 6 years old.

Here are some symptoms and risk factors for you to be aware of.

Does your child wheeze? If he has four or more episodes of wheezing in one year, or if the wheezing lasts longer than one day or wakes him up from sleeping, asthma is likely. It is also likely that your child wheezes when he is not suffering from a cold or upper respiratory infection.

Does your child have a persistent cough that is worse at night or when he exercises? This can be a sign of asthma.

Does your child have a parent or sibling with asthma? This increases his risk.

Does your child have eczema, allergic rhinitis or food allergies? Does he have pollen allergies? These are signs of increased risk as well.

The good news is that many children with asthma symptoms grow out of them. If your child does have asthma, it can be treated and managed with medication. Be sure to talk to your child’s pediatrician if you suspect asthma.

School’s Out! There are few things a child says with more excitement. The summer vacation break can be a great time, full of fun and relaxation.

It is also, unfortunately, a time when most children can lose between one and three months worth of knowledge.

It is common for the first six weeks of any new school year to be spent reviewing things that have been forgotten from the previous year.

While the debate over extending the school year to 12 months continues, you can take steps to minimize the amount of knowledge your child loses over the summer vacation. It is as simple as seeing that your child’s brain gets “knowledge” food, instead of the equivalent of mental “junk” food.

You have a wonderful ally in your local public library. Generally before the school year ends, they have information on their activities for the summer ready, along with a summer reading program.

Most summer reading programs offer incentives in the form of small prizes along the way, together with larger prizes and a party at the end. Consider adding your own incentives as well.

Every parent wants their child to be happy, and not just in the ephemeral “I just got a new toy!” way, but in a way that becomes a part of the child’s way of interacting with the world.

Here are some ways to help your child do just those. [positive parenting tips]

First, consider your own way of interacting with the world. In a very real way, children do what they see us do, and not what we tell them to do.

Find ways to work happiness and joy into your life, and share them with your child. It can be as simple as delighting in a song you like, or sharing an ice cream sundae with your child.

Help your child from nurturing relationships. Your child should have a strong emotional connection to you, and should have plenty of friends with whom she can spend time playing and just being a kid. Try to surround your child, and yourself, with happy, positive people and experiences.

Do not emphasize achievement at the expense of experience. Achievement has its place, particularly as we grow older.

Toddlers are wonderfully active, loving, inquisitive, delightful bundles of joy; and that is just before lunch!

By organizing suitable toddler activities for your child, you can help him develop a variety of important skills at this time.

This age between 12 months and 2 ½ years is when individual personalities start to show and the child begins to test his independence, so you can expect to see some exasperation and temper tantrums too.

Toddlers are very active which means that they need adequate nutrition and rest to feed this activity.

Establish a routine that allows you to organize your day around your toddler’s activities,so that you make sure he gets enough rest. Toddlers may become very difficult about food, and some parents have discovered that giving five smaller meals a day can ensure that their child receives the best nutrition possible.

There are many opportunities for wonderful toddler activities while being outdoors. The large muscle groups are developing and need lots of exercise, so encourage activities like running, jumping, climbing and hand-eye coordination.

Children love balls and balloons, and any activity with these toys is wonderful for toddlers. Encourage them to kick, throw, catch and bat; give lots of praise for every effort.

Our mental image of children is one of happiness–children playing, children laughing.

We do not readily think of children as being depressed. Depression does affect children, however, and it can be hard to diagnose.

Here are some signs of depression in children:

• Frequent crying and sadness
• A feeling of hopelessness or despair
• Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed
• Sudden irritability and flashes of anger
• Overreaction to failure or rejection
• Hypersensitivity
• Preoccupation with songs that feature death, isolation and/or suicide
• Changes in eating and sleeping habits
• Worsening school performance, trouble concentrating
• Threats of running away
• Oppositional or defiant behavior

Many of these signs of depression can be hard to distinguish from normal childhood behavior. For example, sudden irritability and oppositional behavior are fairly common in the teen years.

What you should be looking for is a sudden change, a change that seems out of character, or a combination of symptoms. You should also trust your parental instincts; if you suspect something is wrong, there’s a good chance something is.

If you suspect your child is depressed, talk with them and their health care provider.

Playgrounds are an important place for children. They give an opportunity for play, socialization and learning, but they are also a potential danger to them.

Playground safety is the responsibility, firstly, of the supervising parent, but also of the owners of the playground and the general population of the area it is in.

Over 200,000 children are treated in ERs (emergency rooms) across the country for playground injuries, most of which could have been prevented if there had been adequate adult supervision and better playground safety. Responsibility for children and their child safety needs to be taken seriously.

Your children are your responsibility; don’t allow anyone to take your kids to a playground unless you are positive they will be supervised as closely as you would yourself. When you take your kids, watch them.

It isn’t only your kids you need to watch; you need to be on the lookout for other children behaving dangerously. Teach your children playground safety rules, and make sure they follow the rules when attending a playground.

Encourage your children to look out for each other, and to also be aware of younger children, who often don’t think before they act.

Have you ever threatened your child with some dire consequence if you had to count to 3? You probably have, since most parents have.

Believe it or not, when done properly, counting can be an effective tool in the discipline arsenal.

But there are some things you must keep in mind.

First, never count except in whole numbers. Either a child’s act or failure to act is worth a whole number step up, or it isn’t. Do not get in the habit of counting by halves or quarters or any other fraction.

Second, be consistent. If you have established a consequence for a behavior, you must use it. If you do not, your child will know that counting is just talk. As with every type of discipline, your child must know that you are serious.

Third, do you know that you can be flexible. If your child behavior or actions warrant it, you can go back to a previous number. Say, for example, you began counting because your child hadn’t cleaned his room.

The Preschooler is generally a child who is aged between three and five and is due to go to school in one or two year’s time.

As a toddler, your child will have developed many basic skills that games for preschoolers will build on.

These two preschool years see the start of social skills developing, as the child learns about playing and sharing with other children.

During the year before going to school, your child will need to develop a set of skills to enable her to make the transition to this new phase in her life.

A preschooler develops a greater control over the major muscles in her body and her hand-eye coordination becomes more accurate. Ball games for preschoolers are good activities; and throwing, catching, kicking and rolling balls towards targets or goals are great fun.

By this age, most children can learn to pedal a tricycle or bicycle and this is wonderful exercise and fun. Many people put outdoor play equipment in their yards for their preschooler, which gives them the opportunity for climbing and swinging activities for continuing muscle development.