Being a parent is one of the most challenging jobs in the world. You need a lot of patience and follow-up to ensure that you get through the most important (and sometimes hardest) years with your child in one piece. One of the most challenging lessons in life is teaching kids to do the right thing.

If they know that they don’t have to work, they could get very sloppy in their work habits while doing tasks and activities around the home.  This article aims to do the opposite; it will provide helpful tips and tricks on working with your child to establish and reinforce positive behaviors.

Praise your child for being good.

The easiest way to get your child to act in a particular manner is to praise them. That does not mean you must give them anything cookie every time they do something right, but you must reinforce the behavior with genuine appreciation. Children are often sensitive to their parent’s approval, and they look at their parents as role models.

To make them kind, be kind yourself. If you want to share, share things with them. Positivity breeds positivity, and so on. Children love attention and will do whatever it takes to get it—if that means being good, then they’re more likely going to try hard in order not only to please you but also to boost their self-esteem and confidence as well.

Give rewards for good behavior.

Rewards are a great way to incentivize good behavior. Giving your child rewards for acting will encourage them to repeat that behavior in the future. You should steer away from using punishments as much as possible. However, even if you must punish, it is still important to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior. It is hard for children to behave well all the time, so frequent rewards will help them make progress and continue on their path of improvement.

When choosing what to use as rewards, consider what your child likes or wants most. A reward chart can help reinforce this new system as well! While parents may think that toys or candy are good ways to incentivize acts like listening and being kind, these rewards start losing meaning quickly. Some parents prefer rewarding things like quality time with family members or getting out of chores when they complete their daily goals.

Use stickers to encourage positive behaviors and keep track of positive days without a tantrum.

Stickers can make a big difference. It would help if you used them.

Choosing the correct stickers is critical. Maybe they should be something your child likes.

They should be the kind of thing that makes your child want to do good behavior, and when they get them, it’s a big deal.

Then you need to choose what behaviors you want to encourage with stickers: no tantrums, listening without yelling, doing what you’re told without being told 1,000 times?

Try using stickers to help your child know how good they’re doing day after day. That will make them excited about doing good behavior and earning their sticker reward.

 Give your child age-appropriate chores.

Naturally, adults don’t have to do chores with their kids all the time—but sometimes we need to enforce a sense of responsibility and independence in our kids. The sooner we start helping our children learn how to behave themselves, the better off we’ll be as adults when they grow up. We all know that if we don’t teach our kids something early, they might never pick it up later on. To that end, chores are an essential tool in teaching small changes in behavior: showing them what it means to take care of oneself and others.

Let’s face it: most people these days are busy. Between work, family obligations, hobbies (or lack thereof), and even personal grooming—who’s got time for housework? If you cannot afford a maid service, you will have to depend on your good habits of cleaning the kitchen and bathroom multiple times a week. It will help keep things organized and ensure that your kids can do their homework without fighting over the mess or having a tantrum.

Let your child have input into rules and consequences.

As the parent, you are ultimately responsible for setting the rules and consequences. However, by letting your child have input into them and considering their point of view, they will most likely be more willing to follow the rules over time.

In addition to being more receptive to guidelines if they have a say in them, children will also benefit from feeling that their opinion is valued. Giving a child some ownership over the rules can increase their confidence and decrease negative behaviors stemming from feelings of inadequacy or stress.

Finally, this approach helps foster independence in children as well as responsibility. For example, your teenager won’t always have someone watching over her shoulder when she’s a college student living on her own for the first time. Suppose she has developed a sense of responsibility through participating in decisions that affect her life daily at home with you now. In that case, she will be better prepared for adulthood later on.

Encourage your child to make their own decisions.

Let your child make some decisions. It is essential because it allows them to become a confident and independent adult with the ability to make good choices. Some of the most significant decisions in one’s life include what career path one chooses, whether or not to get married, and when to have children. As a parent, you want your child to grow up and be capable of making their own decisions well into adulthood.

You can encourage your child to make several small decisions on their own, starting at an early age. Children can do to be more in control of their lives, including choosing what to wear, coming up with after-school activities, picking out snacks based on nutritional value, and doing homework instead of playing games on their phones.

Although your child will make mistakes along the way, as we all do when learning how to become independent adults, you are there for them every step until they become old enough to take care of themselves without assistance from others. You can help guide them by asking open-ended questions about why he/or they made confident choices so that he/or they can identify potential problems before they happen.

Acknowledge their efforts.

Children need acknowledgment, but not just in the form of rewards. If your child is crying because he did not get an ice cream cone, acknowledge his efforts to stand up for himself when it also means standing up to you, even if you are the one who did not give him what he wanted.

Even if your child’s behavior does not result in a favorable outcome, praise them for their efforts. For instance, if a child tries to help clean up around the house but does not put away her toys correctly or breaks something during their attempt to help out, praise her effort instead of lecturing her on what she should have done differently.

Celebrate big and small wins.

Celebrate big and small wins. Celebrating will reinforce positive behavior and give your child the much-needed encouragement to keep up the excellent work. But it’s not just the significant milestones that should be celebrated—even the littlest successes are worth a round of applause. A successful potty training session, getting dressed without complaining, or going to bed on time are all causes for celebration. You can choose to celebrate with a special meal, a trip to the park, or by having fun as a family with a game night or movie marathon. And don’t forget about you! A long-overdue spa day is definitely in order after weeks of handling your little one’s tantrums.

Children may have some trouble behaving well, but you can help them learn that breaking rules don’t benefit them.

If you’re not an experienced parent, you may feel like you’ve failed the first few times your child makes a mistake. But remember, mistakes are inevitable. There may be more mistakes than successes in parenting.

It’s important not to lose perspective when your child misbehaves or does something wrong. It will happen at some point; it’s normal for children to make mistakes from time to time.

Let them know how their actions affect you instead of taking your anger on them. Remember that every bad thing they do has a positive side: they learn that not everything is okay, and they try harder next time to avoid making the same mistake again.

Parents can do things to help their children behave well, including teaching them how to say no and teaching them to clean up after themselves immediately. This way, others won’t have to clean up for themselves, and they can learn to be responsible for themselves.

Author bio

Andrea Gibbs is the Content Manager at SpringHive Web Agency, where she helps create content for their clients’ blogs and websites. She is currently a blog contributor at Montessori Academy, a blog dedicated to helping parents with the ins and outs of parenting children within the Montessori tradition. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys spending time with her family and her dog.

One of the greatest challenges parents and educators face is keeping up the technology.  This is especially true in regards to ensuring online safety as kids access online content.  The rapid changes in technology can leave parents and teachers overwhelmed as kids become more tech-savvy at a younger age every year.

It’s never been more important to keep up with what kids are doing online to ensure their safety. Fortunately, many EdTech tools are available for students to ensure safe search is on as they learn. These resources also allow parents at home keep up with what their kids are doing online, whether they are doing homework, playing games or interacting with their friends.

Hāpara

Hāpara, a Chromebook classroom management software, is essential for seamless learning. Today’s digital tools impact the way students learn, and educational leaders and teachers need tools that will transform the way they teach and improve education.

It’s an easy, flexible way to create a collaborative environment where teachers and students can develop content and projects. Hāpara is also a powerful K12 Chromebook monitoring tool. Educators can focus on their core duties while providing students with a customized learning experience with many safety features.

Hāpara allows teachers to watch student internet activity and shut off tabs when they are not being used for schoolwork. It also enables teachers to create personalized lesson plans, projects, and units of inquiry.

Educators can create these lessons and activities with the free educational software, Google Apps for Education. This allows teachers to monitor and manage student use of the Internet. For students, it means more time for homework. As a result, students feel more comfortable using the program.

Vision 

Netop’s instructional tool Vision is another useful classroom management solution for educators. Teachers love this monitoring platform, due to the visibility, accessibility, and ease this software provides them.

With this tool, teachers can share their own screens as well as lock students’ screens and keyboards. In this digital age with increasingly digital savvy students, it’s a gamechanger to be able to lock tools and block websites when something inappropriate comes up.

With remote learning and technological literacy being so pervasive, having tools that filter, block, and protect students from potentially harmful content is of the utmost importance.

Securly

Securly is a cloud-based student safety software that protects students from harmful online content. The platform provides cloud-based web filtering and monitoring for all devices, providing complete visibility of online activity.

Besides monitoring social media and keystrokes, it allows parents to partner with schools to manage their child’s school devices at home and will also notify parents of cyberbullying and violence.

The company’s technology has been designed to protect children and young from cyberbullying and other dangerous online behaviors.  It also sends notifications when students visit adult websites or inappropriate access content.

The platform also gives teachers a secure line of anonymous communication with parents. The Securly safety software even provides a cloud-based parent portal for monitoring student devices. This school security software can help schools and students stay on task with an education-based approach.

GoGuardian

The GoGuardian software is a free and easy-to-use solution for teachers. It has all the features teachers need to keep track of students’ online activity. The app brings filtering, classroom engagement, and school mental health tools into a single suite.

With a focus on K-12 digital learning, security, and student engagement, this tool helps monitor the online activities of students. The app can also help parents monitor their children’s activities in their classroom.  The app is designed to be compatible with all major browsers and operating systems to be used in various settings.

Conclusion

Taking the time to teach students the basics of internet safety is crucial and will ultimately save them from many potential problems. The more they know, the safer they’ll be while exploring what’s out there. So, before students head into the world of social media and beyond, work with them to teach them how to be safe online.

There are a number of reasons you may want to search to find someone online and you will need a specialized search engine. Google isn’t designed to search public records to do a  background check on a person or help you reconnect with a friend from high school.

Let’s review the multiple situations that a person may want to search for someone. Some searches are to protect our kids, such as learning more about an individual who spends time around your children or you wonder about a suspect neighbor and would like to do a criminal record check.  Less concerning are those searches for people that are not regarding a safety issue.  You may simply be looking to locate a distant relative.

Searching the Deep Web

Google is fine for basic research but not for finding information about people or details the exist in public records that require a login to a database.  However, there is a way to access these records by searching names, along with any other information you may have about them.  A search can also include addresses, phone numbers and email address.

This information on the deep web consists of details gathered from millions of public records cross all states, including arrest records, court records, geology websites, contact records and vital records.

Types of Search

Searches may scan social media data, as well for details that are publicly available and legal to access.  Regular search engines can’t gather these details and even more importantly, the information won’t be organized or cross checked with other data found from many other public sources.

A website that requires payment or grants special permission, such as educational institutions, give access to public records including social network data and deep web information to provide you with a detailed report about the person you want to find or check up on.

What is The Deep Web?

The Deep Web should not be confused with The Dark Web.  The latter is a dangerous and scary place as shown in this article here.  The Deep Web is safe and provides valueable information for research.  It includes private websites that you’ll need permission from and login credentials to access, as well as academic databases.

The Deep Web should not be confused with the Dark Web.  The latter is a dangerous and scary place.  The Deep Web is safe and provides valuable high quality and verifiable information for research on many subjects.  It includes private websites that you’ll need permission from and login credentials to access, websites that require payment, as well as academic databases.  Schools, colleges and universities provide free access to the Deep Web at no cost to educator’s and students.  This video explains it all in more detail.

Background Checks

One of the more popular people search tools is for a background check.  Individuals can learn more about co-workers and acquaintances and whether or not they have secret social media profiles.  Search results include birth and death records, associates of a person, details of where they have lived and verified contact information.  There may be information about education history, employment records, property records, divorce records and civil judgements.  A search may also give details about business ownership and finances, including bankruptcies and tax liens.

Criminal Records Checks

Background checks include searching for a criminal past and sex offender status.   There may be a history of abuse, violence, or traffic records exposing tickets or even a DUI charge.  These details are important if you there is someone new in the life of your family that spends time around your children unsupervised.  There is plenty of attention given to protecting your children against online predators, but a criminal records check will also give parents peace of mind about family acquaintances in our local surroundings.

How People Search Protects Kids

No one likes a nosy neighbor, but you can still be a good neighbor to someone and be concerned about your kids’ well being in the neighborhood. There are other issues too.  Do your kids spend time across the street at a friends house? Do they ever go on a sleep over?

We all have life long friends and family members that we trust our kids with.  However, what about those people in your life that you understand to be upstanding citizens that you don’t know much about.  There are parents you just met on your child’s sports team. Others include relatively new acquaintances you met through your local school.

Your children may be car pooling with their friends to sports events.  They may be going to a friends house after school or overnight at a sleep over.  We want to believe the best about people. Still, sometimes you are not sure.  It’s difficult to monitor your child’s online presence, much less where they are when they are not with you at home. Therefore, doing a background check up on any adult that your child spends time with may be the only way to know for sure if you child is not going into a questionable situation.

Finding Family and Friends

Thanks to technology there have been a lot genealogy websites popping up where you can trace your entire family history using your DNA.  However, you may be only looking for a specific person you already know in your past. If this is the case, you probably don’t want to start the process of finding all your ancestors.

Remember that friend you had in high school?  Where does he, she or they live now?  When you don’t keep up on relatives and years later you want to reconnect, how do you track them down?   Or you call someone in your contacts and the number is no longer in service. They must have moved.

Look up someone you know to find:

• Birth and death records
• Possible relatives and relationships
• Contact information
• Social media profiles
• Deep web details.

Controlling Your Personal Information Online

If someone where to look you up online, what public information would they find about you?  It’s been said, if you don’t have something to hide, why worry?  However, there are privacy issues as well to be concerned about.  As well, you’d be surprised how many people find information about themselves that is not inaccurate.

A public record check of yourself can determine if there is any information about you or someone in your family that needs to be corrected.

Phone Number Look Up to See Who Called You

It finally happened.  Telemarketers have finally figured out that people are cancelling their land lines, or at the very least they are no longer answer them.  Now it’s common to receive multiple calls at day from multiple sources on our cell phones.  Many of these include spoof calls. A spoof call is when a caller masks their call with someone else’s number. Often, these calls are local numbers that look a lot like yours.  There is nothing you can do it about it.  Blocking the call is pointless because the next call like this will be from a different number.

Legitimate telemarketers have permissions to call prospects.  They don’t spoof and usually you can find out who they are.  If you get on the line with a telemarketer you simply need to ask them to remove your from their list.  Legally they have to do it.

Unfortunately, the majority of calls you are getting are not legitimate.  You’ve probably noticed that when you answer, there is no one there. This could be a robocall and very often the purpose of the call is to verify there is a live person who answer.  Your phone number is then verified and can be sold to other scammers.

So, when you eliminate those who are spoofing numbers, there are still many other calls you may want to do a reverse number look up.  There may be real people, whether honorable or shady,  who are consistently calling you from the same number.  It may still be a scammer of some type.  It may be also telemarketers.  The call may be from a collection agency or someone who is harassing you for another purpose.

Deep Web Search ReCap

Public Records | Criminal Background Checks | Addresses and Phone Numbers

Whomever you may be looking for, both online and offline, for safety concerns, curiosity or to connect with old friends or relocated family members, searching the deep web may provide the solution for you.

The structure of the traditional family has seen great changes over the past few decades, with single-parent households becoming increasingly common. This shift requires a closer look at of how children raised in these environments are uniquely affected. Understanding these effects is important for providing the necessary support and resources.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 27% of all families with children are headed by a single parent. While DoULike statistics show that 47% of U.S. adults believe that single motherhood is bad for society.  Although children of single parents are less likely to be stigmatized, many are still at risk for certain economic, psychological, and development problems. But, it isn’t all negative.

Negative Effects for Children of Single Parents

No child is fated for a difficult life just because they’re raised by a single parent. However, children who grow up in a single parent household are more at risk for the following.

Economic Hardships

Children in single-parent homes are more vulnerable to economic shifts since only one family member can contribute to finances. Single parents may feel frightened, frustrated, or stressed by the difference between their lives and their friends, emotions that could rub off on the child.

Single parents can live a frugal lifestyle, automate their finances, and slowly build up savings to reduce economic hardships. By investing in life insurance for single parents you can cover various kinds of living expenses, such as education, household maintenance, and childcare.

Developmental Problems

Children of single parents are more likely to fall behind in school than their peers. They tend to get lower grades, act out, and have high rates of absenteeism. Drop-out rates, aggression, and anxiety are also more common in single parent homes, and the effects can be long-lasting.

There are a few ways single parents can minimize developmental problems. For one, they can develop a consistent parenting style that involves regular routines. Single parents who have or can develop a robust network of social support are better equipped at helping their children.

Psychological Effects

A study conducted in Sweden found that children from single-parent families had twice the incidence of depression, mental illnesses, and alcohol abuse problems when compared to two-parent homes. Feelings of guilt or abandonment are typical causes.

It’s possible to protect children from these risk factors by shielding them from parental conflict. Don’t ask children to take sides. Speak to children about why single-parenting is the best option for the family and pay attention to their feelings. Try to accentuate the positives of the situation.

Positive Effects for Children of Single Parents

A lot of media surrounding single parenting focuses on the negative, but there are several advantages of going solo. Being a single parent can offer several benefits to children.

Fewer Arguments

Children are aware when something is off, even if parents hide the negative realities of their relationships. When children are aware that one of their parents is unhappy or being abused, they’ll often suffer from similar issues as they would growing up with a neglectful single parent.

However, single parents can minimize the effect this parenting style has on their children, but they can’t change how another person impacts their child. Therefore, it’s often better for parents to remove their children from this situation, so both parties can feel safer and more secure.

Closer Relationships

Parents who stay in an environment that’s physically or emotionally taxing will have a hard time connecting to their children. That’s because the parent is often too tired or emotionally impaired at the end of the day to develop a strong relationship foundation with their children.

However, children of single parents often spend more positive interaction time with their mothers or fathers. Since single parents can reserve their love and attention strictly for their children, there’s a high possibility that they’ll develop a tight-knit bond with each other.

Stronger Independence

When children live in single-parent households, they’ll take on more responsibility. They quickly notice that their parent is busy juggling work and family, so they’ll either start doing household chores themselves or be asked to help out. Either way, they learn how to be more independent.

Raising independent children is essential, but independence looks different at each age. Most children as young as 8 can help prepare dinner, wash dishes, and vacuum the home. Plus, independent children are less likely to spend their free time watching TV or on the computer.