Resources for Single Mothers

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Parent Know How

A new report that has taken over 2 years to compile presents some stark findings derived from interviews with over 30,000 children. The report, commissioned by the the Children’s Society, presents around 30 recommendations aimed at parents, teachers, government the media and society as a whole regarding what needs to be done to improve the childhood experience of most children.

The reason that children’s lives have become increasingly difficult has been found to be excessive individualism. Leading experts have concluded that excessive individualism has meant that people are more pressurised to compete, more pressurised to own things and less inclined toward helping others.

Around 70% of the children interviewed said that parents getting on with each other is probably the most important factors in raising happy children. Children from broken families are 50% more likely to suffer from academic achievement issues, low self esteem and depression or anxiety.

The excessive exposure to television and the media that most children experience is promoting materialistic desires and breeding generations of consumers. And these consumers want to consume unhealthy fast-food and more television and media.

Britain and the U.S. are among the worst advanced countries for well being amongst children. In Sweden 8% of children live at or below 60% of median income whereas in Britain the number is 22%.

The report makes some strong recommendations. One of these is that people responsible for bringing children into the world should have a long term commitment to one another. Parents need to be provided with free parenting classes to make them fully aware of their responsibilities and how they can meet the needs of their children.

The report recommends that advertising to children under 12 should be banned and all advertising for unhealthy food and alcohol should not be allowed before 9p.m.

Being a child today, perhaps from a broken family, with limited income and with low educational achievement and no support at home, is an enormously difficult situation to contend with. It’s up to parents, teachers and society to recognise these difficulties and do what is required to fix things.

To encourage your little ones to play outdoors more I recommend getting some good quality outdoor play equipment, maybe a slide swing playset, to get the little ones outside to play.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.