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No more school, no more books, no more…you can prob­a­bly see where this is going. Sum­mer is great! For kids that is. But for par­ents, it can be an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Some­time around the sec­ond or third week after school lets out, the nov­el­ty of break starts to wear off for mom and dad. Tat­tling, whin­ing, argu­ing, fight­ing, tantrums, and aggres­sion–all of these can increase dur­ing the sum­mer months. If your kids are melt­ing down, there are sev­er­al pos­si­ble reasons.

Anoth­er school year is upon us. This is a wel­come relief for some and a cause of heart­burn for oth­ers. What­ev­er side you’re on, here are a few tips to start the year off right.

In the past, it was com­mon for home­work time at my house to end in tears, yelling, and occa­sion­al­ly, threats of world dom­i­na­tion. For­tu­nate­ly, we’ve all learned a few things since then and I’m here to tell you home­work doesn’t have to be a fight. I’ve teamed up Lyn­nae Glas­cock, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pist at QMG’s Behav­ioral Health Depart­ment, to tell you about the best strate­gies for tak­ing the bat­tle out of homework.

Most of the adults I know have a hard time deal­ing with big emo­tions. Watch me try to par­ent in the gro­cery store and you’ll wit­ness an adult mis­han­dling a vari­ety of feel­ings. Yet we often expect chil­dren to keep it togeth­er under the most demand­ing cir­cum­stances. Their lit­tle brains are still grow­ing though, and the part respon­si­ble for emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion won’t be ful­ly devel­oped until they reach their mid-twen­ties. So when your child los­es it, he isn’t try­ing to embar­rass you or make you crazy. He sim­ply lacks the skills nec­es­sary to man­age those big feelings.

At no point in his­to­ry have humans had such easy and con­stant access to news, infor­ma­tion, enter­tain­ment, and singing goat videos as we do now? Gam­ing sys­tems, smart­phones, tablets, lap­tops, and smart TV’s – these devices allow us to see and do things pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions could nev­er have imag­ined. It blows my mind that I can ask Siri what a word means and get an answer with­out even pick­ing up my phone. Any­one else adore that you can set an alarm, apply for a loan, shop for under­wear, watch a movie, talk with any­one you’ve ever met (or any­one you’ve nev­er met), play games, and take high-qual­i­ty pho­tos all on the same device?

Ocu­lar motor skills are basi­cal­ly just watch­ing things with our eyes. Lyn­nae Glas­cock, a pedi­atric occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pist with Quin­cy Med­ical Group, dis­cuss­es why these skills are impor­tant for kids to learn.

Your six-year-old just told you that she did not write her name on the wall but her name is very clear­ly writ­ten on the wall in her hand­writ­ing. Either there is a tiny gnome liv­ing in your house with the same hand­writ­ing as your child, or she just told you a lie. While many par­ents may jump to the con­clu­sion that their child is grow­ing up to be a patho­log­i­cal liar, the truth is that her lie is com­plete­ly nor­mal behav­ior. All kids will fib or stretch the truth at some point in their ear­ly years and there are many rea­sons for this.

Par­ents, raise your hand if you are ready for school to start! Now, raise your hand if you despise pack­ing school lunch­es! For some rea­son, it is one item on my ​“to-do” list that I absolute­ly loathe. Our local schools pro­vide great lunch­es, but there are still days that I need to pack a lunch or two. – (and now three this year, as my baby is start­ing first grade sob.) But I digress.

Whether we’re ready or not, it’s time to dig out the lunch box­es, and get pre­pared for anoth­er year! Let’s face it, thanks to Pin­ter­est we have moved way beyond the tra­di­tion­al, some may say ​“bor­ing,” sand­wich and chips meal. This helps keep lunch fun for kids, but mak­ing sure their lunch is both healthy and some­thing they’ll eat can be a challenge.

Toe Walk­ing is just when a child walks pri­mar­i­ly on their toes with­out putting weight on their heels or oth­er parts of the foot.

While school-age kids are adjust­ing to learn­ing remote­ly dur­ing this time when schools are closed due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, fam­i­lies with infants and tod­dlers can also take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to incor­po­rate devel­op­men­tal activities.