With his short-cropped blonde-brown hair and bright blue eyes, it's hard to believe 20-year-old Steven Cummings was a practicing junkie just 27 days before.
Now that school's back in session, how do you make the most of that after-school time for your children?
Times are tight for most Americans. In families with children, expenses can really add up. Often the first thing to go from the family budget is dinner outside the home.
German Gonzalez, of Canyon Country, is used to the stares. It happens at the grocery store, the mall, at the park, whenever he takes his four young daughters out in public.
Some will say writing on paper is a lost art, that the personal, handwritten paper note is a rare happening.
It's the summertime refrain parents dread: "I'm bored. There's nothing to do."
Kevin Mather loved to ride his bike. On July 3, 2009, the Valencia resident pedaled along Sierra Highway with a dozen buddies on a beautiful Southern California morning.
With the longer days and hotter weather of summer, chances are you'll be heading for the beach or the local pool.
Help The Children, formerly known as Hunger Defense Fund, is passionate about helping children and their families.
Angel Castro of Newhall pets Sparky and settles in to read to the Great Dane. Sparky is curled up next to Castro on a blanket at the Santa Clarita Community Center in Newhall. The third-grader, who reads at a fifth-grade level, enjoys this bi-weekly ritual.
Unlike most kids her age, Ashley Green, 11, of Valencia, is not fond of video games. She prefers to play with physical toys, ones that challenge her mind.
It's not by coincidence that busy stay-at-home mother of three Shannon Gleason frequently can be seen, kids in tow, hanging out with her friends in the neighborhood.
One Saturday morning each month, Valencia United Methodist Church is transformed into a warehouse supermarket.
With one daughter who's a little shy, and another who's more outgoing, Carol Ballou, of Canyon Country, was thrilled to find an after-school activity both daughters could enjoy: acting.
As a general pediatrician in Southern California, I have had the good fortune to meet many children with special needs.
If my parents told me once, they told me at least one hundred times, "Don't talk to anyone about their religious or political beliefs." They meant, of course, that those topics are likely to generate tension and angry conflict. As such, they were not the stuff of polite social conversation. Notwithstanding the fact that I find religion and politics to be the two most interesting of all conversational topics, a third caution should be added ...
When I was a child, back in the Parenting Stone Age (a.k.a. the Parentocentric Era), your parents were the most important people in the family. They paid the bills, bought your clothes, prepared the food you ate, took care of you when you were sick, drove you to where you needed to be, tucked you in, and kissed you good night. They were essential.
Q: Is it okay to start teaching our 1 year old how to play independently? He screams and cries when I put him in any type of enclosure if he can't get "free" (even when I arrange the furniture in a way that he has a very ample play area). Is there a method to teach him how to play by himself for at least a little bit? It seems I am following him around ...
Q: It seems our 1 year old is showing willful disobedience. We tell him "no" and try to redirect but he does the same things over and over again. The things in question include turning over and not being cooperative when I'm trying to change him, slapping us in the face, and standing up during bath time. I'm trying to be creative with ways to entertain him and make things fun but am getting weary. Any advice on how I can correct him?
Q: Our 7-year-old son is very negative about everything. He's a middle child, so that may have something to do with it, but everyone else in the family is very happy, positive, optimistic, and so on. He never has anything positive to say about anything. Things the rest of us enjoy he says are "stupid" or "dumb." We raise all of our kids the same, so we don't understand where the negativity is coming from, ...
One of the reasons-it's probably in the top three reasons, in fact-that parents fail at solving discipline problems is they try to solve too many at once. In so doing, they scatter their disciplinary energy too thinly and end up solving none. The only thing they accomplish is getting more frustrated and more convinced that there is something about their child that renders discipline ineffective-a gene perhaps, inherited from the father (who else?), that causes ...
American parents have been listening to professional psycho-babblers tell them how to raise children since the late 1960s. I was in graduate school at the time, and my professors thought the babblers were geniuses, sent by some New Age divinity to correct all the egregious wrongs parents had done to children since time immemorial. Children were about to enter a Golden Age in which their opinions would not only be listened to but also taken ...
In the seventh grade I was promoted by my peers from president of the class geek-nerd-brainiac society to, well, if not fully cool, then at least on the way. I had discovered two sports I excelled in-golf and baseball-and the girls had discovered that I was one of the best, if not the best, dancer in the class. My classmates began overlooking the fact that I was a straight-A student, always sported a few pimples, and wore thick glasses.
Page 1 of 1