Your Baby's Reflexes

Instincts are powerful. Your baby is born with instinctive reflexes that assist in survival.

Here's a quick review of a few of your baby's reflexes, to help you marvel at your newborn.

• Moro or “startle” reflex: This occurs when your baby's head shifts position quickly. Or when her head falls backward. Or when your baby is startled by something loud. She will react by throwing out her arms and legs and extending her neck. Your baby will then quickly bring her arms together. She may cry when doing this. This reflex should go away after two months.
• Rooting reflex: This is how your baby hunts for her mother's breast. If you gently stroke the side of her cheek with your finger, she will turn her head toward your finger. This lasts for three to four months.
• Grasp reflex: Your baby will clench her fist around anything pressed into the palm of her hand. You can show this to a big brother or sister. Say, “The baby wants to hold on to your finger.” This reflex goes away at five to six months.
• Stepping reflex: If you hold a newborn baby upright under her arms with her feet on a hard surface, her feet will make a stepping action. This happens even though it is a long time before she is ready to stand or walk. This usually lasts a couple of months.

Ask your pediatrician if you have any questions about your baby's reflexes.

Live On The Bright Side In Your Relationship

Business is competitive, we all work hard, drive hard and live hard, BUT maybe it all doesn’t have to be this hard.

Having a successful career, successful relationships and an extraordinary life are complementary - All can be achieved. Get out of damage control and back into thriving relationships at work and at home with practical solutions that will change your life.

a. What Harvard says you can do to increase longevity and happiness
b. Three essential steps to successful relationships at work and home
c. The 5 Factor Makeover

Successful Relationships Lesson #1 – Live on the bright side.
Research shows that your viewpoint and attitude may impact your health, happiness and career success more than your genetics.

Successful Relationships Lesson #2– Choose your shoes. You choose what shoes you walk in, what path you take and who you take it with, be proactive not reactive and choose your shoes, don’t just wear any shoes someone offers you.

Successful Relationships Lesson #3– Learn how to push the STOP Button. Know when to stop yourself from making critical, demeaning, contemptuous and sarcastic comments. Edit yourself. People who avoid saying every critical thought when discussing touchy topics are consistently the happiest and most successful in their relationships.

Successful Relationships Lesson #4– Bored people are boring people.
If you aren’t sure what is interesting and intriguing about you, it’s time to find out. If you hear yourself say, I am tired of this job, life, relationship etc. it’s time to take charge, take a risk and make a change.

Successful Relationships Lesson #5– Forgiveness fosters health.
People often think that if they harbor anger it hurts the person they are angry with but anger only hurts you. People who let anger go and experience forgiveness experience less heart disease, anxiety and depression.

My Very Own School @ Home

Many of the families with whom I work wish for their children to:

a) improve in-school behavior
b) develop better every-day routines
c) spend valuable enrichment time at home this summer
d) enjoy arts, crafts, games and play that will enhance learning
e) develop a summer schedule that adds enrichment to free play

Give your children ages 3-7 a Head-Start in school next year with our My Very Own School program. Our Family Coach, Dr. Lynne Kenney, teaches you how to bring school structure, art centers, music centers, nutrition, cooking, phonics, math, social studies and science into your home to help your children improve school performance, academic enrichment and school behavior for next year. Bring the success of school home for your children with this unique enrichment program.

1. Creating a school center in which learning can take place.
2. Writing a daily school schedule for the child.
3. Developing a curriculum that can be used within the schedule.
4. Establishing learning and enrichment goals.
5. Incorporating, play, art, music, and cooking to meet enrichment goals.
6. Organizing and labeling all enrichment materials.
7. Creating an organized activity closet for all enrichment items.
8. Providing brief written summary of work product and achievement toward goals.

Templates, tools and your own curriculum resources provided. Email at www.lynnekenney.com me to learn more.

Spring Cleaning with Meryl Starr

Spring is here, finally. The days are longer and warmer and we are all looking forward to spending more time outside. Spring is a special time for me as its time for Spring Cleaning. For a Personal Organizer, Spring Cleaning is like Christmas, New Years and July 4th all wrapped up into one.

As I mention in the "To Do List" chapter of my book, The Personal Organizing Workbook, Spring is the perfect excuse to make a clean start. The following is a list of 10 easy ways to prepare of the season.

1) Scrub-a-dub-dub. It isn't called "spring cleaning" for nothing. Dust bunnies, cobwebs grime and dirt all have to go.

2) Glasswork. Wash your windows. Nothing brings in light like washing away that winter film.

3) Plant a Garden Now. Then, enjoy flowers, fresh herbs, and home-grown tomatoes this summer.

4) Research summer camps for the kids.

5) Make sure the air conditioner is up and running. Change the filter lately?

6) Cleaning Agents. Spring is the perfect time to get your carpets, rugs and upholstery cleaned by professionals.

7) Curtain Call. Replace the shower-curtain liner in your bathroom. Mold and mildew can build up and exacerbate allergies and asthma.

8) Keep a picnic basket and a blanket handy, so you can make the most of a sunny afternoon at a moment's notice.

9) Finish up those indoor projects you started and did not complete during the winter. Projects like painting your bedroom or organizing a box of photographs. Soon your attention will be outdoors and you will not revisit the indoor projects till October.

10) Waste Not. Don't forget to clean out your closets, drawers and cabinets. Mark two bins "keep" and "get rid of". Be cold, be heartless, be unforgiving. And don't forget to get a receipt when you donate your stuff to local charities.

I hope this list helps you to get the Spring Season off to an Organized start. In the meantime please look for me in April's issue of "Health Magazine" (page 118) on the newsstands now. In this article I tackle the subject of organizing your home office, most people's number one clutter zone.

Enjoy the warm weather,

All the best,

Meryl Starr
Personal Organizer
www.merylstarr.com

I was a really good mom before I had kids

I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids -- "I don't know how she does it!" is an oft-heard refrain about mothers today. Funnily enough, most moms agree—they have no idea how they get it done, or whether they even want the job. Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile spoke to mothers of every stripe—working, stay-at-home, part-time—and found a surprisingly similar trend in their interviews. After enthusing about her lucky life for twenty minutes, a mother would then break down and admit that her child's first word was "Shrek." As one mom put it, "Am I happy? The word that describes me best is challenged." Fresh from the front lines of modern motherhood comes a book that uncovers the guilty secrets of moms today . . . in their own words. I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids recognizes the craziness and offers real solutions, so that mothers can step out of the madness and learn to love motherhood as much as they love their kids.

The Family Schedule

A family schedule is a central component of establishing rhythm and routines in your family. Family schedules guide your child’s life to enhance predictability and mastery.

Do you have a family schedule? Do you know what happens in your family Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday?

It’s time to actually write your schedule out for all to see.

Start with a piece of paper or better yet, a piece of large cardboard. Draw out your family schedule. You might even go to a teacher's store and buy a school-sized schedule, they are so fun to mark up, write on and change over time.

Let’s begin with Monday, what does your day look like? Remember it's not the time that matters, it's the order of the activities, that's what establishes family rhythm.

• Time to wake-up, get dressed and go to school
• School-Time
• After-school Activity Time
• Homework-Time
• Dinner-Time
• Outdoor Play/Sports Time
• Reading-Time
• Bed-Time

Now for each day, write out your schedule.

Talk with your spouse and your kids about the family schedule. What does your schedule look like? Draw it out, hang it up and enjoy the structure and predictability it provides.