New Granny

I can’t think of a better gift idea for new parents than a book of baby’s fist year. Those treasured moments can be recorded and handed down when baby comes of age.
This lovely book will preserve the treasured memories of baby’s first year for generations to ooh and ahh over.
It’s a great idea for the new parents and even for the grandparents. Click on the book to see more.

You probably remember the first time you held your first-born in your arms. Do you remember the fear that you would mess it all up somehow? Do you remember wondering how you ended up with the responsibility of raising this precious child?
I was s scared of doing something wrong with my first-born. It did not help that everyone had an opinion on what was the correct way to do things. It was scary that everyone had very different ideas on what was right and wrong. I did not even feel I was holding my baby right. Every nurse told me something different.
I have now successfully raised three children. They are all wonderful people and are starting families of their own. I have no doubt they will do it right.
The best advice you can give your children is to trust themselves. Tell them they have been raised well and they will know what is right without having to doubt themselves.
Everyone has different ideas on raising children and as long as it is done with love, there is no right or wrong way. Every parent, every family, is different and that is a good thing. Every family will do what is right for their children and they do not need to worry about the wrong way and the right way. They will choose what is right for them.
As a grandparent, the best you can do for your children is to support them in their choices. They will do you proud and your grandchildren will be brought up well. Let them choose how they raise their children. They will love the support and their children will grow strong and proud. Feel free to give advice but do not be offended if your children choose their own way.
There are parents who are affected by drugs, mental problems or who are fanatics. These people are not the average parent and they are not part of this article. They are special cases, not the norm.

Wishing you and your families a happy and safe New Year!

Here’s an inspirational video you may find moving.

If you want to find out more go to
http://www.intenseexperiences.com/beautiful-video-inspirational.html

I’m feeling the holiday spirit, and my good friends, Amanda van der
Gulik and John Seeley have just launched a really cool site and
they’re giving away an incredible gift for you to use for your
grandchild that I know you will love…

Get Unstuck For Kids

Would you like to really empower your grandchild for life?

How did you learn about life and how to deal with it?
Would you have liked to have had a way to know what to do,
or how to handle your own youthful and peer pressure challenges?

I know how difficult it can be sometimes to really connect with
your grandchild and offer them information that can help them to deal
with life.

I mean if you’re anything like me, then your grandchild will probably
listen better to someone other than their own parent or grandparent, right? Kids
like to be independent from elders.

Well, that’s why I was so excited when Amanda and John decided to
launch this cool brand new site for parents and grandparents to help empower their
kids.

Amanda is a homeschooling mom and is well know online for helping
parents teach their kids about money.

John is the beloved ‘Uncle John’ to Amanda’s kids and is a very
well know Personal Life Coach and best-selling author of ‘Get
Unstuck: A Simple Guide to Restart Your Life”.

They are both dedicated to empowering kids and adults with the life
skills to succeed and live truly happy lives.

That’s why they decided to join forces and wrote the book ‘Get
Unstuck for Kids’ and created the ‘Get Unstuck for Kids Home Study
Course’.

They wanted to help us get useful information that kids would
actually understand and use.

Get Unstuck For Kids

We all learn better when we are involved in the learning. So they
designed an interactive study course that teachers and parents can
use with kids.

What’s really cool about their book and course is that they
specifically included stories that explain the concept of each
chapter that feature a boy or girl, learning how to deal with life
as it happens to them.

And then they go even further and also put questions, activities
and special exercises at the end of each chapter to really help to
instill the lessons for our children, while bonding us closer with
our kids. Pretty cool. ;o)

I had a look on their site when they first launched it and I was
personally blown away and hooked after I read some of the
incredible personal testimonials that they had received. Here’s one
of my favourites:

“As a leader in educational field I think that your book is,
without any doubt, an excellent contribution. Not only because of
its great contents balance, but also because it’s a very practical
and dynamic methodology that really works! I gave to my 11 years old
son the first chapter and I saw how he was attracted and interested
from the beginning, and very motivated to give me his comments and
opinions.

Be sure I will recommend your book to all of the parents and
teachers involved in the educational project I am related.”
~Daniel Hernandez

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that Amanda and John have decided
to give us a sample of some of the cool techniques that we can use
right away to help our kids get, as they say, “unstuck” in their
young lives.

You can grab your sample here:
Get Unstuck For Kids

It’s actually really cool. Amanda’s daughter, Xanthe, was upset by
her brother, Quinn, and John walks Xanthe through a quick 7-step
process in under just 2 minutes and then she walks away happy and
ready to go play with her brother again.

Well anyway, John and Amanda made a video of that process and they
are giving that away as a gift, along with a short report that
outlines the exact 7-steps that John walks Xanthe through to get
her “unstuck”.

It’s really effective, I’ve already tried it out with my grandchild and
it was amazingly simple and fast. I’ll be sure to use that often.;o)

The content of their “Get Unstuck for Kids” book is aimed at the
‘tween age group (kids between 8-13 years old) but I found it
worked great with younger kids as well as older teens. So if you’re
a parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, or friend of someone with kids
then you’ll want to get this before they decide to charge for it.

Pass this on. They’ll love you for it. ;o)
Get Unstuck For Kids

Okay, enough said, go grab your video and report and make sure you
check out their book and course while you’re there.

Cheers,

Wendy

P.S. I just want to let you know that my friends, Amanda and John,
are giving the video and report away as a gift. They’ve put it
inside a membership area, and once you go there they will present
you with a cool offer to get their homestudy course. Make sure you
check it out, cause it’s really cool, but even if you decide not to
take them up on that they will still give you the video and report
as a gift, at no charge to you.
Get Unstuck For Kids

(Note: This is an advertisement for my friends’ site, and when you
decide to take them up on their offer then they will give me a
commission on that. I want you to know exactly where this stands. I
was going to recommend this regardless but they insisted on giving
me a commission on any sales they made and then they told me that
they would give you the same deal. They said that when you pass this
on to people you know who could use this then they’ll give you a
generous commission as well. You’ll find your own unique
affiliate link inside your members area. So, I was cool with that,
I didn’t mind getting a commission as long as you get one too. But
again the gift is at no charge, commissions are only given on the
special offer.)

By Laura L. Smith, Ph.D.
November 28, 2009

Watching the children of our children–our grandchildren–fills us with thoughts about the meaning of life. We find ourselves more concerned about our environment, nuclear proliferation, war, politics, healthcare, and the deficit we are leaving for our next generations to pay. Those issues, though always smoldering, felt relatively dormant during the years of getting an education, raising a family, and working. Now, with a little more time to think, we also have more time to worry.

In addition to the existential concerns we have as elders (good grief, not us!), we also have the day to day challenges of being grandparents to families that are changing (that’s the politically correct way to say breaking up and reforming). Like many grandparents, we find ourselves frustrated and impotent; watching people we love make decisions that may have detrimental, yet unknown effects well into the future. At the same time, we have to say that our challenges are mild compared to those of other grandparents that we see in the work we do.

But, the similarities are there. Many grandparents are being asked to be quasi parents to adult children, with some of the same responsibilities, but none of the power. These young adults often ask for financial help from their parents, sometimes as innocent victims of the economy; other times, seduced into excessive spending by our culture of entitlement.

And grandparents increasingly are being asked to assume greater care of their grandchildren. In a nationwide trend, about eight percent of American children are being raised by their grandparents. That’s about 6 million children. Furthermore, many other grandparents are being asked to step in to help provide regular daycare for working parents.

These changing roles pose challenges for all concerned. Grandparents want to help and many times they must and should. At the same time, grandparents often harbor worries about how much help is too much. It’s all too easy to cross the line between providing truly needed assistance and fostering excessive dependency and lack of financial responsibility. When does helping morph into blurred boundaries and an enmeshed entanglement of lives? When do helpers’ efforts become self destructive, possibly even financially ruinous, in the long run?

There are no quick and easy solutions to these dilemmas. However, we encourage open dialogues about these issues between adult children and their parents. Failing to talk and work through these concerns will inevitably lead to resentment, hidden hostility, and possibly increased family instability. If either party refuses to talk, some distance and disengagement for a while may be an unfortunate necessity.

We’d love to hear how our readers have handled these evolving matters of the modern world. And we remain grateful for having the joys and challenges of our family.
Laura L. Smith, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the assessment and treatment of adults and children with obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as personality disorders, depression, anxiety, ADHD, and learning disorders. Dr. Smith is a widely published author of articles and books to the profession and the public, including: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder For Dummies, Seasonal Affective Disorder For Dummies, Anxiety and Depression Workbook For Dummies, Depression For Dummies, Overcoming Anxiety For Dummies, Hollow Kids: Recapturing the Soul of a Generation Lost to the Self-Esteem Myth, and Why Can’t I Be the Parent I Want to Be?

Aunties, Uncles, Grandparents as well as parents will find this interesting.

I just had to share this cool website with you
that I found. This lady’s giving away a huge
book on allowances, over 200 pages on
whether or not we should give our kids an
allowance, for F.R.E.E. I can’t believe it, this
is for real, if you’ve got kids then you’ve got
to check this out for sure.
Click Here

And she’s got this terrific offer for helping you
to help your kids succeed financially.

Let me tell you quickly about what this offer
is all about and also explain who the heck
this lady is.

Amanda van der Gulik is a homeschooling
momepreneur and very savvy young
woman who is providing a terrific, F.R.E.E.
e-book called, “Allowance Secrets: To Give
Or Not To Give?”, which will help you make
up your mind on whether or not to give
your kids an allowance.

She has spent months compiling over 200
pages of valuable and helpful information
about the financial repercussions of giving
your children an allowance, or not.

Check it out, it’s f.r.e.e.

I don’t know about you but I work hard for
my money, and earning this money makes
me appreciate the value of the things that
money can buy.

I know that I have oftentimes wondered
about the validity of giving my children an
allowance, and I bet that as a concerned
parent you are worried about this hot topic
as well.

I have noticed that on occasion, my own
children may not show the appreciation that
I think they should for the things that
I buy for them, nor that they buy with
their own allowance. So I wonder if I should
have them do chores in order to earn their
money.

I wanted to share this with you because I am
really excited about using the lessons and
ideas that I’ve learned already in this book.

I know this valuable information will definitely
benefit my own family.

I really encourage you to take advantage of
this F.R.E.E. e-book before Amanda realizes
that she’s out of her mind and pulls it down.
Get It Here

In these 200+ pages of valuable insight on
the issue of whether or not to give children
allowances, Amanda has sought the help and
input of the top 20+ expert kids money
management experts, life coaches and
successful, adult and teen entrepreneurs.

She’s got individual chapter contributions from
kids money experts such as:

-Elisabeth Donati, from Camp Millionaire,
-Patti Handy, the Kids and Teen Cash Coach,
-Phil Strong, founder of the Wi$eMoney Foundation,
-Jill Suskind, founder of Wealth Quest for Teens,
-John Lanza, creator of The Money Mammals,
-Anita Bell, author of “Your Kids Money”,
-Jeanette Ramnarine, award-winning author of “The Four Little Pigs”,
-Sam X Renick, award-winning author of “It’s A Habit, Sammy Rabbit”,
-Stuart Flemming, founder of “The Money Mindset Mob”,
-Deb Maubach, founder of “Homeschool Entrepreneur”,
-Cijaye DePradine, founder of “Money Fast For Kids”
-and other great experts.

Somehow, Amanda was also able to strong arm incredibly well-known Life Coaches and Successful Entrepreneurs like:

-John Seeley, best-selling author of “Get Unstuck!”
-Robin J. Elliott, the JV Specialist & founder of Dollar Makers,
-Jason Moffatt, successful internet marketing Guru,
-Leslie Householder, award-winning, best-selling author of “The Jackrabbit Factor”
-and more.

So take look at this very generous offer that
Amanda is providing absolutely F.R.E.E.
Honestly, there is no catch.
Get Your Free Copy Here
Talk to you soon, Wendy Streater

P.S. If you’re serious about preparing your
child for the real world so they are money
savvy adults then you need to grab your
F.R.E.E. copy of Amanda’s “Allowance Secrets:
To Give Or Not To Give?” I still can’t believe
she’s just giving it away. I wouldn’t be surprised
if she pulled it down real soon.
Click Here

P.P.S. Even if you don’t have kids, make sure
you let your family and friends with kids know
about Amanda’s book so they can take advantage
of it too. I’m sure they will be as thrilled to get it
as I am.

Newborn babies cry with regional accents. An amazing study found that 5 day old French babies cry with a distinct Gallic quality, while German babies have a Teutonic twang.
The finding suggest babies are eavesdropping on their parents’ conversations and picking up on their accents while still in the womb.

7 Medical Studies Prove You Can Communicate And Teach Your Baby Before Birth. Pre-natal Stimulation Results In Higher IQ, Increased Learning Capability, And Advanced Motor Skills. Find Out What To Do, How & When To Do It In This Groundbreaking Program.

Click Here!

By Rick Broida and Derek Fung on 30 November 2007

With the imminent arrival of a new baby, your life will become a whirlwind. If you’re planning to capture the whole experience on video, plan carefully and you’ll have a priceless record of those fleeting early days to savour long after interrupted sleep and mashed bananas fade from memory.
1. Plan ahead
2. What you’ll need
3. Choose your shots
4. Capture the moments
5. Edit your footage
6. Render, view and distribute

Build the perfect baby video

Step 1: Plan ahead
Cot? Check. Nappies? Check. Digital camcorder with tripod, spare battery, plenty of storage media and video-editing software? Better double-check. Whether you’re a first-time parent or rounding out your family cricket team, it’s almost unthinkable these days to let the experience go undocumented.

To build the perfect baby video, you’ll need to do a bit of advance planning. That’s because your memory is about to take a backseat to all things baby, a development that could lead to trouble down the road. In other words, when you sit down to edit your video, you don’t want to discover that you forgot to get a shot of Grandma with the baby. Trust us, there aren’t enough Hallmark cards on the planet to undo that mistake.

Step 2: What you’ll need
Before you even get started with this project, we recommend that you have the following:

• Camcorder with plenty of storage media
• Tripod
• Video-editing software
• DVD-authoring software
• DVD burner
• A Pentium 4 or better system with at least 1GB of RAM and several gigabytes of free hard disk space

Step 3: Choose your shots
After the baby arrives, life might get just a wee bit hectic — so try to do some planning before the big day. That means building a shot list, which can be anything from a basic checklist of important people to film with the baby to something as in-depth as a storyboard for the Look Who’s Talking, uh, tribute you’re planning to film. Here are some suggestions for your shot list:

Live video and still photos
We haven’t calculated video’s exact worth, but we do know that pictures nab a cool thousand words each. When the time comes to edit your movie, you can flex your creative muscles even further by mixing live video with still photos. If you’re already filming, many camcorders nowadays will let you take a limited number of snapshots while recording.

Photos taken on a camcorder, especially those taken while filming, still pale in comparison to specialised digital camera. So, try to use a digital camera for stills whenever you can. Either way, take lots of photos.

The “before” to go with the “after”
New parents often focus so carefully on the Big Day that they forget all the stuff leading up to it: decorating the baby’s room, opening presents at the baby shower, even just getting some good shots of mum’s big belly. You might even want to play news reader, citing some of the personal and world events that are occurring as you’re getting ready for the new bundle of joy.

Coming home from the hospital
It can be downright scary to bring that first baby into the house, where you’re suddenly cut off from the help and experience of doctors and nurses. If you’re too busy helping to make the move from car to crib, have someone else film the equally joyous and panic-stricken parents. It’s priceless footage for later.

Baby’s introduction to friends and family
Make sure everybody gets a turn in front of the camera while holding or cooing at the new baby. Sure, you’ll leave some of these folks on the cutting-room floor, but you’ll also make sure no one important gets left out.

Baby’s first everything
It goes without saying that you’ll want shots of the baby’s first smile, rollover, solid food and so on. But don’t forget the potentially unpleasant stuff, such as middle-of-the-night feedings and scream-producing first baths. It’s no fun while it’s happening, but you’ll look back on it later with a smile.

A personal documentary
Every so often, put the camera on the tripod, start it rolling, then step in front of it. Talk about what the baby’s doing, how your lives have changed, what’s going on in the world, and so on. This video diary helps establish some context for all the footage you’re shooting of the bambino, while at the same time giving you a chance to be in front of the camera instead of always behind it.

Step 4: Capture the moments
Once you’ve done your prep work, it’s time to shoot — but you can’t just point your camera at the kid and hit record. You need to decide when to use a tripod and when to go handheld. You need to frame your shots so that they avoid that amateur look. And don’t forget special effects — the good old-fashioned kind made popular by a certain Mr. Burns. Learn the ins and outs of using your camcorder before an important baby moment comes along, otherwise you’ll find yourself fumbling with batteries and settings while baby takes his first steps.

Use a tripod
That shaky-camera look is fine for NYPD Blue, but it can absolutely ruin a baby video. Consider this: the little one stays pretty motionless, at least for the first few months, so your camcorder should do the same. By mounting it on a tripod, you’ll get rock-steady footage. At the same time, you’ll free yourself to perform artistic pans and zooms — or just get in front of the lens.

If you’re planning to rely on your camera’s image-stabilisation feature, don’t. Digital image stabilisation works by shifting pixels to counteract shake but this has the side-effect of softening the image. Optical and mechanical image stabilisation is preferable, as they work by moving either the lens elements or sensor to balance out shake, and therefore don’t soften your footage. Remember that stabilisation is great for making handheld footage watchable, but the step up to video shot on a tripod is like the leap from backyard cricket to a Test Match.

Remember the rule of thirds
Photographers know this rule well, but it’s just as applicable when shooting video. Imagine a noughts-and-crosses board over your viewfinder. The lines intersect in four spots. Your goal should be to have your subject at one of those intersection spots in the frame. Or, to put it another way, keep the baby out of the centre square.

Avoid digital zoom
The same rule that applies to digital cameras applies to camcorders: optical zoom, good; digital zoom, bad. Although you may have been suckered into buying a particular model because it touted some astronomical digital-zoom number (240x! 300x! 800x!), you should never use it — unless you like grainy, pixelated video. Digital zoom is actually a big fake: as you increase the zoom level, the camcorder crops further and further into the centre of the image, enlarging that cropped portion so that it fills the screen. As a result, your video looks, well, awful. Stick with your camcorder’s optical zoom (usually you can turn off digital zoom from within the camera’s menu system), which relies solely on the lens for magnification. If you need to get closer to the little ankle biter, follow the old photographer’s maxim: zoom with your feet (or in this case, your hands and knees).

Skip the special effects
Lots of digital camcorders offer sexy special effects, everything from sepia to slow-mo. These can be fun to fool around with, but we recommend using them sparingly — if at all. Better you should start with pristine colour video, then apply special effects using your editing software (a little manoeuvre the pros like to call post-production). Likewise, skip the camcorder’s autofade features; your editing software will give you far greater control over transitions, and greater variety as well.

Create on-the-fly Ken Burns effects
As noted earlier, for the first few months your baby isn’t going to do much except lie there, making for some pretty dry video. Spice things up a bit by borrowing from documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who manages to make even 100-year-old still photos exciting. His best trick? The slow zoom. Put your camcorder on a tripod, make sure the baby is well lit, and shoot some very slow zooms. You can start wide and zoom in or start close and zoom out. Add a little simultaneous panning if you really want to get fancy. Sprinkling these shots throughout your movie can add some much-needed visual diversity.

Practice in-camera editing
It’s always better to have too much footage than too little, but there’s such a thing as way too much. Shoot images that tell a story. Shoot when something interesting is happening. If you just leave the camcorder running, you’ll make the editing process more difficult because you’ll have that much more fluff to trim away. Consider what you’re filming as you’re filming it and ask yourself if it’s something you’re likely to keep. If not, turn the camcorder off.

Mix in still photos
A baby video needn’t be all video. Photos are a great way to add diversity — and to spotlight those memorable smiles, screams, nap times, and so on. Many video editors will even let you add Ken Burns-style pan and zoom effects.

Step 5: Edit your footage
There’s a reason they give out Oscars for editing. The process of separating the wheat from the chaff, the smiles from the spit-ups, can be nothing short of Herculean. Fortunately, there are tools and tips that can make the process easier:

Make it a music video
Fellini didn’t make two-hour baby movies, and neither should you. Pick a meaningful song (Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” is always in style), then edit your movie to fit it. A music video is the ideal baby video, as it doesn’t take an insane amount of time to create, it’s short enough to keep viewers interested, and it overcomes the common problem of poor audio in your recordings (as you’re replacing some or all of the audio with music).

Keep the scenes short
Whether you go the music-video route or not, don’t linger on the same shot for more than five to 10 seconds. Obviously you can exercise some creative licence here, especially if there’s a lot of action happening, but just remember that long scenes tend to make for boring movies.

Avoid fancy transitions
Editing programs such as CyberLink PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio offer dozens, even hundreds, of fancy transitions. Pretend they’re not there and stick with basic fades and dissolves instead. If you absolutely must use the 3D barn-door pull-away, put it someplace logical, such as in between the opening credits and your first video shot. If it shows up in the middle of your movie, it’s going to look really conspicuous — and out of place.

Consider automation software
If you don’t have time to manually edit each and every frame of your movie, try a program that will do the work for you. Muvee AutoProducer is one such time-saver; it automatically assembles movie clips, still photos, and MP3/WMA files into slick, polished music videos, all in about the time it takes to read this sentence. Pinnacle Studio offers a similar kind of automation while giving you a full roster of editing and special-effects tools. Even Microsoft’s free Windows Movie Maker has an AutoMovie feature, though you can’t output the finished product to DVD as you can with the other programs.

Don’t forget to title
Throw in some descriptive text every now and then, such as “Baby’s First Birthday”. This is especially helpful if the audio quality isn’t very good.

Step 6: Render, view and distribute
Once you’ve finished channelling Francis Ford Coppola, render your video to hard-disk in the highest possible quality. This will ensure that you have a high-quality original for your archives. Now it’s time to share baby’s best, and worst, moments with all and sundry.

Invite friends and family over for a barbeque and the premiere of Baby’s First Year. For those far-flung friends, upload your clip to video streaming sites, such as YouTube. Grainy 320 x 240 Web video won’t cut it if your nearest and dearest family members are overseas. It’s probably best to burn them a DVD and mail it. Most video editors and DVD-burning software will have instructions for laying out and burning discs, including templates for the disc’s menu navigation.

Those going down the high-def path should screen Best of Baby at home in HD, but distribute it on DVD. There’s a number of reasons for this: the format wars between Blu-ray and HD DVD are still a long way from being resolved, few homes have players capable of reading either format, and both burners and writeable discs are still jaw-droppingly expensive.

Now ship those discs out to your friends and family, have a sip of coffee and get ready to start filming the next instalment of the Baby Diaries.

By Elizabeth Landau
CNN

(CNN) — Think a little spanking won’t do much harm to kids? New research says the effects can be long-lasting.
Children are too young to understand when parenting behavior is wrong, a social psychologist says.

Experts say “popping” kids can do more harm than good. A new study of more than 2,500 toddlers from low-income families found that spanking may have detrimental effects on behavior and mental development.

“We’re talking about infants and toddlers, and I think that just, cognitively, they just don’t understand enough about right or wrong or punishment to benefit from being spanked,” said Lisa Berlin, the study’s lead author and research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University.

Berlin and colleagues found that children who were spanked as 1-year-olds tended to behave more aggressively at age 2, and did not perform as well as other children on a test measuring thinking skills at age 3. The study is published in the journal Child Development.

Although these effects were somewhat small, the study is just the latest of many supporting psychologists’ advice against spanking. Still, some experts say spanking has a time and place.

The new study focused on children from low-income families because prior research suggested that spanking is more common among them, Berlin said. This may be because of the added stresses of parenting in a low-income situation, or because of a “cultural contagion” of behaviors among people. For example, in some families this study examined, a grandmother would spank a child, or neighbors would encourage physical discipline, she said.

Her study found that about one-third of the 1-year-olds, and about half of the 2- and 3-year-olds, had been spanked in the previous week, according to mothers’ self-reporting to the researchers. At all three ages, African-American children were spanked significantly more frequently than those from white and Mexican-American families, and verbally punished more than the other children at ages 2 and 3, the study said.

Previous research had also found that parents who spank are more likely to be younger, less educated, single, and/or depressed and stressed, Berlin’s study said. Spanking is most commonly used among parents who were spanked themselves, who live in the South, and/or who identify themselves as conservative Christians. These parents also tend to believe in the effectiveness of spanking or believe the child is at fault in a given situation, the study said.

The new research refutes the idea that more aggressive children are more likely to be spanked, Berlin said. On the other hand, the study did find that children who were fussier at age 1 were more likely to be spanked and verbally punished, she said.

Verbal punishment did not appear to have the same detrimental effects as spanking in this study, Berlin said.

Some remain unconvinced that parents should never spank their children. Robert Larzelere, associate professor of human development and family science at Oklahoma State University, conducted a meta-analysis of 26 studies on the subject, and found that, overall, spanking seemed more effective than 10 of 13 alternative disciplinary methods for getting a child to behave or do as asked.

Much of the research on the subject does not clearly demonstrate a causal link, Larzelere said. For example, in comparing studies, children who are spanked and children who are taken to psychologists both are more likely to have aggressive behavior later, he said.

The best use of spanking, Larzelere said, is in children between the ages of 2 and 6 when milder discipline tactics, such as time out, fail.

“That’s why psychologists trained parents to use spanking that way for 25 years [from the] late ’60s to mid-’90s,” he said. Now, the trend of advice is away from spanking, but there’s not much hard evidence to support it, he said.

Berlin’s study focused on particularly early ages, Larzelere noted; much of the spanking literature focuses on ages 2 and older. Twelve months is probably too early to spank children, but there’s no established point between ages 1 and 2 at which it is appropriate, he said.

Others say parents should not resort to spanking at any age. Susan Newman, social psychologist and author of “Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day,” said parents should discourage bad behaviors by taking away privileges such as dessert, or setting an earlier bedtime. They should also reinforce good behaviors verbally, saying how nice it is when their children share, for example.

The study corroborates what clinical psychologist Laura Markham, who was not involved in the study, has observed about the negative effects of spanking. Many mothers describe their children as fussy, resistant and demanding at age 1, which is a critical junction in the parent-child relationship, she said in an e-mail.

“If the mother sees this fussiness as willful misbehavior and begins verbally punishing or spanking, rather than empathizing with the child, the child’s behavior deteriorates into more tantrums and other frustrating behavior,” said Markham, who also offers advice at AhaParenting.com.
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Newman also noted that children are too young to understand when parenting behavior is wrong, even at the level of abuse. Physical violence gets passed down in families because the only parenting skills people know are the behaviors that they saw at home, she said.

Spanking, moreover, reinforces negative memories in the child’s mind, Newman said. Parents should aim instead to build “prominent, happy memories” of childhood for their kids, she said.

Regardless of income level, all parents can benefit from training classes, Newman said.

For future research, Berlin is looking at programs that work with low-income or high-risk families and try to promote supportive parenting behaviors.

In the spanking study, some mothers said they were receiving parenting services in which they were counseled not to spank their children.

“This is definitively the direction in which services are going and in which, in general, American culture is going,” Berlin said