Parenting and Its Challenges

Adequate nutrition before and during pregnancy is very important for a long-term health of the baby. A woman who has been well nourished before conception begins her pregnancy with reserves of several nutrients so that the needs of the growing foetus can be met without affecting her health. Infants, who are well nourished in the womb, have an enhanced chance of entering life in good health. Mother's diet should produce adequate nutrients so that maternal stores do not get depleted and produce sufficient milk to nourish her child after birth. In many underdeveloped countries thousands of mothers as well as babies died every year due to malnutrition.

If the mother is undernourished the baby is at an increased risk of being premature with low birth weight and development irregularities. Intrauterine nutrition is highly important for the growth of the central nervous system and kidneys of the foetus, which mature during the later part of pregnancy. So if you want a healthy baby, your diet should contain adequate amounts of protein, iron, calcium, folate, iron and vitamins A and D because these nutrients are needed for the formation of bones and teeth, muscles and hemoglobin. If any of these nutrients are lacking, then your own stores of these will be depleted to compensate for the lack in your diet. So, a proper balanced diet must be given to the mother before, during and even after birth of her baby.

During the early childhood and until the teenage years, it’s largely possible to control what and when your children eat, how much exercise they get and when they go to bed. While all this may change once your child reaches the teenage years, there are ways you can help him eat healthily and stay fit. To provide the adequate and appropriate food to your growing child is very necessary. Teenagers grow quickly and in fits and starts. They need an increase in food to supply the energy they need for growth. Teenagers need more calories than adults, to meet their physiological and psychological requirements.

As a general rule of thumb, about half of all calories should come from complex carbohydrates such as cereals, pasta, rice and bread, and from root and leaf vegetables and fruit. About a third of calories should come from foods like chicken, meat, oily fish, milk, cheese, eggs, and yoghurt. The rest will be made up of other foods like fats. However, even if you offer good food at regular intervals, your teenager may not always eat it. Erratic meal patterns, skipping breakfast and fasting to lose weight are not uncommon, as is eating too much of the wrong foods.

The next important issues are that we see some children are big eaters and put on extra weight, while small eaters remain underweight (excess of everything is bad).

Some teenagers put on weight slowly but surely in early adolescence. If weight-gain starts to become a problem, it’s easier to try to change the eating patterns that caused the gain sooner rather than later. Try to ensure that your teenager is eating sensibly from all food groups, and encourage the whole family to follow the same routine so that he has company. Don’t keep cupboards full of tempting foods high in fat or sugar.

Many teenagers worry about their weight. Social pressure and media images combine to put fat near the top of most teenagers’ hate lists. However, while most teenagers worry, very few go on to develop eating disorders. One that worries parents is anorexia nervosa, which is more common amongst teenage girls than boys. Anorexia occurs when a girl sees herself as fat and continues to diet even when she is already very thin. If you suspect your teenager is developing anorexic tendencies, talk to your GP.

It’s a fine path to tread between encouraging your child to eat healthily and making her, or him, feel that they are over or under weight. Try to make sure their diet is healthy and they take a fair amount of exercise. Concentrate on the whole person, not just one aspect such as what they do or don’t eat.

Parents often seek answers to very difficult questions regarding teenage drug abuse. There is no simple answer on how we can protect our children, but there are many ways we can help to raise them to make intelligent decisions when faced with the opportunity to use drugs. This type of parenting begins well before our children become teenagers. A parent's role starts when their child is just a toddler and continues until college.

For better parenting you need to create a relatively disciplined home environment to ensure that your home is designed to promote positive behavior. Making sure you reduce sources of temptation and make simple changes to help your children better organize his or her time, you can prevent many troubles before they occur. Establishing understandable rules and routines, will help you save your energy for predictable challenges that are part of childhood -- with greater patience and understanding.

Moreover, you need to create a friendly home environment to increase communication with your child, particularly during difficult moments. You will learn to describe problems rather than assign blame, speak first from positive assumptions and use words to resolve rather than escalate problems. It will help you chose the response that can best defuse conflict resolve problems and keep your relationship with you child positive, even in the most trying moments.

Another great issue is divorce. You are so called matured, so can handle the aftermaths of divorce, but they are children, sometimes they find it very difficult to adjust the new situation. There are many published research findings showing many social, economical and psychological problems related to divorce. When children grow up with both parents, they normally shift their loyalties between their parents. Either, they want to be closer to dad or to mom—it's natural.

But after divorce, both parents and their children are locked into a rigid structure. Any change is an occasion for painful, defensive struggles for turf. Children learn. They figure out that they have extraordinary power over their parents based on those shifting allegiances. It's degrading and unpleasant for parents and children alike, but it happens.

The most effective parenting plans, the most compassionate parenting plans, are designed to be flexible. That doesn't mean children need to be moving back and forth with every whim, but it may mean that the two of you build in a chance to re-examine your residential plans and visitation schedules on a periodic basis, so both of you can review them without defensiveness and without feeling threatened.

However, the discussion may go and on but these are few great issues that help you in better parenting. The best way is to remember that you should lead by example. As with many teenager issues, there are no simple solutions. However, he/she is more likely to follow your example than do what you say. Even if you don’t see the results in the short term, your child will eventually learn to respect your lifestyle. He/she may choose a different way of doing things himself, but some of your upbringing will show through in the end. We admit some of these issue are beyond our control and no one is perfect, but for sure there are few points you should always make sure for better parenthood.

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