With our regular Wednesday feature, Cackleberries.com has another expert article to help parents solve those tough child rearing dilemmas.  The Cackleberries How-to feature provides great parenting tips, tricks, and techniques to help you deal with any sort of situation that may arise throughout the process of parenthood.  You can view all of our expert articles on the right side of the page under the “Expert Articles” category.  If you have a topic you’d like us to cover, feel free to let us know at info@cackleberries.com

Safety tips for your Children to Follow while using Social Networking Websites

We’ve all heard about the new and highly popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. However, just because your aware of them doesn’t mean you necessarily know how dangerous and harmful social networking sites can be to your children. These websites offer an opportunity for people to create their very own web page full of personal information, photos, and any other content they wish to share with the world. That’s all good and well if the user is a responsible and educated adult. If, on the other hand, your child or teenager is the one attempting to use these sites, the situation and repercussions of posting private content may not be so clear. It is important to educate your child about the dangers involved in using social networking websites.

While many of these websites try to enact decent privacy policies and safety features, the Internet can still be a dangerous place because there is no foolproof system to protect your children when using these networking sites. The people that can cause harm online rely on naivety and inexperience to do their damage. Here are five key tips to make sure your child follows while using social websites.

1 – Don’t List Personal Information

The number one thing you can teach your child is to never give out or post personal information on the Internet. Information such as your home address, phone number, enrolled school, and even email address shouldn’t be shared online. Depending on your child’s stipulated privacy settings, anyone logged in to the website your child is using could obtain this information. With this information in hand, child predators or scam artists can use it to build trust with your child and attempt to garner even more private information and even attempt to meet your child.

2 – Never Agree to Meet an Online Friend in Person

While your child may feel like their mature and grown-up by meeting new people and making new friends online, it is very important that they know never to meet an online friend in person without your knowledge, approval, and attendance at any potential get together. Even if it is a real friendship, you can’t afford to take chances when it comes to online predators. Many times, people pretend to be someone they’re not in order to gain access to potential victims.

3 – Never have Conversations of an Inappropriate Manner

Your child may feel invincible online and may be compelled or coerced into discussing things they otherwise wouldn’t speak about. Racial, sexual, belligerent, crude, or otherwise inappropriate topics should not be discussed online. Not only is this content not acceptable but it is also apparent to everyone viewing your child’s web page that they are saying these things. This does not present a good impression for your family, possible employers, or your community and society on a whole.

4 – Maintain Honesty

Many children and teenagers like to partake in practical jokes and this is no different when they’re online. Due to its simplicity and effectiveness, your child may find it entertaining or humorous to pretend to be someone else online in order to play a joke or spread a rumour. However, identity theft is never harmless and can result in serious repercussions for the individuals involved. The seriousness of such a prank can be seen when you consider that many online scam artists and predators use this type of tactic to prey on potential victims. Make sure your child always uses the Internet and social websites in an honest and respectful manner.

5 – Never Divulge Passwords

A password to your child’s social web account can be a ticket to identity theft and could create a huge problem for your child socially. If the wrong person gains access to your child’s account, they can use it to distribute nasty messages, pictures, and other content. Much like the safety tip above, if someone is dishonest in using your child’s account, it can create a situation much bigger than anyone intended.  If your child’s account becomes compromised, make sure to let their school administration and their friends’ parents know.

Obviously it would be ideal to trust that your child could handle all these situations on their own but unfortunately with today’s technologies, that isn’t always the case. People with more knowledge and experience can prey on those unaware of the hazards or consequences of actions taken while using social networking websites. Be sure to keep your child informed of these dangers so they can make the right decisions while online.

We’re back again with our ‘Drawing Lessons & Drawing for Kids‘ Series from Cackleberries.com.  Each and every week we present a brand new drawing lessons video for your enjoyment.  These videos from our head artist are a great resource for you and your kids as you learn to draw together.  If you want to re view past lessons, you can access previous drawing tutorials on the right side of the page under the”drawing lessons” category.  These art lessons are produced specifically to make drawing for kids more fun and exciting!  Stay tuned every week as we progress with our drawing knowledge and learn new skills together. 

With Halloween closing in on us, the Cackleberries Club will be offering fun Halloween themed drawing lessons over the next 5 weeks.  For part 1 of our 5 part series, this week, we present to you…..

How to Draw a Monster!

A Cackleberries Halloween Special Drawing Lesson

We Hope you enjoyed today’s drawing lessons and drawing for kids lesson.  See you next week for instalment number 2!

Cackleberries.com is pleased to offer another post in our easy kids snack recipes and recipes for kids series.  Not only will these recipes provide great and healthy snacks for you and your family but they will also save you plenty of time in the kitchen.  With fun and new recipes every week, our kids snack feature offers a place for you to find new tasty treats!  This week, Cackleberries.com has another tasty snack recipe that you and your kids are sure to love.

With just about a month until Halloween, Cackleberries is pleased to offer a new feature over the next few Monday’s as we set out to provide some fun Halloween themed recipes for you and your kids!

This week, we feature…….

Pumpkin Pizza!

Ingredients

• Pizza Shells
• Pizza Sauce
• Toppings of your choice
• Cheese (Mozzarella or Cheddar)

Directions

1. Pre-heat Oven to required temperature
2. Spread shell with  pizza sauce
3. Cover pizza with cheese
4. Cut toppings into required shapes
5. Place cut toppings into unique Halloween shaped faces
6. Bake for required time (usually 11-14 minutes)
7. Serve and Enjoy

We hope you enjoyed the first of our Halloween Recipes Series!  See you all next week!

Cackleberries.com is back with its Children’s Stories and Bedtime Stories Series.  We showcase our unique characters and wonderful town through our eye-catching stories while providing parents with a great way to encourage children to read!  To read other stories we’ve released, check out the ‘children’s stories’ category on the right side of the page.  Make sure you check back each and every week as we offer a brand new story every Friday!

Today, we meet up with the always responsible and ever caring cackpal, Shellbee in the short story……

Shellbee Shares her Thoughts

A Cackleberries Video Storybook

We hope you liked today’s Children’s Stories and Bedtime Stories Feature!

With school back in session, Cackleberries will be offering some timely tips on how to handle the sudden switch from summer to school mode.

Setting Some Ground Rules for the Back to School Schedule

It is definitely not easy being a kid. However, sometimes it seams as though it’s even harder being a parent. Not only do you have to support, nurture, and care for your family, but you also have to make those tough decisions that wont go over well with your children. This is especially difficult after a long summer of lax rules and leisurely days. When it comes time to head back to school, certain ground rules need to be re-established.

In order to ease the transition, you should have a family get together to discuss your expectations and openly talk about why you’re implementing these new rules. Allow your children to have their say and be actively involved in the process. This way, your children will understand the new rules and will be  aware of any potential consequences should they fail to live up to the new conditions. For clarity’s sake, you may want to write these rules down and post them where the family can see. That way, there will be no confusion as to what is expected.

Once school is back in session, there are a few key areas you’ll want to address.  Here are a few ideas to implement that will help things run smoothly on the home front:

* Set a consistent bedtime

For your sake and theirs, you should set a standard bedtime for your kids. They need the rest, and so do you.

* Establish homework requirements and review their work

Ensuring your child is completing their schoolwork on time and to the best of their ability is an excellent habit to get into. Study habits learned while young will be a great benefit for years to come.

* Institute entertainment and gaming limitations

With school back in session, you will need to rein your children’s extra-curricular activities in and make sure that they are doing their fair share of studying and household chores.

* Create contact procedures

This can range from regularly checking in, planning for rides or after school activities, and emergency contact protocol.

* Determine your family’s activity schedule and plan out logistics

Whether it’s picking up your kids from school or dropping them off at soccer practice, your family’s activities need to be coordinated and travel plans or carpool arrangements need to be established.

* Create a chores task list

If your children are at an age where they can lend a hand, sign them up to help out. Household chores are almost never ending so if you have children that can share the burden, create a chore list. You’ll be glad you did.

* Create Internet usage rules and time restrictions

Most important here is restricting what they can and can’t see. Inappropriate content is almost inevitable but there are steps you can take to mitigate this. Try blocking certain sites, placing the computer in a common area, and restricting pleasure use until other tasks are done.

* Know what you’re capable of

Don’t overload yourself! Be aware of your limitations and make sure to ask for help if you need it! Remember, you can only do so much. For example, if your child has soccer practice with a friend, arrange a carpool. That way, you can cut down your driving by fifty percent. Another thing you can do is have a family night where you prepare a bunch of dinners for the week. That way, you can freeze them until ready and wont need to slave in the kitchen every evening.

So with school back in session, try implementing rules such as these to help ease the transition and ensure that your family stays on track throughout the year.