Issues
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Parenting Issues |
The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychology
This site's Facts for Families section is an award winning series of 51 fact sheets in English, French and Spanish. You'll find everything you wanted to know about Adolescent Psychiatry here or through the links provided. If you have any psychological concerns about your child, or the child of your new partner, this is the site to start with. Parenting is a difficult enough job under the best of circumstances and when everything is "normal". This is a site to help you see if what you're dealing with is normal or not and what you can learn to help make you a more effective parent.
One of the many terrific sites found at ParentsPlace. This has a variety of links providing support for stay-at-home and working mothers, a newsletter and a discussion group for Feminist Mothers at Home.
This is an unusual and interesting site set up as a free service by Debtguard Corporation of Mississauga, Ontario to help locate Canadian parents defaulting on their child support payments. You can find what they list as the "Most Wanted Deadbeats" and also a full listing of all of the "deadbeat parents" in a photo gallery showing details about the person and how you might be able to recognize him or her. If you spot one of these people you can e-mail the company. As matters stand there are still only a limited number of parents listed on this site, but I would expect it to grow over the next several months as more people become aware of it.
The Nemours Foundation operates hospitals, clinics and child care centres in the U.S. and calls itself "one of the nation's largest accumulations of assets devoted specifically to the improvement of health care for children". They offer this eclectic site with all kinds of valuable information.
Click on Word to get a layman's description of medical terms and symptoms. The section for Kids has games, sites and a Kids Vote poll. The Parents section has helpful information from the "common, every day" to "specialized knowledge about particular medical conditions." Here you can click on Common Childhood Illnesses for a growing list of things that our kids get - descriptions, symptoms, prevention, home treatment, etc.
If the specific condition or ailment your child has is not yet discussed on this site, or for another description of it, check out the Pediatric Data Base (Pedbase) below.
Lisa had a daughter in September, 1995, and has put up a web site devoted to parenting and mothering issues. She has collected links to on-line resources under headings such as Breastfeeding Resources, Pregnancy & Childbirth, Children With Special Needs and General Parenting Resources. This is a one person site with lots of information.
What a fabulous site this is! Anywhere you go in it is really worthwhile and well done. Although only some of the areas in this mammoth site are discussed below, there are many other areas or sub-areas for which there simply isn't space here to make a comment but which are just as worthy of your attention. There are many sites on the Internet which are of interest because of one particular topic area or strength. The ParentsPlace site has strengths bulging out all over on all sorts of topics. Spend a night here if you're a parent - whether experiencing separation and divorce or not.
Reading Rooms: These are broken into numerous areas with information and links in each category. There are separate "Rooms" for Single Parenting, Step-Parenting, Fathering, Mothering, Working Parents, etc., etc. Includes a series of columns called Ask the: Midwife, Doctor, Lawyer, Nutritionist and Single Mom Expert.
(Throughout various Family Law Centre Directories you will find references to specific pages or sites found in the ParentsPlace Reading Rooms because many of them are excellent as independent sites to visit on their own.)
Chat Groups: This site hosts chat groups on different topics at specific times posted so you can decide which one you want to join. Allows parents with particular interests or concerns to discuss them directly and on-line with other parents. Includes chat times for kids.
The Mall: This has a lengthy list of child related products, information and services. There is a list of Parenting Newsletters and Journals which include such titles as Full-Time Dad (discussed above), SingleMOTHER and Single Parenting in the Nineties.
Bulletin Boards: You name the topic and the ParentsPlace Bulletin Boards have a discussion thread going. Whether you intend to lurk or participate you'll likely find these quite interesting.
Another terrific site with lots of pages on all kinds of general, family oriented issues. To the FLC it's best feature is its phenomenal grouping of Bulletin Boards. There are more topics than many of us could imagine and they are clearly set out in groups and sub-groups. Unlike many newsgroups, the comments found are to the point and on topic. They are set out in large, readable type and neatly organized so you can follow a discussion or join in at an appropriate place.
In addition to numerous groups on general parenting issues, there are Bulletin Boards devoted to Single Parents, Single Parent Dating, Blended Families and Extended Families. This is a place where people are discussing situations and predicaments you may be sharing and where others are commenting on how they dealt with them. Even if you don't participate directly, you'll likely find value to following the discussion under a topic of interest to you.
Started by a Consulting Pediatrician in Summerside, P.E.I., Dr. Alan Gandy, while doing his residency in Pediatrics at the University of Western Ontario, this site has a huge data base of information about childhood diseases. It lets you get information about what may be afflicting your child and is a place you can check into on your own after you've left the doctor's office to see what he or she was talking about. If your child is sick, the odds are that you'll find some information here. (You might also check out the KidsHealth.Org site referred to above.)
Shared Parenting Information Group (SPIG)
This is a wonderfully informative site about the concept and application of "Shared Parenting". There is all sorts of helpful and focussed information on this topic including sections on arguments used in courts for and against the idea, guidelines for parents exploring this idea and much more. It has resources and articles and is rich in information.
This is another ParentsPlace page and has a monthly newsletter focussing on issues concerning single parents and their children. Numerous articles are on-line and accessable by clicking Selected Articles.
This is a commercial organization which offers counselling for step families. They include telephone counselling, which they say represents 50% of their business. They cite statistics for the United States showing that 50% of all marriages end in divorce and that 60% of second marriages fail. They also state that 66% of marriages and living together situations break up when children become actively involved and that 50% of all children in the United States will go through a divorce before they are 18 years old. These are staggering statistics and don't seem to represent the Canadian experience - yet. Their site has articles and links to other sites dealing with step parenting issues and is well worth reading for people involved in, or contemplating, second marriages with children.
Click here to submit any information regarding other Parenting sites you think should be added. Thanks, Joel Miller.
One of the most noteable things about the Internet is how often sites you really like disappear. Everyone of the sites referred to above was operational and accessable at the time it was reviewed - but there is no guarantee it's still there. If you tried to click onto a site and had difficulty, please send us an e-mail so we can look into it. Thanks, Joel Miller
