Ask the Parent Coach: Strategies for Reducing Video Game Screen Time

  Q: My child played video games a lot this summer. Now that school has started back up, what can I do to help him transition to less playing time and more studying time? Also, how much video game playing time is okay? A: Back-to-school time is always a period of adjustment, whether video games

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Top 5 Apps for Helping Busy Families Stay Organized

Each day as a parent you wear a variety of hats: mom/dad, spouse, employee, household CFO, chef, chauffeur, etc., and with each of these hats comes the requirement to juggle and prioritize different responsibilities, inputs, and schedules. As professional organizers, we at Innovatively Organized con

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Living under (cyber) cover: How technology is shaping our relationships

It all started with an “aha” moment of insight, between ordering a baby gift on potterybarnkids.com and downloading Taylor Swift on iTunes. The thinking went like this: Moms, endlessly in front of their laptops, smart phones or iPads, must be experiencing some sort of existential crisis. They’ve got

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Cool new gadgets for kids

There are times when you have to wonder what people in the consumer electronics industry are thinking. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show is a good example. I thought I’d seen everything when one exhibitor demonstrated a $39 device that tidies up iTunes libraries and another offered a new line of

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Online monitoring: Do you know your child's passwords?

Teens and tweens of every stripe are logging onto Buzz, Skype, email and Facebook. Should parents know their children’s passwords and monitor their communication? The debate sparks passion on both sides. Some parents believe their children have a right to privacy, as with the locked diaries and hush

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Alarming videos glamorize self-harm: What parents should know

By Patti Skelton-McGougan, executive director of Youth Eastside Services. Disturbing YouTube videos, showing cutting and other self-injury methods, are drawing millions of views and have the potential to trigger troubled youth to copy the behaviors, a study warns. Though the issue of self-harm has

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TV nation: Viewing time hits new heights

Three-year-old Maggie is in the middle of a TV-watching marathon. Though her mom has careful rules about what Maggie can watch, she watches a lot — nearly four hours every day. Kevin, an 8-year-old, watches TV in his room while getting ready for school, after school to “unwind,” and again after

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How to watch TV

Parents have been dealing with the downsides of television as long as that shimmering screen has been around. Today, with access to unlimited content just a Hulu click away, they anxiously wonder: How much is too much? What shows are good shows? Are programs too violent? Too sexy? Their concerns sw

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