The Cost of Working
My sister has a very interesting dilemma.
She is a professional nanny, unmarried, living in central Florida. She was just offered a job watching three children for $13 an hour. For a nanny, that is pretty good money.
On the verge of accepting this position, a neighbor has offered her $11 an hour to watch her two children.
My sister is very interested in the $11 an hour job, as she would not need to drive to work at all, as opposed to the $13 an hour job which is a 45 minute commute.
So where is the dilemma?
I have cautioned my sister that she would be very foolish to accept the closer, $11 an hour job. Why?
This really has nothing to do with the $2 an hour difference, and everything to do with the Cost of Working. You see, the neighbor who wants to hire my sister has decided that she “needs a break” from being a full-time stay-at-home-mom. She plans to get a job to ease the stresses in her life, and to provide a diversion.
There is nothing wrong with that, except she will probably have to pay for the opportunity to work.
What’s that? Paying to work instead of getting paid to work?
Yes. Many mothers do indeed pay for the opportunity to work each day, instead of getting paid to work.
How?
They have not factored in the cost of working.
There are many hidden costs and expenses we must pay in order to have a job outside the home. Many are taken for granted, like transportation and work clothing expenses. Once we sit down and examine how much we are spending to be able to go to work, we sometimes will find that it is just not worth it.
Work Related Expenses
–Gasoline
–Car Payment
–Car Maintenance and Repair
–Child Care
–Taxes
–Clothing
–Dining Out: Lunch
–Dining Out: Convenience Dinner Foods
–Miscellaneous: Fundraisers and Gifts for Coworkers, Occasional Office Supplies, etc
What are you paying for the privilege of working?
Could your transportation expenses be reduced or eliminated if you were a stay at home mom? Could you condense down to one vehicle, or purchase an older model as your second car? How much are you really spending to get to work each day?
100% of Child Care expenses fall on the second working parent. Why? Because if Mom is a stay at home mom, there are no child care expenses. This expense cannot be divided between two working parents when examining the cost of working.
Many two income households fall into a high income tax bracket. Some households would benefit greatly by reducing their income, pushing them into a much lower bracket. When calculating your cost of working, if your income pushes you into a higher tax bracket, you need to factor the entire increase (not just your percentage) into your income. If you were not working, you would not have this expense.
Clothing, dining out, and miscellaneous expenses are a constant source of frustration for working mothers. Pantyhose rip, getting up a half hour earlier to pack a lunch is not an option, and saying no to your coworker’s child’s gift wrap fundraiser is out of the question. Five dollars here and ten dollars there can eat a hole in your income faster than you can blink.
My sister’s neighbor never factored the cost of working into to her situation. She was getting a retail position, paying $15 an hour. Based on taxes and child care expenses alone, the neighbor would probably be going into debt to afford her job. She rationalizes it with the fact that her husband works, and is incorrectly putting half of the child care expenses burden on his plate.
My guess is that her job will not last past a month or two, when the reality of more expenses and less income truly hits home. Then my sister will be out of a job.
There is nothing wrong with choosing to work outside the home, if you can financially afford it. Many mothers earn significant income and can easily cover these expenses. Many mothers have older children who do not need child care.
But many mothers think that they are working because they have to, when in reality, if they examined their cost of working, they might find that it would be less expensive to stay home.
Rayven Perkins has spent 7 years implementing cost-cutting tips that allow her family to live comfortably on one-income. Her site http://www.stay-a-stay-at-home-mom.com examines resources and tips on Reducing Expenses, Stretching Your Dollar, and Supplementing Income in order to stay a SAHM.
Home Remedies to Help Your Baby Through Teething
The teething process can be quite a traumatic time for babies and parents alike. The good news is that there are various different home remedies that you can try at this stage in an infant’s life. Home remedies for teething are often much more favored by parents as they are safe and do not contain any type of alcohol or other medication. There are lots of home remedies for teething, but here are a few in particular that stand out from the others.
Home Remedies for Teething
One in particular is to use a chilled teether. This is one of the most commonly used to relieve the pain that is caused during teething. These teethers can be usually bought at any retail store and generally consist of a plastic ring that is filled with a liquid gel. When you refrigerate or freeze them, they help to soothe your baby’s sore and swollen gums when they gum and suck on them. You do need to be careful however because they are usually made of plastic and so if your baby has already developed teeth then make sure they are unlikely to be able to puncture the teether.
Another good option is to give your baby cold food. Frozen banana is a particularly effective and tasty one. All you have to do is take a regular sized banana, peel it, cut it in half, and place the two halves in a freezer bag and let them sit in the freezer for a couple of hours. Then, once your baby starts getting aggravated from the teething pain you can take out one of the halves and give it to them to gum on. This is a great idea because the cold helps to soothe baby’s sore gums and yet you do not have to worry because a banana is a natural and healthy food and not any type of medicine. Ice cream and yogurts are also enjoyed by babies during the teething process.
Another thing you can do for your baby is to massage the baby’s gums with your fingers. As long as your hands are clean, all you need to do is put your fingers in your baby’s mouth and gently rub back and forth across their sore and swollen gums. This is by far the easiest method, although if the pain is particularly extreme then this method would not be effective enough at alleviating enough of the pain.
At the end of the day, every child is unique and so each case of teething is unique as well. This is why it is recommended that you take the time to try a few different options so that you can see what works best for your baby and what doesn’t. As you are trying all natural remedies for teething you don’t have to worry that you are harming your baby in any way which is a great comfort to you as a parent.
Lisa Davies is a freelance writer. For more information about babies and teething visit our site Baby Development Stages at http://www.babies2toddlers.com
Why Would You Want to Introduce a Second Language to Your Young Child?
There seems to be a general tone among parents today when it comes to the topic of helping their child learn a second language, particularly English-speaking parents of young children. Just this morning, in our local Starbucks, a mom approached me after seeing the magnetic signs on my car that tout my business and its benefits. She asked me if I also taught adults Spanish, to which I quickly and definitively replied with a negative, a no. Her feeling was that she had to know the language before bringing it into her child’s world.
This mom, like so many other savvy parents, felt she better find a program that will get her fluent in the new language first. This feeling, this tone is such a misconception as recently addressed in a terrific book written by two moms who are also PhDs in linguistics. In their book titled The Bilingual Edge, Dr. King and Dr. Mackey clearly state that a parent does not have to be fluent in nor have command of the second language in order to bring it
into their home on a daily and regular basis. As long as there is interaction between parent and child using tools that bring the new language into their lives then the bilingual journey can take place.
Experts agree that daily and regular interaction with the new language is crucial to achieving bilingual fluency. There is a huge debate about the length of time it takes a person to become truly bilingual. The point here is not to debate the length of time necessary to be deemed wholly bilingual. The younger, the better is the agreement between experts, research teams and educators. Today’s parents should heed their advice and get the language learning going as early as possible in their children’s lives.
The very board that administers the SAT, the College Board, has continually reported that the length of foreign language study is an important variable in predicting students’ SAT performance. What does this mean? The seniors who had four or more years of language study scored, on average, 50 points higher in the Critical Reading section of the SAT than those seniors who had only a half year or less of foreign language.
Year after year the statistical reports that provide information about SAT performance across the United States show clear evidence that link together foreign language study and increased standardized test scores. Many parents, who are faced with toddler tantrums and preschool age adventures, don’t often think this far into their child’s future. College entrance exams seem a lifetime away. Truth be told, the choices they make today in their child’s development, both socially and educationally, will help determine and drive their successes later in life. Gaining skills in a second language early in life will assist your child in learning his own language more quickly and often times lead to early reading skills that are not noted in monolingual children.
Dr. Ellen Bialystok, PhD out of York University has shared definitive research showing that children who receive instruction in two languages score twice as high on language tests than their monolingual peers. These bilingual children also read sooner and demonstrated advanced problem solving capabilities. This same woman and her research team out of the Rotman Research Institute just reported in January 2007 that bilingualism can help delay the onset of dementia by four years. Again, something most parents are not focusing on when they are still changing diapers and choosing preschools, but something worth noting.
Maintaining an English-only mentality is no longer a choice. The choice now is when should I as a parent begin the second language introduction and why. The reasons are clear, and your child will benefit greatly from you making the choice to begin the journey to bilingualism today in your family.
Beth Butler is the founder of The Boca Beth Program,a fun and easy way to introduce Spanish to young children. Gather your children around the computer now and enjoy the bilingual music and movies for FREE at http://www.bocabeth.com. Order online or via their toll free number 1.877.825.2622.
A Glimpse On Baby’s Iron Diet
We know all too well that we need iron, may it be from our well-prepared meals or from the dependable iron supplement pill that we take in everyday. Iron is an essential element that our body needs. It is basically required for us to maintain our strength and energy literally as without it we could be finding ourselves ensconced in a chair or in bed after feeling weak and faint due to the lack of oxygen on our body’s tissues. There are a lot of benefits that one can get from iron. The need for iron rich foods or products may be for preventive purposes for evading and ducking away from ailments that are caused by the deficiency of this element; or for treatment reasons. Iron could very well ignite the healing aids of our body into doing their jobs and making us healthy in no time.
The most widely held consideration for making sure that one’s diet amply includes the recommended daily allowance for iron is to avoid iron deficiency anemia. This is especially critical during the very first stages of our lives – our nine months or so inside the mother’s womb or the first few months after our introduction to this big, big world. Iron deficiency anemia is a big deal for babies and infants as it can cause problems on a child’s development and growth more particularly on the aspects of behavior, motor or mental facets. This means that your child could grow to be weak not only physically but he could be very well out of the kindergarten “fast learner’s league.” These implications are a cause for concern because they can have long term effects even if the anemia has already been treated or cured.
During pregnancy, the mom is strongly advised to get all the iron she needs from food with a little extra from iron supplements. This is because her body undergoes a lot of physical changes, one of which is to accommodate the growing fetus inside her which in time will spurt out to be a healthy baby. In this phase, she generates new tissues and so iron is needed to deliver the much needed oxygen to these new blood cells and tissues. A regular person who lacks in iron is prone to feelings of weakness and faintness, how much more for a mother who is carrying another person inside of her. Iron in this stage of life is vital.
During the last few months of pregnancy, the baby typically obtains from his mom iron and stores it in his body which should last at the very least for the first six months of his life outside the mother’s womb. This is the reason why most premature babies are at a high risk for iron deficiency anemia. Iron deficiency anemia is also possible for babies with low birth weights at a range below 6.5 lbs. and babies whose mothers have diabetes which are poor nutritional status.
For ages, we have learned that breast milk is the best food for babies. And this is classically true when it comes to iron. An added advantage is that the iron that is found in breast milk is easily absorbed by the baby’s system as well. When opting out of breast milk, one should check the formula milk to ensure that it is fortified with iron. As he grows older, make sure to feed your baby iron rich foods, vegetables, cereals and fruits.
James Brown writes about http://www.vitaminsdietshop.com