The Importance of Quality Child Care

a4_99999044 By American Academy of Pediatrics

Parents all wish for the best start for their child. Unfortunately, quality child care can be expensive and often hard to find. Many parents end up spending a large share of their paychecks for child care and still are not happy with the quality of the care their children receive. Lower-income families are much less likely to have their child in a quality center, and are more likely to have multiple changes in their child care arrangements, than middle- to higher-income families.

Finding quality child care is very important. Standards for child care settings may vary depending on the type of child care. Parents can, however, improve their children’s child care programs by becoming actively involved. You can visit the program regularly and talk with the caregiver often and extensively. You also can get involved in fund raising and donating supplies, can volunteer to help, or can work with the staff to create developmentally appropriate activities for the children. It also helps to bring the child’s activities home for family interaction, and on weekends, to try to maintain the child’s weekday schedule.

Bereavement and Loss

The death of a loved one can be the most stressful event in a person's life. A wide array of emotions can be experienced, such as sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt, and despair. Changes in sleep patterns and appetite can occur, as well as physical illness. These are all normal parts of grieving and the feelings can ebb and flow over time.

There is no "right way" and "wrong way" to grieve. Each person experiences grief in his or her own way, partly based on religious, cultural, social, and personal beliefs and partly because of the relationship with the person who died.

Humane Society recruits believers for animal rights

By Sarah More McCann

Religion News Service - Advocates at the Humane Society of the United States have long suspected God was on their side, and now they're hoping his followers will join them.

They're focusing their fight on the most vulnerable creatures:
factory farm hens and pigs crammed into cages so tight they can't move, and boiler chickens genetically altered to grow so fast their limbs can't support them.

But too many religious people, they say, remain in the dark, not recruited as potential allies.

"Very often ... I'll hear a preacher talking about our obligations of mercy and compassion to one another, and our stewardship of the earth, and I just want to jump up and say the missing piece in the middle is the animals," said Lois Godfrey Wye, an animal advocate who attends the Washington National Cathedral.

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The Importance of Quality Child Care

Bereavement and Loss

Humane Society recruits believers for animal rights