All My Children

Premarital sex can also cause great emotional stress, and God wants to protect our children from that. Perhaps the biggest problem is the guilt that comes from knowing one has violated God’s standards.

As one young person said, “One of the worst feelings many sexually active people experience is to get up the next morning and realize the person lying next to them is a total stranger. This ‘morning after’ syndrome robs a person of a healthy self- image and a clear conscience, which decreases his ability to experience the transparency needed to cultivate an intimate relationship. On top of that, flashbacks from past sexual encounters can haunt a person the rest of his life, which can leave him feeling ‘grimy’ in the hands of his current lover.” Continue Reading »

Lastly, God wants our children to wait until marriage for sex to protect them from relational problems. The first of these is a breakdown in communication. One young person said, “Like many others, I have learned that if there is too much touching in a relationship, it can cause uneasy feelings which lead to lack of communication.”

Wrote another, “Spending this time on sex takes away from time which could be spent getting to know each other more. Just at the time when the two need to talk most about their deepening feelings, problems they have, and so on, the verbal communication is stopped.” Continue Reading »

The closer the twin pair, the greater the distress when one twin dies, at whatever age. For the identical twin, there may be a shock that is similar to losing a limb. If twins have been helped to find a sense of personal identity during childhood, with their own individual friends and interests as well as those in common, they will have some support to help them with the trauma of what may seem like the loss of one half of themselves. Nothing can lessen their grief, but it can be made bearable if every small activity is not a constant reminder of the absence of their twin.

After the acute phase of grief is over, a child of school age should return to school, and his friends encouraged to invite him round so that he does not get trapped by his own fears and lack of confidence. Children in middle childhood are not usually frightened by the idea of death and can sometimes appear quite callous. Continue Reading »

If we are given a little time to show we care and to make our peace it is easier to live with ourselves afterwards. That is why it is so important for parents to have the opportunity of nursing a dying child or baby. It is important, too, for the other children in the family to make their farewells.

It can be helpful to have a loving mother figure in the house, such as a grandmother or a sister, to enable the parents to have time to grieve whilst young children and the co-twin baby can continue to feel good and lovable.

`Michael only came to visit, he couldn’t stay, but John will stay and be your baby brother,’ might be a helpful explanation for a three-year-old who could feel that his bad feelings had hurt the baby, or that he had somehow wished him away. Continue Reading »

The bereaved parents

The loss of a child at any stage brings heartbreak as there are so many might-have-beens, but the loss of a twin is somehow perpetuated in the survivor. There is also the loss of something that is not given to everyone: the privilege of having two babies, an achievement that is out of the ordinary.

The way that hospital staff react to the death of a stillborn or newborn twin is of great importance. The birth of twins in the maternity ward is always exciting and staff may deal with their own feelings of loss by denying those of the parents. They may also feel that parents should be grateful that they have one healthy baby when others, less fortunate, have none. The mother and father may be given the message that it is unacceptable to grieve. The baby is unceremoniously disposed of as though it had never existed. The grief may come later and be diagnosed as post-natal depression, or be delayed until the birth of the next baby. Continue Reading »

See color insert for color photos of skin conditions.

A new baby’s skin is so sensitive that at times looking at her cross-eyed may seem to provoke a new rash. You will see spots and splotches come and go, especially in the first several weeks, but most don’t need special treatment.

The characteristics of newborn skin and some common conditions including erythema toxicum, milia, and salmon patches. In addition, during the first few weeks many babies develop pimples on the face, neck, and upper back, which in some cases look like acne. These pimples most likely are a response to some of mother’s hormones acquired just before birth, and with rare exception they will resolve without treatment. If they become progressively worse, however, have them checked by your baby’s healthcare provider. Continue Reading »

Newborns do not typically sleep in long stretches during the first several weeks of life, nor do they know the difference between day and night. By two months, however, they are capable of lasting for longer periods without a feeding. Most parents will go through the pulse-quickening experience of awakening at dawn and realizing that the baby didn’t sound off in the middle of the night. “Is he okay?” is the first breathless concern, followed by both relief and quiet exultation: “He slept through the night!” Continue Reading »

By the time your baby arrives home for the first night, you will have had to address a basic question: Will she sleep in her own room, in a cradle or bassinet next to your bed, or in your bed right next to you? There are advocates for each of these arrangements.

Those who espouse sleeping with your baby point out that this is widely practiced throughout the world and that it gives the newborn a sense of security and comfort she won’t feel in a crib. Critics of shared sleeping raise concerns about parents accidentally rolling over and crushing the baby; however, the risk of this is remote. The more immediate concern is the potential disruption of parental sleep, intimacy, and privacy. Continue Reading »

Your experience as parent(s)

If a pregnancy is an upheaval for a teenager, it is also no picnic for her parents. Discovering that your adolescent daughter is pregnant is a trial like few others, and reactions—fear for her future, denial, guilt—may parallel hers with equal intensity. Parents are likely to feel anger in a number of directions—anger toward their daughter for being careless, not taking their advice, not using good judgment, and disobeying both them and God. They may be angry with the boy (or man) involved, who has violated their trust and their daughter’s well-being. They may be angry with themselves for any number of reasons: They were too narrow or too permissive, too busy or too tired to tune into their daughter’s world for the past several months—and now look what has happened. Continue Reading »

Before considering how you might respond to the news that your unmarried teenager is pregnant, take a brief tour of the emotions and thought processes that are likely to be swirling through her mind and heart.

Your daughter’s experience

Fear is an overriding emotion in nearly every teen pregnancy. “I can’t tell my par ents. They’ll kill me!” “How can I finish school when I’m pregnant?” “My boyfriend will take off if I don’t have an abortion.” The adolescent with a crisis pregnancy probably sees nothing but loss on the horizon—loss of love, time, education, and physical health. Fear of one or more of these losses propels most of her other responses. Continue Reading »