See all the answers on Circle of Moms…

Of course, it is important to plan ahead in order to get school supplies at a great sale price! In addition, it’s important to help your child get accustomed to the idea that school, routines, hectic schedules and cooler weather, will all be here soon.

But…before boxing up the bathing suits and taking out the sweaters, let’s not rush into the fall and winter. It’s very important to teach kids the value of living in the moment and appreciating the experience at hand, before rushing ahead to the next thing. So, please, take the time to really enjoy the last weeks of summer together with your child. There are many different ways to live in the moment, right now. and here are just a few tips to help you do it:

• Resist the urge to unpack and try fall clothing on your child before the first day of school. It may be convenient for you to see if your child has grown a size over the summer, but for kids, it’s a sign to move on to the next thing. Rather, wait until a week or so before school starts. This will give you and your child a little time to plan without rushing the summer along.

• Limit school supply shopping with your child to one or two specific outings—don’t make it the focus of every day until school starts. If there’s a lot to get done, do some of it without your child so that she can continue to be in the summer mode.

• Spend even less time than usual watching TV, or watch recorded shows so that you can fast forward through the commercials. TV ads for back-to-school products become overwhelmingly prolific in August. This advertising pressure can be stressful for you and your child, pushing you out of summer mode before you are ready.

• Encourage your child to stay focused on the summer fun at hand by limiting conversations about school to once a day—at bedtime or first thing in the morning.

• Regularly ask your child to name activities or experiences that she or he has enjoyed, or is looking forward to enjoying this summer. Discussing these will help you and your child stay focused on the summer “moment” in which you are still living.

• When your child is in earshot, spend as little time as possible talking about back-to-school with other adults (in person or on the phone). Your child will pick up on the conversation and it will make it more difficult for him to focus on enjoying the rest of the summer.

• As the end of summer truly arrives (and teacher assignments arrive in the mail) plan one or two really fun summer activities. Even as you are preparing for the transition into school, remind your child that there are still days left of summer to appreciate; time to run through the sprinkler barefoot and eat that last piece of watermelon.

Dr. Susan Bartell is America’s #1 Family Psychologist. Her latest book is The Top 50 Questions Kids Ask. You can learn more about her at www.drsusanbartell.com

Because women are having babies later and later, the number of parentless parents in America is skyrocketing. While life expectancy is also on the rise, it isn’t growing fast enough to guarantee the children born to these parents will have more time with their grandparents. What this means is that all of our assumptions about grandparents being around longer than ever before — because they’re living longer, after all — are simply inaccurate.

For the first time in U.S. history, millions of children (and their parents) are actually vulnerable to having less time with their grandparents than more. Between 1970 and 2007, the average age for a woman to give birth rose 3.6 years. During the same period, life expectancy for a 65-year-old increased 3.4 years. While that doesn’t seem earth-shattering on its own, consider another trend: While women overall are having fewer babies, mothers between 40 and 54 are having more. For example, 180,000 children were born to mothers 35 and older in 1972. Nearly 40 years later, that number soared to 603,113 — a 235 percent increase. This jump is so significant it can’t be explained away by increasing population size. Unquestionably, a revolution is happening in the way generations are connected in America.

This has massive consequences for every member of the family. Parents are raising kids without the support of their own mothers and fathers, and kids don’t have grandparents, with all the social, behavioral and cognitive benefits associated with these grandparent/grandchild relationships.

For the last three years, I’ve conducted one-on-one interviews, led numerous focus groups, and launched the Parentless Parents Survey, the first of its kind, which gathered responses from across the United States and a dozen countries, in order to study this growing population. Most shocking to me during this time is that I couldn’t find any research like it. Dozens of government institutions, committees and commissions are tasked with researching the changing landscape of the American family; yet while the American population is shifting in such a dramatic and measurable ways, no other investigation has been done on what these changes mean to parents and their children.

Here are some of my findings… (read the rest of the article here)