Paying for a college education can be daunting, especially as tuition costs rise year after year. While many parents try to start saving for their child’s projected college costs early on, almost two-thirds of parents have no education savings by the time their child is in high school. Whether your own children have just graduated from preschool or high school, it’s not too late to think about college finances.

Now that the economy has taken a turn for the worst, you might be worried that trying to figure out how to pay for your kids’ higher education costs is taking a back seat to meeting mortgage payments, looking for a new job, or just trying to make ends meet.

Fear not – Education.com has published a new special edition just for you: College Financing: Pay for College in Today’s Economy. To put together the ultimate resource on college financing, we enlisted the help of leading college financing expert, Mark Kantrowitz, who is the publisher of the award-winning FinAid and FastWeb websites, and president of MK Consulting, Inc. Denise Daniels, Ph.D. and I also serve as editors of the special edition.

The College Financing special edition features over 30 articles on a variety of topics, including figuring out 529 plans, decoding financial aid forms, finding scholarships, and identifying some creative ways to pay for college. If you’re still tackling your own student debt, the College Financing special edition also offers articles to help you ease the burden of your current student loan payments.

We hope you’ll take some time this summer to read through this collection of college financing articles, and let us know what you think. Or use JustAsk to get your college financing questions answered by the Education.com community of experts, parents, students and others with relevant knowledge or personal experiences to share.

As the summer heats up, we’ll continue expanding the College Financing special edition with more articles and tools, so please keep coming back to learn the latest. You might also spend some time reviewing the other new special edition we’ve recently launched: Going to College to learn how to support your child’s transition to college.

College means more responsibility, more freedom, and more choices for your child than he or she may have ever had before. Being away from home for the first time. Adjusting to dorm life or off-campus housing. Making new friends. Parties and drinking. Learning to balance the new social life with the increased study load. Staying healthy, balancing a tight budget, passing college exams. With so much to consider and manage, making the transition to college can be tricky for students and parents alike!

To help ease this transition, Education.com has launched a new special edition: Going to College, to provide parents and students with authoritative, credible information on a wide range of issues, including health and wellness, personal finance, adjusting to college academics, packing and preparing for college, and surviving the college social scene. There’s also a helpful section just for parents on how to let go while also remaining involved as a source of support in their child’s life during that first year of college.

With over 44 articles already included and more to come later this summer, the Going to College special edition was compiled by the following team of experts:

• Kevin Gaw, Ph.D., the current president of the American College Counseling Association and director of University Career Services at Georgia State University; Kevin is a leader in the college counseling and career services field, and has dedicated his career to helping students make the transition from high school to college and from college to the work-force,

• College Parents of America, the leading national membership association dedicated to advocating and to serving on behalf of current and future college parents

• And multiple members of the Education.com Reference team, including: Jennifer Kirshman, M.Ed., Denise Daniels, Ph.D. and me.

We hope you find this new special edition helpful, and will let us know what you think. You can use JustAsk to get your college-related questions answered by the Education.com community of experts, parents, students and others with relevant knowledge or personal experiences to share. Please also spend some time reviewing the other new special edition we’ve recently launched: College Financing, to learn how to pay for college during hard economic times.

Ready to give sleep training a whirl? Here’s a night-by-night gameplan, plus a detailed log of my own experience, so you know what to expect. May the sleep be with you!

The Gameplan:

The first night: Go in quickly– during the first five minutes of crying, and stay for under a minute.  After that, if your baby keeps crying, go in every 5-25 minutes, at the height of baby’s cry. Repeat this process throughout the night. Do not feed your baby before midnight.

The second night: Stick to the plan above. If your baby ate at midnight last night, feed her again at midnight. If she lasted longer, for example, she nursed at 2 AM, do not feed her before that time.

The third night: Follow the same plan, but tonight, move the boundary for feeding by two hours. If your baby has been nursing for the past two nights at midnight, don’t feed her tonight before 2 AM. If she’s been nursing at 3 AM the past two nights, move the feeding to 5 AM.

The following nights: Every baby is different. Many will be sleeping through the night after three nights of this sleep program. For others, it can take two weeks or more. The most important thing is consistency. If you respond to your baby the same way each night, she’ll know the drill. Don’t start feeding her earlier than the boundary you set and don’t pick her up when she cries. Babies adjust quickly if the routine is consistent and they know what to expect.

A Week in the Life of a Sleep Trainer…
Knowing what to do in theory, and actually doing it are completely different things. I’ve just finished a full week of following Diamond and Cochran’s advice. Let me state for the record that I have a child who can cry for long spouts. I didn’t really expect this to work. Here’s the blow-by-blow of what’s happened so far:

Night #1: Went to bed at 7 PM. Woke up crying at 9 PM, so I knew she wasn’t hungry. I put the pacifier in her mouth (bad mommy!) and walked out of the room. She cried even harder. I waited five minutes and the crying lessened, so I didn’t go back in. She eventually fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until 3:45 AM, at which point I fed her. She slept until 6:30 AM.

Night #2: Went to bed at 7 PM. Woke up crying at 12 AM. It took three rounds of going in and patting her, with her crying harder each time. I was tempted to feed her, but I resisted, since she’d gone until 3:45 AM the night before. Instead, I went in for each round at the height of the cry, stayed less than a minute each time, and prepared myself for a very long night. But after the third time, the crying lessened and she fell asleep. She woke up again at 5:15 AM and I fed her. It was starting to get light out, so I didn’t think she’d fall asleep again, but she did. She woke up again at 7:30 AM.

Night #3: She slept through until 3:15 AM. I wasn’t sure what to do, since she’d gone longer without eating the night before, so I fed her. She slept until 6 AM.

Night #4: She slept from 7 PM-5:30 AM without eating! I fed her just as it was growing light out, and she slept until 7:30.

Night #5: My worst night I think. Now that I’m used to the fact that she can sleep until 5-ish, I was really disheartened when she woke up at 3:15. I went in over and over again, determined not to feed her. After an hour and a half, of visits according to the “official” rules, my husband was pushing me to feed her, and I was in crisis in my room. She was still wailing. Just as I was about to break down, the crying stopped and she went to sleep. I don’t know if I can do this…

Night #6: She cried at midnight and I went in to help her get off her belly. She went back to sleep. She woke up again at 4 AM and I wasn’t sure if I should feed her, since other than the freak night when she slept until 5:30, my official threshold was more like 3:30 or 4, so I fed her. She slept until 6:15.

Night #7: Whoohoo! I think I’m in the home stretch. My daughter slept from 6:45 PM until 5:30 AM without waking once. I fed her and she slept until 7:30. Sleep, glorious sleep!

So there it is, my sleep saga, explained. It was quick and not too painful. If you’re thinking of taking the plunge, I say, do it! Who knows, you might be sleeping more than two hours at a time in a week, too…

For exhausted parents everywhere, babies can be divided into two categories: sleepers and non-sleepers. After 8 months of waking up at all hours of the night, one thing was abundantly clear to me: I did not, by any stretch of the imagination, have a sleeper. Working at Education.com, I have some of the best experts in the world willing to take my phone calls. So I decided to bring in the big guns, two gurus who make a living teaching parents like me how to get a baby to sleep through the night. I’m a few days in now, and incredibly enough, it’s working.

First, some background. I met my sleep gurus, Noelle Cochran, PsyD and Lele Diamond, MFT, both specialists in infant and toddler mental health and child development, because I was writing a story on preschoolers and kindergarteners who refuse to stay in bed. They run a Bay Area practice called Symbio but parents from across the country come to them for help… especially with sleep.

When I decided I was done waking up multiple times per night, I knew they were the ones to go to for advice. What I didn’t know, was how fast things could change. In just a few days, my baby went from waking up 4-5 times a night, to sleeping from 7 PM- 5:15 AM. I haven’t had this much sleep since George W. Bush was President…

What they advised me to do to get my baby to sleep worked so quickly, and so dramatically, that it would be just plain mean not to share. Here, with their blessing, is exactly what they told me:

The 10 Things You Need to Know to Get a Baby to Sleep Though the Night

1. Understand why what you’re doing is important. Listening to your baby cry is incredibly difficult for most parents. Cochran and Diamond emphasize, though, that the process of training a baby to sleep through the night isn’t a selfish endeavor. True, many parents try it because they’re plum exhausted. But what’s really going on is a passing of the torch. “It’s a transition between you soothing her by picking her up and her learning how to soothe herself.” Cochran says.
2. Lay the groundwork for success. Decide on a date to start and mark it on the calendar so you’ll commit to it. If you’re doing this with a partner decide in advance who will go in to baby in the middle of the night. Plan things out ahead of time, so you’re not trying to decide what to do at 3 AM, when you’re exhausted.
3. Close the kitchen and choose a sleep threshold. If your child is older than 6 months and you’re still feeding her multiple times per night, it’s time to close the kitchen. “Yes” Diamond says, “She will be hungry for a night or two, but her body will adjust and she’ll learn to get more of her calories during the day.” Cochran and Diamond don’t recommend going cold turkey. Instead, they recommend phasing out the feedings. “Pick a time in the middle of the night, for example, midnight, and commit to the fact that before midnight you will not feed you’re your child when she cries,” Diamond says, “Then  every two or three nights, move the boundary back by two hours.” For example, move it to 2 AM, then 4 AM, then 6 AM. “If you pull a feeding,” she says, “Your child is going to be hungry, but you need to distinguish between a physical need and a habitual need.”
4. Go in based on the cry, not based on the clock. Most sleep training books advocate going in to your child at timed intervals, such as every five minutes, then extending those intervals gradually. Cochran and Diamond say to ignore the clock and focus on the cry. “On the first night, at the first cry, go in within the first five minutes, so your baby knows you hear her,” Cochran says. After that, and forever more, go in somewhere between 5-25 minutes, right at the height of the baby’s cry. Before you open the door to the nursery, listen to the quality of cry—if it’s deescalating or starting and stopping, your baby is starting to self-soothe. Don’t go in unless the cry starts to work up again.
5. Don’t stay too long. The ideal length of time is between two seconds and one minute. Never stay longer than a minute.
6. Eliminate the pacifier. Sometime between four and six months, the physical need for sucking goes away. If your baby is older than that and still using a pacifier, the challenge is getting to the point where she doesn’t need you to help. “If she can find the pacifier and put it in her own mouth, I’m okay with it,” Cochran says, “But it’s not okay for you to have to come in during the night to put it in for her.” Start working on putting it in her hand for her, rather than in her mouth. And have a plan for phasing it out completely. They don’t recommend doing that at the same time as the rest of the sleep training, though! One thing at a time.
7. Don’t expect to calm baby down. When a parent goes in to the room, they’re often hoping that going in will soothe their child, Diamond says. But it’s important to have realistic expectations. Not only will you likely not make your baby stop crying, but the crying is likely to jack up, not lessen, since you’re refusing to do what your baby wants, which is to pick her up or feed her. The point of going in is to say “I get it, you’re upset, but I know you’re okay. Nothing has gone wrong. It’s not that I don’t hear you. But I know you can do this and I’m here to support you.” Parents often say, “This doesn’t help—I made it worse by going in.” What they need to understand is that going in is not meant to soothe the baby, just to reassure her.
8. Know there’s no tough love required. Although the sleep books often warn parents not to talk to their child or make eye contact, Cochran and Diamond disagree. “You can look at them, talk to them, say you love them, “Diamond says, “Eye contact is okay. Patting is okay. Some kids hate to be touched or talked to, so know your kid tempermentally”, but if you think it will help, feel free to do it, as long as you don’t pick them up. As for going in the room, you can phase out these visits whenever feels good to you, Cochran says.
9. Set a clear boundary and stick to it. When a baby cries, she’s signaling you. There’s a contest going on. Your baby is saying, “I’ll cry to make you do what I want you to do,” Diamond says. And when you start sleep training, you’re changing all the rules. That’s why it’s important to keep what you do consistent, so she knows what to expect. “Picking her up sometimes but not others, or rocking her to sleep when you’re at your wits end, but not at other times, isn’t fair to her and it actually makes things harder on her,” Diamond says. Once she knows, “Okay, I can get you to visit me, but I won’t get rocked or nursed to sleep,” she can learn how to soothe herself.

Want to know the step-by-step gameplan? Tune in tomorrow for details, plus the nitty-gritty of one parent’s night-by-night experience.

Yep.  It’s true.  School’s out.

And whether that statement makes your heart sink, stop, or soar, there’s no getting around it - summer is here!  

I’m so excited to announce the Education.com 2009 Summer Activities Challenge - a free program designed to help parents keep their kids sharp during the summer break while also reminding them that learning can be really fun!  Oh, and there’s also a chance for you to score some great stuff… Families who complete the Challenge by August 31st will be entered to win a Dell Latitude 2100 Netbook or one of 100 LEGO Creator Mini Sets.

As a mom staring down the barrel of eleven loooonnngggg weeks of summer break, I’m really excited to have this new way to help my kids stay busy, have fun, and avoid the summer slide this year.   We’ve already got two activities under our belt!  My boys were blown away when we made fireworks on our kitchen counter last night.  Seriously…that’s one you should all check out.  And I’m sure their dad will be thrilled to unwrap his Duct Tape Wallet on Sunday (shhhh….)

So don’t fret, participating in the Summer Activities Challenge will make the summer zoom by.  And when that beautiful yellow school bus shows up next fall to take your kids off your hands again, you may be able to curl up on your quiet couch with a shiny new laptop!

Good luck!

Kat

As the school year winds down, many parents and teachers are discussing plans for the next school year. At Education.com, we have received a large number of questions in our online community, JustAsk, regarding the topic of grade retention. In general, the questions go something like this, “My child’s teacher is recommending that my child be retained another year. What should I do?” Given the large number of parents who are struggling with this questions, I decided to tweet about it on Twitter @ChildPsych. The tweet generated such a healthy debate on the advantages and disadvantages of grade retentions, I thought I might keep the conversation going in the form of a blog post.

To date, the majority of research suggests that grade retention does NOT positively impact children. For example, Dr. Jimerson conducted a meta-analysis (analyzing the cumulative results of previous research on the topic) in 2001, finding that “grade retention does not provide greater benefits to students with academic or adjustment difficulties than does promotion to the next grade.” Experts have theorized that the characteristics that predisposed the child to difficulty in school initially, persist throughout development, effectively “trumping” any short term gains that could be earned with grade retention. Indeed, the evidence is so strong, the National Association of School Psychologists issued a position statement (the top thinkers in the field of school psychology convened together, discussed the topic, and declared a final declaration on the topic) recommending that parents and teachers limit the use of grade retention.

Despite the evidence, I do recognize that grade retention can be beneficial for some students. Some students simply need another year of development to be “ready” in order to access the classroom curriculum. I recommend that parents do their best to  get the latest information available on grade retention, talk with their child’s teacher and school administrators, and use their gut to make the best decision possible. And, when in doubt, JustAsk!

I am a very lucky woman. I had the honor and pleasure of judging within the Social and Behavioral Sciences category at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Reno, NV last week. This year, ISEF included 1,563 students from over 50 countries who conducted independent research in a traditional “science fair” format. Intel awarded nearly $4 million in scholarships, laptops and other prizes to the top finalists.

The opportunity to engage with the brightest young minds in the world is an experience I will never forget. Graduate school and college teaching were both exciting for me, but there is something very special about discussing research with young teens who are just discovering the thrill of scientific inquiry. The looks on their faces as they discussed their research questions, their experimental methodology, and, oh, what they found! The light in their eyes and the pride they carried will forever stick with me. And, I should not forget to mention the parents! The expectant looks on their faces as they waited outside the judging hall for their children. There was little doubt in my mind that, as a judge, I was playing a very important and serious role in the experience of science for the finalists. Of course, I had a little fun with the experience, too. I started my Twitter feed (@ChildPsych), and I tweeted regular updates from ISEF. I am on Twitter now. I am official!

I would like to personally congratulate all of the finalists, but I would like to give a special “shout out” to the Young Scientist and Social and Behavioral Science Award winners. The Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award winners each took home a $50,000 scholarship. The first Young Scientist award winner is Tara Anjali Adiseshan from Charlottesville, Virginia. Tara completed a project titled, “Identifying and Classifying Evolutionary Interactions between Sweat Bees and Nematodes.” The second Young Scientist Award winner is Olivia Catherine Schwob from Boston, Massachusetts. Her project was titled, “How Worms Learn, Part III: Mammalian Gene Expression and Associative Conditioning in Caenorhabditis elegans.” The third Young Scientist Award winner is Li Sallou Boynton from Bellaire, Texas. Her project was titled, “The Use of Bioluminscent Bacteria to Detect Environmental Contaminants.” Their work will most certainly have important implications for future health and well-being of the populace.

I enjoyed the experience so much that I plan to apply again to serve as a Grand Award Judge for the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose, Ca. If you are the parent of a budding scientist, I encourage you to review the criteria for the fair, and if you are a doctoral level researcher or practitioner, I invite you to apply to serve as a judge next year. Whatever your level of involvement with this fine program, I guarantee that you will not be disappointed, and you will enjoy the experience of witnessing the young bright minds of the world.

This has been a big week, a week of gigantic, monumental proportions - we are nearing the end of National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week. Maybe you have heard of it, maybe you haven’t, but either way, I would invite you to bring the spirit of this week into your home today, and in the future.

National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week and day was established by the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health to promote positive, mental health, well-being and social development for all children and adolescents. The most recent Report of the Surgeon General indicated that about 20% of children are estimated to have a diagnosable mental disorder with at least mild functional impairment. Of all the various mental disorders, anxiety is the most common problem for children (approximately 13%). Although a substantial portion of children do “grow out” of disorder, many mental disorders identified in childhood and adolescence do persist into adulthood.

Thus, awareness and intervention is critical! It is so very important that parents and other caring adults are aware of normative development and understand the signs of emotional distress. There are a number of proven and effective treatments available (most of them do not include medication!). If you suspect your child, or a child you know, may be struggling with emotional distress, you should seek the advice and guidance of a mental health professional. 

If you are uncertain where to start, you can begin by talking with your child’s teacher and/or school counselor. They have most likely worked with a number of children who have received mental health services from qualified professionals, and they can make an informed recommendation for someone in the community. If you are like many people these days, and you do not have extra cash to pay for a counselor, there are many low cost alternatives available in the community. Look in the phone book for local university counseling clinics. Universities typically have graduate training programs for counselors, and they offer sliding scale fees (pay only what you can afford based upon your salary) to community members. The quality of the services is typically quite high given that the trainees are being supervised by very experienced counselors.

If you would like additional information on children with behavior problems, sad or worried feelings, check out the additional resources we offer at Education.com. Most importantly, do not delay if you suspect that a child may be suffering from emotional distress. It doesn’t have to be so hard!

As swine flu continues to tally new cases each day, it’s impacting not only those who come down with the H1N1 virus, but also over 150,000 schoolchildren whose schools have been shut down due to confirmed or suspected cases. And many parents who are already concerned about the virus have another problem to contend with: taking care of kids who would otherwise be at school during the five or more days schools are recommended to stay shuttered after a student falls ill.

In Fort Worth, Texas, the entire school district closed down today, leaving about 80,000 students from 140 schools at home. Fort Worth schools are expected to stay closed for at least 10 days.

“Our public health officials have recommended that schools with confirmed or suspected cases of this flu strongly consider temporarily closing,” President Obama said yesterday, just hours after the World Health Organization raised the Pandemic Alert to Level 5, indicating that a pandemic may be imminent. “And if more schools are forced to close,” Obama continued, “we’ve recommended that both parents and businesses think about contingency plans if their children do have to stay home.”

Parents should consider staying home themselves or finding a babysitter or relative to watch the kids, and should not place their children in a day care center, which could mean quicker transmission of the virus between children. Vice President Biden urged yesterday that “a parent whose child’s school is closed out of a precaution or because there’s been a confirmed case of flu should not take the child then to a day care center. They’re going to have to take them home.” He also urged employers to be considerate of the special circumstances. “The hope is that the employers will be generous in terms of how they treat that employee’s necessary action of taking that child home and not being at work,” he said.

Still, most schools remain open, and while officials urge parents to keep sick kids at home, they ask that healthy students go to class as usual, while taking the following precautions: minimize exposure, wash hands frequently, and cover up coughs and sneezes.

Learn all about green schools- find ways to help your school go green and browse LEED certified schools in your state.

Green Schools

Students, parents and teachers are working together to promote green schools.  Recycling programs, bus transportation, and water efficiency are just a few of the many ways schools save energy and reduce waste.  Also, environmental education programs raise students’ awareness on how they can impact their environment. Learn about five easy ways to green your school. 

Although many schools promote green programs and activities, some schools are actually ceritified as green schools.  This means they have been certified by the U.S. Green Builing Council as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified.  Find LEED certified green schools near you.  The LEED for Schools Rating System is specific to the design and construction of K-12 schools and buildings, addressing such things as energy efficiency, water conservation and mold prevention.  

Green School Review Prize

How green is your school?  Find your school with our SchoolFinder tool and tell others about your green school!  Writing a ”green” review gives you a chance to win a beautiful hard cover copy of Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World.  Learn more.