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It’s one of the hardest things to do in this day and age of hyper-active kids and super busy, multi-tasking parents… but spending good quality time with your children doesn’t have to be a painful torture tactic.

One of the best, most enjoyable things you can do with your kids is to read to them. This is a great way to connect with them and to share different parts of your life story in a natural, easy, and relaxed setting.

One of the best books, or sets of books, to start reading your kids, is the “Little House on the Prairie” series. Beginning in the late 1800’s, it tells the story of a distant, almost forgotten, time in American history. A time that many of us might not believe ever existed, if Laura Ingalls hadn’t shared her life with us.

Can you imagine living without cars, without light switches, without TVs? Well, once you start reading “Little House”, you will be transported, in your imagination, back to moments that seem almost surreal. A time where kids actually played outside, and got dirt between their toes and beneath their fingernails. Where children were thrilled to get 1 or 2 holiday gifts, and enjoyed playing with them for months afterwards. A place where adults planted, grew, hunted and prepared their own foods, right from the land they were living on.

The Little House “picture” can’t be painted completely rosy, either. There are some statements and beliefs, throughout the series, that can make you cringe. You may even want to reconstruct how they are read to your kids. For example, almost all of the comments about Native Americans are derogatory. But you can not just sweep American history under a rug, or hide it, in the hopes that all the painful parts will just disappear or go away. Remembering the struggles and accomplishments is a large part of sharing and passing on your heritage to your children.

Your kids will probably be excited to share such relaxing, enjoyable quality time with you. Plus the thrill of each chapter will provide a rich and pleasant adventure for you and them.

Whether fighting a bear in hand-to-hand combat, or traveling all night across a frozen lake, or enjoying the beauty of Jack Frost’s artwork on a window pane, you are sure to find something that you and your children will love in the “Little House” series. So make plans to start reading to your kids, and open up a whole new world of imaginative possibilities.

If by now you have not heard of Mspace or Friendster then maybe the world is moving too slowly for you. Young adults (teens and college age adults) are using the world of the internet to communicate in ways we had no inkling of a few years ago.

Social networking is booming as young adults find one another online to chat, post comments, post photos, and share info about the latest happenings in their world to their Myspace pages and Friendster networking sites. It is not always a good thing for sure, but more on that later on.

So how does it work? Well some genius thought up the concept of Myspace, which is basically a free bulletin board for anyone (not just teens) to create a web site that is all about networking and communicating with friends and creating new friends too. Users create a free account; enter information about themselves, in as much or little detail as they want. They then share their site with their friends. Their friends can then post comments on the myspace. It becomes a great big bulletin board of social interaction. The kids are glued to these things and seem to know how to find one another and chase down the latest hot info in a heartbeat.

So what does this mean to communication in the Internet age for teens and young adults? It puts a fancier face on the outpouring of information exchange between teens.

It used to be that only the geeky teens had web pages about themselves. They were the only ones who knew how to build them. Now with these easy to use tools at their disposal every teen or young adult can have a site. That means connections and networking spreads very fast.

The sharing aspect of these sites is not only their good side but also their bad side as well. In the last year many schools and parents have become alarmed at the content of some of these Myspace sites that students have built. In typical teen fashion some kids say on their site what probably should not be said in public. They post as though it were a diary and then it gets spread around. That means that hate and meanness spread within the community quickly. Some schools have cracked down and told students they would be expelled if they do not clean up their sites. Parents, just finding out about the technology and checking it out for the first time become alarmed at the things that are said on these postings.

Of course that aspect comes back to the old thing of parents needing to be in tune with their kids and what is going on in their world. You cannot give a kid a computer and internet access and then walk away and not pay any attention.

The other thing that has raised alarm in this world of social networking is kids will post news of a party in their area, to their site. Instead of getting to “just” their friends it ends up spreading to the whole area. Homes have been overrun by crowds of kids trying to attend parties. One such event even ended with a fatal stabbing when the crowd got to big and unruly.

These are the types of things that can happen with or without such social networking sites in teen’s lives. These sites are not going to fade away. Myspace has over 60 million subscribers and was recently bought by a major corporation. They intend to make a lot of money off these sites for years to come. After all it is a very juicy target market for advertising revenue.

Global Positioning systems (or GPS) technology is becoming an increasingly popular means by which parents can accurately determine the location of their children at any given moment. By utilizing an array of satellites originally deployed by the government for security uses, GPS systems can literally pinpoint the exact location of anyone carrying the appropriate locator chip. This allows parents to outfit their children with the GPS technology and to then have the power to monitor their whereabouts if any concerns should arise. The possible safety advantages offered by a GPS child monitoring system are substantial and parents are beginning to embrace the technology as it become increasingly “mainstream” and available.

There are a variety of systems offered, all of which hold some potential benefit for users. Simple wristwatch versions, for instance, are relatively unobtrusive and are convenient for a child to wear at any time. These wrist units, however, may be at a greater risk of being lost or simply forgotten, particularly by children not already accustomed to wearing a watch daily.

Cellular telephones are another popular GPS chip repository. As cell phones become increasingly ubiquitous, the idea of outfitting them with GPS technology to aid in child tracking has grown. At least one manufacturer is offering a GPS tracking system that houses the chip in a plastic sleeve that fits around a cellular telephone. Of course, these solutions require providing the child to be tracked with a cellular telephone - a situation that may not make sense for all children.

At least one manufacturer has started production of book bags and backpacks that contain the required GPS technology. These products are a perfectly reasonable way to make sure that children get to school and return from school without incident. They are very well suited to younger children, and may not make much sense for older kids who are prone to leaving the house for other reasons and will not always need school materials with them.

Other tools include a simple necklace that features the GPS chip as something of a charm, and other options. Even more GPS child tracking tools are certain to be released in the near future, as the field will undoubtedly continue to experience rapid and significant growth. This growth in the availability of products is a boon to parents, as they will be able to seek out tools that truly meet the unique needs of their particular child or children.

Any style of GPS tool can be effective. Certainly, the most important consideration in choosing a GPS tracking device is the unit’s reliability and effectiveness. Most of the major products on the market seem to be at least reasonably reliable in performance. After appropriate performance levels are established, it is essential, of course, to choose a product that matches the needs and tendencies of the child who will be tracked. Parents will want to make sure they choose a tracking device that fits the child lifestyle appropriately.