Tuesday, June 23, 2009

By The Book: How To Take Care of My Kids - Review and Giveaway

As parents, there are going to be times when you have to leave your children in someone else's care - whether it's while you are working outside the home, out running errands, or just enjoying an occasional outing without the kids. It's important for your child's caregiver to have all the information they need in order to take proper care of them. Information that will let them know exactly how you do things - how you take care of your kids.

I was recently given an opportunity to review an eBook called By The Book: How To Take Care Of My Kids.



It's basically a manual that allows you to customize your child’s daily schedule/routine, habits, likes/dislikes, medical information, special needs, household guidelines and more. The book provides guidelines that let you pick and choose which sections are relevant to your needs. You can personalize pages for each of your children. Extra pages are included for you to update as needed. Here are just two examples of the pages found in the book: "Extra Curricular Details" and "What They Love, What They Hate".







There are many other useful sections as well, such as Daily Routine, School Information, Discipline Tools, Sitter Notes and more. I especially like the pages that let you record medical phone numbers and your child's identification information (physical description and finger prints). And, the authorization to treat a minor form is very important, as well. This book is full of so many helpful and necessary tools. Some of which you might not even think to address with your caregiver. For example, there is a page that outlines what to do if there is an emergency at your home (detailed escape plans, location of flashlights and batteries, fuse box, gas and water shut offs, etc.). Another section discusses what to do if something happens beyond your control. Maybe you have to send someone to the house unexpectedly to pick up the children to bring them to you and you can’t reach the caregiver. How will the caregiver know this person is for real? That it’s safe to open the door? You provide the detailed instructions so that your caregiver will know exactly what to do.

I was very impressed with the contents of this publication and would highly recommend it to any parent. I will definitely be using this for my family.

The creator of How To Take Care Of My Kids has kindly offered to giveaway a free eBook to one of my readers. A great thing about the eBook is that you are able to print out as many of the pages as you need. If you have more than one child and/or want to frequently update your forms, the eBook is perfect for you. For your chance to win, here's what you need to do:

To enter, you may do any of the following:

1.Visit the publisher's website and take a look inside the book (click under Table of Contents to see all sections). Then come back here and tell me a section that you think would be especially useful for your family.

2. Subscribe to my blog via email (see sidebar)

3. Follow my blog (see sidebar)

4. Follow me on twitter and tweet about the giveaway (leave link to your tweet)

5. Write a post on your blog about this giveaway, include links to this post as well as How To Take Care Of My Kids website (leave link to your blog post)



If you would like to go ahead and purchase By The Book: How To Take Care Of My Kids as a hardbound book, they have also generously offered my readers a 25% discount. Just click on the above link and use coupon code BTBK7757 (case sensitive). Remember, this discount applies to the hardbound book.

This giveaway will run until June 30th. At that time, I will choose a random winner.


5 comments:

septembermom said...

This looks like a very helpful book. All of us tired, overwhelmed moms can use all the help we can get!

Jenners said...

What a great idea ... and it seems pretty thorough! It would be great to have on the (rare) occasions when me manage to score a babysitter. I like the section about the emergency plan... you would never think to do that. I also like the discipline option page! Please enter me. I will Tweet about this and be back.

Jenners said...

I just Twittered about it but I don't know how to give you that link. And I'm following you now (I thought I was already!) : )

amy & lisa said...

What a neat book! I think all of it is good, but just picking one section I'd say I like the basics almost the best. I think it is very important that the child's cares are important too.
I'm going to follow you!! :)

Anonymous said...

What a helpful idea! One of my favorite babysissters was a teenager who was CPR certified and came with a printed form for me to fill about their schedule, food choices, activities they liked. The boys loved her! You could tell she loved her job:)