Informative Blogging
This week, find a blog that is doing just this - gathering information, sharing it with readers, and persuading or motivating readers to take action. Add your own post, a link to the site, and a summary of the content and motivational strategies the readers use to engage readers. Who do you think this blog appeals to and why?
The blog that I chose that I feel is gathering information and sharing it with readers is called "Victoria's Blog". It is a blog about parenting, children and teaching. Victoria, the author of the blog, is an occupational therapist and she teaches people how to teach and help their children. I was intrigued by this blog since I am going into social work, and a lot of her ideas to help children learn through her occupational therapy background can be very helpful. When it comes to teaching children and beginning at a young age, many parents can be lost on where to even start or what is right for them and their child(ren). I found that this blog offers a lot of good, motivational, helpful tips and things to get parents on the right track and being able to teach their kids.
I think by creating a blog space for parents to go to and read about is a really great opportunity for those who have no other help and no other way of learning. For example, one of the recent posts on her blog is a Survival Guide for the day to day life during Covid quarantine. I think this can be such a great tool for those parents who are just stuck and have no idea what to do with their children who are now home all day every day. She is very relatable and that makes it more of a comfortable space for people to go and learn from her. She is essentially taking normal, every day information that she gathers and she sees working for her, puts it into one space where others can go and use it. Since she seems to have it all together and her posts give you a sense of structure and normalcy, I can see a lot of people being influenced to follow her tips and advice for things in their lives.
Another great post she has is about children and misbehaving. She goes into it more in depth and really breaks down the reasons why children misbehave, which sounds very standard, but for a lot of parents they feel like their children misbehaving is their fault or something unfixable. As Victoria talks about in her blog post, this is not always the case. Many children who misbehave usually have a real reason or problem behind it, and she outlines these problems and how you can go about treating or fixing the problems to help your child as well as yourself.
Overall I found her blog to be very informational and helpful. I found her posts to be practical and there was a sense of comfortability and realness, an authentic voice if you will. This made me feel more open to listening to what she had to say. I also feel like I can use this blog in the future when I have my own children or during my work with any children as a social worker. I would say she is motivating parents to be better and do better by helping them through the everyday struggles that parents deal with.
Even though some of her posts are informational, others do aim to persuade readers more overtly but suggesting that her info is best practices for parents. What motivational strategies do you think work the best?
ReplyDeleteAs an occupational therapist, Victoria is drawing on her training and experience to inform parents of what she understands as best practices for managing behavioral problems. The initial draw for parents or caregivers to a blog such as this is the hope of relief - blogs that give parents tips can help you see the light at the end of the tunnel when we are at wits end (pathos). Her job as an occupational therapist plays an important role in convincing parents that she knows what she is talking about and to give her suggestions a try if she is offering solutions (ethos). Finally, what is going to keep parents coming back is if they take her advice and it works (logos).
ReplyDeleteIndividual posts like the one titled "Misbehavior: Your Child’s Desperate Call For Help! Real Solutions for Better Behavior at School And at Home" involve the author arguing for less screen time for kids and teaching them to be self-dependent. She uses the disruption of restlessness in the classroom and doing things for your child that is capable of doing them on her own as important reasons to change parental behaviors to improve a child's development.
While much parenting advice comes from personal experience, it is increasingly common in our increasingly educated society to seek professional advice and information that is backed by research when making decisions, especially those that impact our children. This search for logical advice is backed by a parent's love for their child and the desire to give them the best possible upbringing - which, as Victory Prooday points out, is not by giving them everything they want or doing everything for them.