Teachers in Britain will be able to take parents of disruptive pupils to court under government plans to be unveiled tomorrow.
Schools will get stronger powers to ask for the imposition of parenting orders, which could mean families being forced to attend classes to learn how to control their offspring.
A parenting order required parents to take specific steps to control a child's behaviour - including attending parenting courses or counselling sessions, ensuring their children are at home a certain time, or avoiding certain situations and people, the Guardian reported yesterday.
If they still fail to keep their children in line, they would face a 1000 Pounds fine - and a jail term if they do not pay.
The proposal will be included in a wide-ranging schools White Paper set to be unveiled in Parliament tomorrow.
Writing in the Sunday Mirror, Schools Secretary Ed Balls said: "Every parent has a responsibility to back our teachers and make sure the rules are enforced. We all have to play our part to make sure that happens. And that doesn't just mean 95 percent of parents, but all parents, including the very few who aren't taking their responsibilities seriously."
The initiative will be used to support existing home-school agreements which set out what is expected of parents and their children in the education system.
The agreements cover issues like home-work, uniforms and getting children to school on time.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson told the News of the World: "I want to make sure that more considerations is given to the parents' role when a teenager gets into problems and is being considered for an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. Parenting orders are not punishments - they are a way of giving adults the skills they need to help them fulfil their responsibilities.
"If a teenager is in danger of going off the rails, then one of the best ways to deal with it is to give parents more support at an early stage."
Also expected in the White Paper are plans for one-to-one lessons for children lagging behind in English and maths.
The White Paper will also introduce new "report cards" for schools, detailing achievements in sport, music and pastoral care, as well as exams, to help parents of prospective pupils choose schools.
Source: The Straits Times
If you have any comments please drop an email to youandchildren@gmail.com
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Teens and Technology
In today’s society, teens are inundated with gadgets. Most teenagers would probably admit their days are filled with text messaging friends, talking on their cell phones, playing electronic games, listening to MP3 players, blogging on MySpace, watching television, surfing the Internet or doing any number of other activities involving media technology. These activities aren’t necessarily bad things but can cause problems when done in excess.
Unfortunately, most of these electronic activities increase a teen’s inactive behavior, lessen their opportunity to have face-to-face relationship building time and can run up some pretty significant bills for mom and dad. Parents can help their children limit their techno cravings and reduce monthly cost by cutting back the use of too many gadgets.
Please send your comments to: youandchildren.gmail.com
Unfortunately, most of these electronic activities increase a teen’s inactive behavior, lessen their opportunity to have face-to-face relationship building time and can run up some pretty significant bills for mom and dad. Parents can help their children limit their techno cravings and reduce monthly cost by cutting back the use of too many gadgets.
- Have your child earn time to use electronic gadgets by doing extra chores and/or engaging in fun, mobile activities.
- Limit the times when gadgets can be used such as having a “no gadgets” rule after a certain curfew or not using gadgets during school or family time.
- Connect the use of electronic gadgets to your child’s ability to be responsible and respectful. For example, keeping their bedroom clean, helping siblings and being considerate could earn extra time on the home computer or X-box.
Some parents feel they cannot limit their child’s use of electronic gadgets for many reasons. Perhaps the electronic device is being used to keep track of a teen’s whereabouts, the item was a gift, the teen bought the gadget himself or parents say they feel hypocritical because they are modeling the very behavior they’re asking their kids to stop doing. Still, these technological concerns should not hinder a parent from helping their child learn and grow when it comes to media madness.
Source: Parenting.orgPlease send your comments to: youandchildren.gmail.com
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Bully, The “Bullied” and The Bystander
Wherever there are children, there are bullies. In your neighborhood. In your school. Maybe in your own home.
Bullies use fear to get away with unacceptable behavior. Their victims (the “bullied”) fear continued abuse if they tell. Bystanders fear becoming the next victim. The “bullied” suffer in silence while repeatedly getting harassed. Bystanders stay silent to avoid the unwanted attention. It’s a vicious, unending cycle.
Studies on bullying show that younger and weaker youth are victimized most often. In addition, the bully-victim relationship tends to continue unless there is some sort of intervention from parents or other adults.
Bullies come in all sizes, ages and genders. The tactics they use vary widely. Some get physical. Others play on emotion. Boys often use force (punching, kicking, tripping, etc.). Girls often rely on subtle actions (gossip, manipulation, exclusion, etc.). Other characteristics include:
Bullies are impulsive
Bullies have little, if any, empathy
Bullies do not suffer from low self-esteem
Bullies need to control and dominate others
Bullies have a positive attitude toward aggression
Bullies have more physical or emotional power than their victims
Bullies have a strong desire to get or achieve something they feel they need
The Victim
Bullies like to pick on those who can’t or won’t stick up for themselves. Unfortunately, many victims lack the social skills and social networks that can keep them from being victimized. As a parent, you can help bully-proof your child by doing the following:
Teach Your Teen To Be A Friend
There is strength in numbers. Encourage your teen to develop friendships. If he or she has a special interest – sports or music – find programs that your teen can participate in. The more social interactions he or she has, the more friendships that can develop. Your teen will also become better skilled at dealing with a variety of personalities and handling different social interactions.
Build Your Teen’s Social Skills
Humor can be a powerful weapon for disarming a bully. The ability to laugh at oneself first, rather than laughing at someone else’s expense, is a skill everyone needs. Teach your teen friendship skills, including getting along with others and showing appreciation. The bottom line for your teen: He or she has to act like a friend to have a friend.
Teach Your Teen Self-Respect
Kids who can hold their heads high and walk with confidence are less likely to be singled out. Some victims actually believe they deserve to be attacked because of a self-perceived flaw in how they look, the way they talk, how they dress or any number of reasons. They start acting like victims. They become withdrawn. They slouch and avoid eye contact.
You need to remind your teen of his or her strengths. Encourage your teen to use positive self-talk during difficult moments. Help him or her see challenges as opportunities.
The Bystander
It can be very hard for a teen to take a stand and defend someone who is being bullied, especially if the victim is considered to be a “loser” or “weird.” Has your teen ever described a bullying situation, and have you ever asked what he or she did to stop it?
Some bystanders are too afraid to get involved. They don’t want to be a target. Some experience feelings of guilt because they did nothing. If a victim is a friend or classmate, some bystanders choose to disassociate themselves from the victim. Others blame the victim.
As a parent, it’s important to teach and reinforce virtues such as caring and respect. Here are things you can do to instill these values in your teen:
Model respect and kindness at home. If you and your spouse are considerate and compassionate to each other and your family, your child will likely treat others the same way.
Show respect for those in authority, including teachers and police officers.
Have positive expectations for your child’s behavior. Praise your child’s acts of kindness and discipline him or her for bad behavior.
Encourage your teen to volunteer in the community. This will give your teen a sense of obligation to others.
Bullying is a difficult problem that only gets worse when it’s ignored. Victims and bystanders can’t be expected to resolve the issue all on their own. Talk to school administrators to find out how they are dealing with the problem. If necessary, you or a representative from the school should contact the parents of bullies and make them aware of their children’s behavior.
Pretending the problem doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. Everyone must correct the behavior when it happens and be proactive in trying to prevent bullying.
If you have any comments or anything to share on parenting, please send email to youandchildren@gmail.com.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Outsourcing parenting
I recently read an article in The Hindu and I think every other parent should read this.
African saying: It takes a village to raise a child.
A chilling figure reached us late last year: 5,871 children committed suicide either upon receiving unsatisfactory academic results or even more pathetically, in anticipation of them, which means their emotional state was so fragile that they couldn& #8217;t bear the thought of either disappointing their parents or working out an alternative plan to the goal that had already been fixed for them. Anything below a certain magic percentage which is the key to a course in higher education and a 16-year-old thinks he is a failure.
In none of these cases did anyone expect these children to equate their lives with their marks. Yet, for at least 10 years that is what they had been led to believe… that they were worth only what they won in a classroom. Nothing about their all-round personalities mattered, whether they were thoughtful children, respectful to elders or compassionate to household staff/ trades people. It meant little or nothing at all how talented they might have been at music, gardening, sketching, fixing things about the house or cooking. Hardly anyone noticed or appreciated those aspects of their unfolding characters. What mattered was only whether they were scoring machines in schoolroom tests or on the playing fields. As these are the reported deaths, we can be sure there were many more. And as for those who did not take their lives, we may be equally sure that most of them live with feelings of defeat, depression and injury: an inflammatory mix.
Who is responsible? A system of intense competition that makes unnatural demands, robs a child of her free time, and is supported by a collaboration of social and familial expectations which together form a human trap.
Now, is there something we don’t know or are we carrying on regardless? For at least a 100 years since psychoanalysis proved it, we have known that an emotionally happy child will grow into a stable adult .Yet how, in the space of just two decades, has the attitude to raising children, and goal-setting for them changed to one of joyless and extreme urgency? Nearly every tender and imaginative space in a child’s life has been invaded and adult anxieties concerning performance bluntly passed on to seven and eight-year-old humans who have not yet grasped the concepts of wealth and success, but can sense their power.
Bewildered
In the current pattern of rearing the next generation is hidden the kind of pain that I equate with what I saw on Khader Nawaz Khan Road (Chennai) some time ago: a calf no more than a week old was being driven with a stick to keep up with its anxious, mooing mother who was tied to a moped doing a brisk 10 kmph. The sheer bewilderment and panic in the young creature’s eyes as it wobbled along is reflected in the eyes of our youngsters goaded to get through tests and tricks devised by an adult vision of discipline and attainments deemed right for a child of three in LKG; for a child of four in UKG; for a child of five in class I. This is so the world over. An article in Time magazine (May 2008) described the joy of parents who send their children to learning centres at the age of two. “She can recognise numbers and pictures!” And this at an age when the child is powerless to choose for herself.
What about some time to stand and stare? Not on your sweet life.
On the one hand we recognise and celebrate individuality. On the other, a crowd of four-year-olds is expected to learn to read, write and recite at exactly the same pace, triggering early and sharp competition in the schoolroom. Socialising, and learning to give and live together is considered far less important and in not counselling children that the most vital thing in life is human relationships, we are doing them the injustice of opening the door to loneliness.
Seeds of anger
Why will they — these tense, weary children — not grow up into impatient and angry young people if we do not spend enough time with them in their early years? We not only send them out of the safety of the house as soon as we can, but talk about it constantly in their presence as if our goal is to put some distance between them and us. “Come June, she will go off for three hours every day giving me some time for myself!” is something that we hear all the time.
Have we outsourced parenting to schools?
The most valuable thing we can give our children is our time and the continuous confidence of parental presence as they grow at their pace, and from their own inner visions. For, in every child the inner vision of life is brighter than the outer which is dictated by a world which imposes “learning” from the outside. All systems of modern education insist that the world must be understood in certain patterns: mathematically, historically, scientifically. Learning which could be delayed till the infant personality stabilises is applied too rapidly, suppressing the inner vision.
If we push our children away from ourselves and into the world too early in their lives and tell them to overcome everybody else, what kind of emotional equipment will they grow up with? We would do well to remember what Sylvia Ashton-Werner said about orienting children: “War and peace wait in an infant room, wait and vie.”
If you have any comments or anything to share on parenting, please send email to youandchildren@gmail.com.
African saying: It takes a village to raise a child.
A chilling figure reached us late last year: 5,871 children committed suicide either upon receiving unsatisfactory academic results or even more pathetically, in anticipation of them, which means their emotional state was so fragile that they couldn& #8217;t bear the thought of either disappointing their parents or working out an alternative plan to the goal that had already been fixed for them. Anything below a certain magic percentage which is the key to a course in higher education and a 16-year-old thinks he is a failure.
In none of these cases did anyone expect these children to equate their lives with their marks. Yet, for at least 10 years that is what they had been led to believe… that they were worth only what they won in a classroom. Nothing about their all-round personalities mattered, whether they were thoughtful children, respectful to elders or compassionate to household staff/ trades people. It meant little or nothing at all how talented they might have been at music, gardening, sketching, fixing things about the house or cooking. Hardly anyone noticed or appreciated those aspects of their unfolding characters. What mattered was only whether they were scoring machines in schoolroom tests or on the playing fields. As these are the reported deaths, we can be sure there were many more. And as for those who did not take their lives, we may be equally sure that most of them live with feelings of defeat, depression and injury: an inflammatory mix.
Who is responsible? A system of intense competition that makes unnatural demands, robs a child of her free time, and is supported by a collaboration of social and familial expectations which together form a human trap.
Now, is there something we don’t know or are we carrying on regardless? For at least a 100 years since psychoanalysis proved it, we have known that an emotionally happy child will grow into a stable adult .Yet how, in the space of just two decades, has the attitude to raising children, and goal-setting for them changed to one of joyless and extreme urgency? Nearly every tender and imaginative space in a child’s life has been invaded and adult anxieties concerning performance bluntly passed on to seven and eight-year-old humans who have not yet grasped the concepts of wealth and success, but can sense their power.
Bewildered
In the current pattern of rearing the next generation is hidden the kind of pain that I equate with what I saw on Khader Nawaz Khan Road (Chennai) some time ago: a calf no more than a week old was being driven with a stick to keep up with its anxious, mooing mother who was tied to a moped doing a brisk 10 kmph. The sheer bewilderment and panic in the young creature’s eyes as it wobbled along is reflected in the eyes of our youngsters goaded to get through tests and tricks devised by an adult vision of discipline and attainments deemed right for a child of three in LKG; for a child of four in UKG; for a child of five in class I. This is so the world over. An article in Time magazine (May 2008) described the joy of parents who send their children to learning centres at the age of two. “She can recognise numbers and pictures!” And this at an age when the child is powerless to choose for herself.
What about some time to stand and stare? Not on your sweet life.
On the one hand we recognise and celebrate individuality. On the other, a crowd of four-year-olds is expected to learn to read, write and recite at exactly the same pace, triggering early and sharp competition in the schoolroom. Socialising, and learning to give and live together is considered far less important and in not counselling children that the most vital thing in life is human relationships, we are doing them the injustice of opening the door to loneliness.
Seeds of anger
Why will they — these tense, weary children — not grow up into impatient and angry young people if we do not spend enough time with them in their early years? We not only send them out of the safety of the house as soon as we can, but talk about it constantly in their presence as if our goal is to put some distance between them and us. “Come June, she will go off for three hours every day giving me some time for myself!” is something that we hear all the time.
Have we outsourced parenting to schools?
The most valuable thing we can give our children is our time and the continuous confidence of parental presence as they grow at their pace, and from their own inner visions. For, in every child the inner vision of life is brighter than the outer which is dictated by a world which imposes “learning” from the outside. All systems of modern education insist that the world must be understood in certain patterns: mathematically, historically, scientifically. Learning which could be delayed till the infant personality stabilises is applied too rapidly, suppressing the inner vision.
If we push our children away from ourselves and into the world too early in their lives and tell them to overcome everybody else, what kind of emotional equipment will they grow up with? We would do well to remember what Sylvia Ashton-Werner said about orienting children: “War and peace wait in an infant room, wait and vie.”
If you have any comments or anything to share on parenting, please send email to youandchildren@gmail.com.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Teens and Allowance vs. Teen Money Management
What about teens and allowances? Should you give your adolescent an allowance and, if so, how much?
Kids are trying out their independence. They’re looking around at their peers and trying to figure out what everyone else has. They’re constantly asking Mom or Dad for cash or “borrowing it” (how many of us have stopped for a latte, thinking we had $10—only to find an empty billfold?). Parents start to hear “I need my own money!”
Everything we do as parents teaches our kids something. So, what’s your “end game” for the allowance; or, what do you want your teen to learn?
By the teen years, we suggest that the best reason for giving a teen allowance is to teach money management. Youth at this age can learn to write a check, balance an account and budget their expenses. This is a great life skill and one that’s best learned while they’re still under your roof.
As for the exact amount, that can be determined by the budget you help your teen set, with a probation period and plan for review.
Source: Parenting.org
If you have any comments or anything to share on parenting, please email to youandchildren@gmail.com
Kids are trying out their independence. They’re looking around at their peers and trying to figure out what everyone else has. They’re constantly asking Mom or Dad for cash or “borrowing it” (how many of us have stopped for a latte, thinking we had $10—only to find an empty billfold?). Parents start to hear “I need my own money!”
Everything we do as parents teaches our kids something. So, what’s your “end game” for the allowance; or, what do you want your teen to learn?
By the teen years, we suggest that the best reason for giving a teen allowance is to teach money management. Youth at this age can learn to write a check, balance an account and budget their expenses. This is a great life skill and one that’s best learned while they’re still under your roof.
As for the exact amount, that can be determined by the budget you help your teen set, with a probation period and plan for review.
Source: Parenting.org
If you have any comments or anything to share on parenting, please email to youandchildren@gmail.com
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Help Parenting Teenagers and High School Teens Ages 15 and Up
Teen years are wildly unpredictable. You still have the moodiness of the pre-teen years and the battle for independence intensifies. It's not all bad, though. You do have the simple pleasure of watching your teenager make mature decisions and grow into adulthood.
Great, you say, but what about choices regarding curfews, friends, driving, dating, smoking and drinking? Your potential battlegrounds are endless. That's why you must remember this: Don't feel too frustrated or desperate when your son or daughter defies your authority. Reducing dependence on parents is natural and necessary in this life stage. However, you can play a significant role in shaping the decisions your teen makes.
You should be authoritative without being authoritarian. You should teach by word and by example. You should be engaged in your child's education (research shows your involvement can enhance academic success and provide protection against the risks of adolescence).
Don't retreat from your teen's life. Participate in it. Now is the time to reinforce character and build discipline so your teen can survive and thrive in the face of life's many lessons:
Stealing and Cheating
The Bully, The "Bullied" and The Bystander
Bad Friendships
There Are No Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter
Let us discuss in detail about each one of the above in our next article.
Source: Parenting.org
If you have any comments or anything to share on parenting please email to:
youandchildren@gmail.com
Great, you say, but what about choices regarding curfews, friends, driving, dating, smoking and drinking? Your potential battlegrounds are endless. That's why you must remember this: Don't feel too frustrated or desperate when your son or daughter defies your authority. Reducing dependence on parents is natural and necessary in this life stage. However, you can play a significant role in shaping the decisions your teen makes.
You should be authoritative without being authoritarian. You should teach by word and by example. You should be engaged in your child's education (research shows your involvement can enhance academic success and provide protection against the risks of adolescence).
Don't retreat from your teen's life. Participate in it. Now is the time to reinforce character and build discipline so your teen can survive and thrive in the face of life's many lessons:
Stealing and Cheating
The Bully, The "Bullied" and The Bystander
Bad Friendships
There Are No Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter
Let us discuss in detail about each one of the above in our next article.
Source: Parenting.org
If you have any comments or anything to share on parenting please email to:
youandchildren@gmail.com
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Discipline Techniques
Positive Discipline
Effective Discipline:
Effective Discipline:
- is proactive;
- promotes positive behavior and self-control;
- encourages self-responsibility;
- responds to unacceptable behavior and a lack of self-control;
- protects and strengthens the child's self-esteem;
- strengthens the parent-child relationship; and
- advances development.
A Summary of Some Practical Discipline Techniques
No one technique of discipline can be relied upon for all situations. The wise parent develops a functional set of skills suited to different situations. Remember that the best discipline is prevention and there is "no one size fits all" when it comes to promoting positive behavior and self-responsibility and responding to unacceptable behaviors.
Role modeling: Children learn more about behavior by watching adults than in any other way.
Encouragement: Encouragement is a means to promote positive behavior and some argue that it is more effective than praise or reward. It implies reasonable expectations (one step at a time), and that we accept the child's mistakes, as well the successes.
Attention-ignore: Catch children being good! Children repeat behaviors that get attention; they give up behaviors that get no attention.
Charts and Rewards: If not overused, the handy chart posted on the refrigerator (or elsewhere) can help establish good behavior patterns.
Setting limits: Children need to know where the limits are and that these limits stay the same all the time. They feel secure when they know where the boundaries are. They test them frequently to find out.
Consequences: Consequences can be of two types: those that happen if you do nothing and those that you arrange. For example, if a child willfully or carelessly breaks a toy, the child no longer has that toy to play with. If the child hits another with a toy, you may take that toy away. Both are consequences of the child's actions.
Time out: Sometimes children need time to calm down and collect themselves. (Adults do to!) Used sparingly, with consistency and repetition, it must be viewed as teaching the child, not punishing.
Rules: Indeed rules are useful for providing predictability, consistency, and stability. They can be used for a variety of reasons that range from preventing problems from happening to responding to them when they do occur.
Modifying the environment: This refers to steps the parent takes to change or structure the child's environment in a way that helps the child to succeed at tasks and remain safe. Be creative in how you organize, enhance, sooth, redirect and childproof the environment to help promote the child's self-control.
"I-Message": It is more helpful to try to make children aware of how we feel, but leave responsibility for behavioral change with the child. A proper "I-message" identifies: the behavior; how it makes you feel; and a concrete impact this has on your life. For example, "When the music is on that loud I get upset because I can't hear the person I'm talking to on the phone."
Mexico buries children after fire claims 38 lives
Grieving Mexican parents have begun burying their children after a deadly fire in a government daycare center in the north of the country claimed at least 38 young lives.
Most of the fatalities from Friday's blaze at the state-run ABC daycare center in the town of Hermosillo were under the age of two. With many still hospitalized in critical condition, the toll was expected to rise.
Dozens of people carrying flowers and toys came to a small chapel Saturday to bid final farewell to a three-year-old girl named Camila who died in the fire from asphyxiation.
Meanwhile, her four-year-old sister was fighting for her life in a hospital in Guadalajara.
Elsewhere, distraught parents sat outside hospitals awaiting word on the fate of their children, questions were raised about how the fire began and whether deaths could have been prevented.
President Felipe Calderon cut short a trip to the resort town of Cancun and flew to Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state, to respond to the tragedy, a presidential source told AFP.
"I have ordered the federal prosecutor to as soon as possible carry out investigations to help us know exactly what and how it happened, and to work out corresponding responsibility," Calderon said.
Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez said that 38 children had died and another 23 remained hospitalized, including 15 in extremely serious condition.
Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours said six adults had also been hospitalized after the blaze, which broke out when many at the daycare center, located in an Hermosillo working class neighborhood, were taking an afternoon nap.
Some of the injured had been transferred to the western state of Jalisco to be treated by doctors specialized in children's burns, said Daniel Karam of the Mexican Social Security Institute.
One was even flown to a burns unit at a hospital in Sacramento in the US state of California.
Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office, told reporters that it was too early to announce a final toll.
Most of the children died from smoke inhalation, officials said. Others died when the roof in the crib room collapsed.
Questions were already being raised about whether the deaths could have been prevented.
The center lacked emergency exits and the structure was so weak that part of the roof caved in, on an area where many newborn babies were sleeping, reports said.
Local media suggested the fire had started in a neighboring tire shop, a claim the shop owners quickly denied, according to news reports.
The local prosecutor's office cautioned against premature conclusions as to what caused the fire.
In desperate scenes Friday, people living nearby smashed through the cement walls of the center using cars and vans to try to save the children.
Emergency services arrived a good while after locals began bringing victims out, witnesses told AFP.
A 40-year-old man who lives in front of the center and was the first to arrive told La Reforma daily how he handed burnt and lifeless bodies that he pulled from the building to his neighbors.
"It was a terrifying experience," said the man, identified as Roberto Bustamante, as he choked on tears. "There was a lot of smoke, but there were no children's cries. They were all unconscious or dead."
Source: http://www.google.com/
Most of the fatalities from Friday's blaze at the state-run ABC daycare center in the town of Hermosillo were under the age of two. With many still hospitalized in critical condition, the toll was expected to rise.
Dozens of people carrying flowers and toys came to a small chapel Saturday to bid final farewell to a three-year-old girl named Camila who died in the fire from asphyxiation.
Meanwhile, her four-year-old sister was fighting for her life in a hospital in Guadalajara.
Elsewhere, distraught parents sat outside hospitals awaiting word on the fate of their children, questions were raised about how the fire began and whether deaths could have been prevented.
President Felipe Calderon cut short a trip to the resort town of Cancun and flew to Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state, to respond to the tragedy, a presidential source told AFP.
"I have ordered the federal prosecutor to as soon as possible carry out investigations to help us know exactly what and how it happened, and to work out corresponding responsibility," Calderon said.
Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez said that 38 children had died and another 23 remained hospitalized, including 15 in extremely serious condition.
Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours said six adults had also been hospitalized after the blaze, which broke out when many at the daycare center, located in an Hermosillo working class neighborhood, were taking an afternoon nap.
Some of the injured had been transferred to the western state of Jalisco to be treated by doctors specialized in children's burns, said Daniel Karam of the Mexican Social Security Institute.
One was even flown to a burns unit at a hospital in Sacramento in the US state of California.
Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office, told reporters that it was too early to announce a final toll.
Most of the children died from smoke inhalation, officials said. Others died when the roof in the crib room collapsed.
Questions were already being raised about whether the deaths could have been prevented.
The center lacked emergency exits and the structure was so weak that part of the roof caved in, on an area where many newborn babies were sleeping, reports said.
Local media suggested the fire had started in a neighboring tire shop, a claim the shop owners quickly denied, according to news reports.
The local prosecutor's office cautioned against premature conclusions as to what caused the fire.
In desperate scenes Friday, people living nearby smashed through the cement walls of the center using cars and vans to try to save the children.
Emergency services arrived a good while after locals began bringing victims out, witnesses told AFP.
A 40-year-old man who lives in front of the center and was the first to arrive told La Reforma daily how he handed burnt and lifeless bodies that he pulled from the building to his neighbors.
"It was a terrifying experience," said the man, identified as Roberto Bustamante, as he choked on tears. "There was a lot of smoke, but there were no children's cries. They were all unconscious or dead."
Source: http://www.google.com/
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