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A Call for Gentleness
The greatest source of danger to our human lives is, unfortunately, other humans. Our human species is unique in its ability to attack, decimate, maim and destroy itself. It requires little effort for us to kill one another or ourselves.
Books for New Brothers and Sisters
Every new parent worries about their firstborn when they are expecting their second child. They wonder if their oldest will feel left out or unloved. They read articles about aggression and regression and make plans to put off potty training.
New Year’s Parenting Pledge
If you experience even a twinge of self-recognition in this incident, it's time to make a solid resolution as a parent. Ask yourself, "What resolution would make the biggest difference in my parenting?"
Using Guided Imagery With Your Child
Guided imagery is a dynamic way to increase a child’s chances for successful development of inner talents and personal resources. Parents, teachers and other service providers can use imagery with confidence to increase a child’s mental focus, help clarify values, increase study efficiency or instill other successful traits.
Living with Differences
In the first week at my daughter's inclusive preschool (half kids with special needs, half "typical" kids), the parents tried to figure out who had the disabled kids and who didn't. No one knew how to begin a conversation — we were afraid of offending each other. We found our common ground: we were all parents raising preschoolers. Some of us had children who loved music, couldn't use the bathroom yet or screamed when someone got too close. And some of us had kids with disabilities.
Mother Nurture: Letting Go
A mom is dealing with so many feelings and needs and wants in her children and partner that the stress builds up over the course of a day. It's normal to feel like you describe. Plus, many women have been taught various ways to keep a stiff upper lip and not to say anything that seems like a complaint, which just keeps things bottled up and festering.
How (and Why) to Teach Kids to Care
Raising caring kids is a goal most parents strive for — and one that's becoming increasingly challenging given the violence, in media and real life that children are inevitably exposed to these days. There is some good news, though. While researchers once believed that kids had to learn to care, it seems they may possess this ability even as toddlers.
Build Life Skills With Music
Love, respect and appreciation for music are easy to share with our children and build life skills at the same time. During the first years of our child’s life, musical skills build self-esteem and enhance expression. Musical rhythms spur motor development. Learning melodies and words stimulates listening capacity and help children develop receptive language.
Parent Better Than Your Own Parents Did
Your parents undoubtedly failed you as parents. All parents fail. No parent is ever adequate enough to provide one child — let alone two or more — with enough love, caring, support, wisdom or whatever to completely meet his or her needs. Therefore, parents naturally fall short when it comes to parenting. It is impossible to be a perfect parent. We teach our children almost all the skills they need to become doctors, engineers, plumbers, architects, truck drivers or any one of the millions of jobs in the world. We usually don’t teach parenting.
Take a Hike!
With a little planning and forethought, hiking with children can be a fun and rewarding experience. Hiking is a wonderful way to help them develop a love and respect for nature, stimulate their imagination and encourage them to stay active.
Meditating Mamas
If we want to enjoy our daily lives, it is exceptionally helpful to slow down for part of the day and focus on your breath. Research has shown that periods of meditation — of focusing on your breath — helps us transcend worries, lowers our anxiety, diminishes depression and increases clarity. Meditation balances our moods and enhances our ability to connect fully with who we are.
Yikes! My Kid is Stealing!
One of the more common problems that we as parents encounter (but that nobody likes to talk about) is what to do when your child steals. There are a number of different reasons children steal and a number of different ways to handle the problem. Whatever the reason a child is stealing, parents need to approach the problem with wisdom. If parents just react according to their natural inclination, their response will almost certainly be wrong and destructive.
Fresh Ways to Have Fun Outside
Are you looking for fresh ways to spend time with your friends and family? Outdoor activities getting a little boring, are they? With your fast-paced life gaining speed all the time, it’s easy to stick to what’s familiar — but is that any way to live? Let’s take a few minutes and look at how easy it is to break out of the same-ole-routine and into the new with wholesome activities near home and out of doors. Read on to see why it’s tough to beat having fun with friends and family outdoors in the fresh air.
Frugal Family Fun
Here are some frugal entertainment ideas for the whole family. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Keep your eyes and ears open and you will find many more opportunities to have fun with your family without spending a lot of money.
Top 10 Ways to Be a Better Father
The expectations for fathers are increasing both at work and at home. Here are 10 ways for fathers to be more effective in the most important job they'll ever have. See your kids as capable. The Achilles’ heel of many fathers is to see their kids as "not good enough." Your kids will feel this, and they'll live up to these expectations. The more you approve of them, the greater they'll be!
Look At It From A Kid’s-Eye View
It's quite easy for most fathers to look at their kids with a critical eye. And why not? There's a lot riding on the outcome of your kids' development. There's the nagging worry that you're not doing your job well enough and that your child will develop "problems." There's also the fear of being judged as an incompetent or uninvolved father by others. And there's the relentless presence of your children, making mistakes by the truckload while you watch.
Fathers, Sons and Masculinity
My 5-year-old son had a quirky smile that showed a mixture of pride and anticipation. He'd shown me his art project from school, and he was waiting for his mom. "Come on over and look at what Michael made," I shouted to my wife. Michael ran out of the room crying. I was filled with visions of a son who was incapable of dealing with the challenges and frustrations of daily living. And I felt the responsibility of showing him how to be "tough enough" to live in a world that delivers plenty of tough times. At the moment, I felt like I was failing badly.
What Do You Do When Your Kid is “Acting Up”?
There were probably good reasons why men were the ones who were out hunting big game for dinner while their wives stayed at home, many centuries ago. One reason is that men probably threw spears with a little better velocity. Another is that women seem a bit more comfortable in the midst of the emotional turmoil that constitutes family life.
Stressed, Every Day
As I came through the door after a challenging day of work, the tornado began. "Daddy's home!" My kids wanted to share their day and their artwork, and my wife wanted to share how difficult her day had been. I wanted to lie down on the couch and be left alone. And this same scenario is happening all over the country with fathers (or mothers) and their families. Families are converging on each other at the end of the day with wildly different needs and moods. The result can be hurt feelings and distance between family members.
Let Kids Be Kids
I once heard a mom say, “My husband loves being a dad. He’s just like a kid again. He knows all the cartoons and action figures.” Is that what parents think being a kid is? Power Rangers and Rug Rats? What about imagination, creativity, curiosity? What about letting a kid just be a kid? I think we push our kids to grow up too fast. We bombard them with learning-based toys. We brag to our friends that our child can count to 10 and recite the alphabet by age 2. We dress them as little adults. We reward their precociousness. We’re embarrassed when they act like babies. We fill their calendars with gymnastics, soccer and music classes.
Magic Ways to Make It Better
All mommies everywhere kiss owies to make them better, but I've learned a few other fun ways to make things better. My friend Trevi taught me about throwing owies in the street. When her daughter Simone was hurt or sad, she would scoop up the imaginary owie and dramatically fling it toward the window. She'd shout at it and make a grand scene of chastising it. It worked every time.
Helping Kids Cope with Trauma
Whether after a personal trauma or a national tragedy like 9/11, our children suffer. Whether their suffering manifests as overt misbehavior or in quiet reticence, we can help children cope so they do not feel alone. While we cannot shield children's innocence, we can help them feel safe. Some symptoms of trauma are immediate, and other symptoms may not show themselves for months or years. Because we care for our children, the task before us is to watch for symptoms and choose an appropriate response. Our responses may be verbal, but more often our assistance can simply be nonverbal and supportive.
Find Your Child’s Personal Style
Every morning, six-year-old Josh and his mom clash at breakfast just as Mom is ready to walk out the door. A daydreamer by nature, Josh moves through life at a slower pace than his task-oriented mom, who values organization. Their distinct ways of relating to the world reveal their obviously different personal styles. When parents can communicate and interact in ways that fit their children’s unique styles, there is harmony in the home. Both parents and children develop confidence and self-esteem.
You CAN Influence Your Teens Attitudes About Sex
Most parents would agree that they don’t want their middle- or high-schoolers to become sexually active. Teen sex can pose irreversible consequences including significant health risks, social and emotional effects and pregnancy. Sexually active girls are predisposed to genital tract infections, cervical cancer and pre-cancerous lesions. For boys, unprotected intercourse increases the chances of prostate and urethral infections.
Disciplining an Infant: Are You Kidding?
The thought of disciplining a child in the first year of life seems wrong or even ridiculous. Yet every time an infant reaches up to tug his mother's hair and she gently removes his grasp, or when he pulls an unsafe object to his mouth and she intervenes, that's setting limits, that's redirecting, that's guidance — and yes, that's discipline. Effective discipline is not punishment. It's teaching. Discipline really starts from day one.
Baby Massage From A-Z
Baby massage has been practiced since ancient times. It can be as simple as a gentle rub with lotion after a bath or a more practiced infant massage. The benefits are many for both baby and parent. You can, and should, massage a child of any age from newborn to adulthood. Children learn much about the power of gentle touch. There's something very special about spending a little time giving your teenager a backrub or foot massage. It maintains a beautiful parent-child connection throughout a lifetime.
Get more Time, Energy and Money!
Time, energy and money are chronically lacking in parents’ lives. They are too tired because their children keep them up at night, they are strapped for time between juggling work and family, and they spend all their resources on their kids, the house, the car and the mortgage. Everybody has a dream. Whether you know it or not, at one time you dreamed all the time. As children grow, their imaginations grow with them. Then they become adults, and the reality of the world sets in. Have you forgotten how to dream? Do you feel as if you have no time to breath, much less make your dreams reality?
The Family That Eats Together Stays Together
You often hear that families should eat together. What evidence is there that this is a good thing? A recent study suggests that family meals might increase adolescents’ well-being. Middle school (n=1608) and high school (n=3074) students, ages 11 to 18, completed surveys. The frequency of family meals, level of family connectedness, academic performance, substance use, self-esteem, depressions, suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts were assessed.
Our children interrupt our conversations constantly. Even while I’m asking them to wait until we’re done talking...
Many parents admonish kids for interrupting, but in the same breath, they respond to the child’s interrupted request! Interrupting is habit forming. Like many annoying behaviors, once kids figure out that they can “get away with it,” the behavior will continue.
Our two boys, ages 7 and 9, are constantly fighting. The only thing that works is to separate them — my wife is with one, and I take the other. It's driving us nuts. Do you have any suggestions? Siblings will naturally vie for their parents’ attention, and fighting will be a part of that. It is completely normal. The problem with separating them too much is that they won't learn some of the skills that will help them to get along in the future.
What can I give my child when she's had a stressful day, is nervous, fearful, teething, or cannot seem to fall asleep?
Mrs. Rabbit's secret tea is the answer to a multitude of baby and child upsets. Peter Rabbit’s heart went pit-a-pat as he ran from Farmer MacGregor, but his mother knew to calm him with a nice warm cup of chamomile tea. When he couldn’t sleep or had a tummy ache, good old chamomile came to the rescue.
Yoga for Kids and Parents
“Baby yoga! Baby yoga!” This is my daughter’s chant any time she reaches over to place her hands in front of her toes, in essence doing the toddler version of downward facing dog. I fantasized about doing yoga with my children before becoming pregnant, but I never pictured it like this.
Your Kids Can Manage Stress
Children may react to excess stress with behavior that seems immature, inappropriate or even disturbing. Stress can be terrifying to children who lack the emotional maturity or experience to understand and deal with it. The challenge for parents, teachers and other caretakers include how to recognize signs of stress in children of different ages, how to know when stress threatens to overwhelm a child and what to do about it.
Tips to Build Sibling Attachment
The second time around, a parent knows how to care for an infant and how quickly the dependent infant becomes a struggling-for-independence child. For many parents pregnant with the second, the fear is about the first child. How will she handle the new baby? How am I going to give my first the attention she is used to?
10 Reasons to Tell Your Kids Stories
In today’s busy world, many parents have lost the art of telling their stories to their kids. Don't pass up the opportunity to connect with your kids at the same time you tell them what's important to you. It will be a huge gift to your kids, and a huge gift to you.
Redefining "Grounding" for Your Teens
I invite you to ground yourself in love and compassion. For thousands of years, great, grounded teachers have exemplified the power of love and compassion to generate happiness and to feel the joy of being alive. Ground yourself in love and compassion, and you will feel that same joy.
Getting Kids to Organize Themselves
The school year is in full swing again in many places -- and with it, another opportunity to make the days run a bit smoother than they did before. Like most parents, I've discovered there are a handful of challenges each year that need to be addressed to make for a productive, successful school year.
Encourage Natural Expression
Five-year-old Jasper doesn't look up at the people watching him as he studies the mandrill's colorful face and picks the right colored pencil. Then he's ready to move on to the orangutans, whom he has sketched before. With only inches of glass separating them, he shows the finished portrait to the great ape, who grins at him, much to the audience’s delight.
Top 10 Ways to Keep Your Kids From Fighting
Fighting among siblings is as natural as the changing of the seasons. All parents will have to deal with it. There are some simple things we can do to limit fighting and make it tolerable.
10 Ways to Get Your Kids to Talk to You
Parents can often be frustrated by their kids' unwillingness to share their lives with them. Whether your kids are toddlers or teens, there will be times when it's difficult to break through and find out what's really going on.
At grocery stores and other public places, I often see parents being harsh toward their children, who are understandably tired and impatient. What is reasonable to expect from a child in this kind of situation, and what is reasonable to expect from a parent?
Are Your Giving Your Kids Hurried Child Syndrome?
In an era of technological and media advances, children are often portrayed as little adults. However, if children are offered the stresses of adulthood, they will also exhibit the ailments of adulthood.
The Dangers of Holding Therapy
Whether by a parent, therapist or stranger, physically overpowering a helpless child is wrong. Justifying it by calling it "love" or "therapy" is a violation of the child’s trust and understanding of life as he has come to know it.
Should You Reward Your Kids?
If rewards did work, they would help us to raise responsible and well-adjusted children. Let's look at how rewards really do work.
Give Your Kids Household Chores!
The early participation in household chores was deemed more important in their success than any other factor, including IQ. On the other hand, if children did not begin participating in household chores until they were teenagers, the experience seemed to backfire and had a negative effect on their success as young adults, using those same measures.
Encourage Children to Play Naturally
The research is clear: Children need to play, and play is how they learn best. True play is child-initiated and led, and children are active participants in creating their own play experiences.
Getting Your Kids to Cooperate
If you’re waiting for your child to start cooperating of his own free will, you might want to pack a lunch. Things won’t change on their own. It takes consistent, effective parenting skills to change your children’s behavior and to encourage your children to cooperate willingly on a regular basis.
Learning All Day Long
Providing a rich learning environment for your baby or toddler isn’t as complicated as you might think. Creating a great environment for learning simply means doing the things that you would normally do with them anyway but in a conscientious manner.
Natural parenting comes naturally
Had someone told me five years ago that I was a "natural parent," I would have sputtered in protest. To me, natural parenting brought to mind images of a woman toting a baby attached to her breast in public, sleeping communally on a mattress on the floor and flaunting hairy armpits. None of those pictures pertained to me!
What is Attachment Parenting?
Attachment Parenting: Is It For You?
What is Attachment Parenting?
The Science of Attachment
The Chemistry of Attachment
Long Term Attachment Parenting
What exactly is “attachment parenting” as it applies to all ages?
Siblings Articles and Sibling Rivalry
Siblings Fighting
Tips to Build Sibling Attachment
Siblings at the Baby’s Birth?
How do we know if we’re ready to have another baby?
How to Help Your Marriage Survive a New Baby
Others
Natural Parenting
Pitching In: Simple Ways to Get Your Family Involved
When Your Parenting Comes Under Fire
Should Both Parents Work? Should One Stay at Home?
Playdates for Parents
Is it ok to spoil your kids?
Unplugging your family
Others...
Articles on Getting Kids To Sleep
My 6-month-old baby wakes up almost every hour to breastfeed.
My baby won't nap! She fights sleep but gets fussier and fussier as the day progresses.
Using White Noise While Babies Sleep
Write a Family Bestseller: “My Sleep Book”
Why Isn't She Sleeping at Night?
Others...
Your Child's Feelings and Emotional Intelligence
Build Your Child’s Emotional Toolkit
What You Say and What Your Children Hear
Helping Kids Cope With News of War
Top Ten Ways to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Kids
Be Smart With Your Children’s Feelings
How You Can Teach Your Child Respect
Teaching Responsibility - Responsible Children
The Hidden Messages of Parenting
Others...
Natural Fathering Articles
10 Reasons to Tell Your Kids Stories
Help Your Hubby Support Breastfeeding
Help For Overwhelmed Fathers
Natural Fathering - Save Memories of Your Children
Fathers, Tell Your Stories
Top 10 Common Sense Rules for Fathers
Parenting Stress
How to Help Your Marriage Survive a New Baby
When It’s More Than the “Baby Blues”
I Yelled at My Kids
My Kids Are Driving Me Crazy!
Others ....
Gentle Discipline Articles
Redefining "Grounding" for Your Teens
Give Your Kids the “N” Word
Keep Your Kids From Fighting - Fighting Kids - Fighting Siblings
Of Conflict and Control - Kid Discipline
To Spank Your Child or Not to Spank?
Get Your Toddler to Cooperate - Parenting Toddlers
Others ...
Homeschooling
How to Homeschool Your Child
Building the Unschooling or Homeschooling Village
I do not feel qualified to teach my children
Husband's involvement in homeschooling
Multiple Kids
How should we structure our school year?
Science in the Blink of an Eye
Unschooling
Building the Unschooling or Homeschooling Village
Can a Single Parent Unschool?
Isn't “unschooling” just a fancy way of saying you ignore your children? Is that even legal?
Attachment Parenting Articles
Create a Peaceful Home Sanctuary
Long Term Attachment Parenting
Can There Be Too Much? - Attachment Parenting
Parenting Style Differences
Caring vs. Caring Too Much
Learning All Day Long
Falling off the AP Wagon
more...
