Connect with us!
Tag Archives: parenting
Support for your Parenting: It can make a difference
When was the last time you had one of those “bad parent days?” Maybe it was an awful fight between siblings, an extremely difficult bedtime routine that ended up with you yelling or hitting your children, or maybe you got so frustrated for another reason that you said something you wish you had never said. You flipped your lid. Then later you felt bad about it. Maybe even awful. Continue reading
Posted in Connection and love, Self-care
Tagged parenting, parenting_challenges., support_for_parents
1 Comment
Non-stop Negotiation Getting You Down?
As the parent it doesn’t always feel so great when all of your positions get shaved away by your budding courtroom lawyer. It is exhausting. Setting limits firmly and still honoring the dignity of your child isn’t really hard, but it takes practice. Continue reading
Posted in Mutual Respect, Routines, Setting limits
Tagged Jody McVittie, kind_and_firm, negotiation, parenting, setting_limits
Leave a comment
Small Steps into the New Year
A lot is written this time of year about what we “resolve” to do for the future. Goals are great but it can be really discouraging when, despite good intentions, they are not met. Continue reading
Posted in Routines
Tagged dreams, Jody McVittie, new_years_resolutions, parenting, small_steps
Leave a comment
Time-in for Children: Re-gathering Response-ability
Children (and all of us) do better when they feel better. Our culture tends to want to “teach” children who are misbehaving by having them feel worse “so they’ll learn not to do it again.” We forget that if the child had felt included, important, or weren’t so tired or hungry she likely would have handled the situation well to begin with. Instead of teaching by hurting the goal of a time-in is to help our child learn how to regain their “better” sense of self so that she can come back to the situation and meet the challenge. With practice, children get better at “re-gathering” by themselves. Remember, this kind of “feeling better” is not happiness – it is a sense of being able to respond (be response-able) from a centered place. Continue reading
Time In
If you are a parent you probably recognize that feeling inside that comes when you’ve really tried your best and NOTHING seems to be working. You are tired, dinner is almost ready, the table needs to be set and the kids are bickering. Or maybe you are in a hurry and everyone knows what he or she is supposed to do but you think are the only one who really cares if you get to Grandma’s even close to the time you promised to be there.
Ick. For me it is kind of a frantic, out of control desperateness that starts in my chest and moves outward. Continue reading
Posted in Connection and love, Self regulation
Tagged parenting, repairs, self_regulation, Time_in, Time_out
Leave a comment
From “Mis-takes” to Compassion
It turns out that the distinction between “I made a mistake” and “I am a mistake” is a big deal. When we make a mistake, we may feel bad, but we can learn from what we did. When we come to the erroneous conclusion that we are a mistake, that there is something wrong with us as a person or that we are defective, that becomes the main “learning.” Continue reading
The compasses and maps of parenting
Contributed by Melanie Miller, M.Ed. I had the recent opportunity to take my daughter and her friends orienteering. Orienteering is where you use a map, compass and your powers of observation to navigate through a course of pre-set checkpoints. It’s … Continue reading
Parenting with the Body in Mind
We sure hear a lot these days about the brain – and brain science. When we hear the word “brain” most of us think of the soft stuff that is inside our skull. That is, in fact, our “brain.” But it turns out that our body is not just the thing that carries our brain around. Human nervous systems are incredibly complex and there is a lot of information exchanged between the brain and the rest of the body. We can use this information to help ourselves and to help our kids. Continue reading
Whose problem is it anyway?
One of the many little posters my parenting instructor used read, “Whose problem is it, anyway?” He tried to teach us to recognize which problems were ours (as parents) and which problems really “belonged” to the children. Continue reading
Posted in Conflict, Growing Responsibility, Mistakes yours and theirs
Tagged discipline, growing_up, Jody_McVittie, parenting, solving_problems
1 Comment
