Category Archive:
Children’s basic needs

Five Whys Can Help

five whys can help

”For whatever reasons my eight-year-old, Eric, is critical of everything his younger siblings do. Eric tells his sister that her coloring stinks. He tells his brother that his handwriting is messy. Last night Eric burst into tears because the peas touched his mashed potatoes. Nothing seems to make him happy right now,” Michael told me. […]


Be The Storyteller For Your Child’s Special Moments

be the storyteller for your child's special moments

Erle Stanley Gardner. Agatha Christie. Dick Francis. I’ve always loved reading mysteries and I’ve read so many that I can usually guess ”who dunnit.” In my late teens I took a writing seminar with a mystery writer. My first question to her was “Do you know the ending when you start writing?” She laughed and […]


Helping Your Child Change Self-Perception

helping your child change self-perception

Labels. We all are labeled by the roles we play or how others perceive us. On the day we are born, the labeling begins. “He looks just like his daddy. She’s an angel. He’s a handful. She’s fussy. He’s scatterbrained. She has no patience. He’s greedy.” Names and adjectives are used to describe children and […]


The Prepared Environment

prepared environment

“Pretend that you just found out that you’ll have to be in a wheelchair for a year, possibly longer. What adjustment would you have to make to your home to accommodate this change? This week crawl around your house, through every room, and make a list of changes that you would make. That’s your homework. […]


Help! My Child Is The Bully!

help my child is the bully

Amanda, a preschool teacher in California, contacted me about a column about bullying. “I do agree”, she wrote, “that bullying is a very serious issue but the people that usually need more support are the mortified parents of the bully.” Let’s define bullying behavior. Bullying can be physical, verbal or excluding behaviors that include but […]


Three Levels Of Obedience

three levels of obedience

Sometimes when I am working on the computer I feel like a three-year-old. At least, I think I feel like a three-year-old. I try to do some function that I haven’t done in a while, and I look at the computer screen wondering how I did it. When I am utterly confused, I’ll phone one […]


Understanding Happiness

understanding happiness

Happy. We use this word as though happy is a goal unto itself. An elusive objective, indeed. The meanings of happiness and pleasure are used interchangeably in our world. Happiness and pleasure are not the same concept and to think so is dangerous. Pleasure seeking will not bring us happiness. Conversely, happiness is rarely found […]


An Ounce of Prevention: Handwashing

handwashing an ounce of prevention

“My mommy said I don’t have to wash my hands after I go to the bathroom,” one of my preschool students said. How was I going to side step this power struggle? “At school,” I said, “we wash our hands. Do you want to use the pump soap or the bar soap?” Fortunately, for children […]


Helping Your Child Learn To Listen

helping your child learn to listen

“You can’t help your child learn anything if you don’t teach them to listen and pay attention. That’s what you have to do first.” I overheard Tricia, a mother of three, as she visited with a father at a parent get-together. Afraid of breaking a child’s spirit, we are sometimes reluctant to “make” a child […]


10,000 Steps

10,000 steps

10,000 steps. A step is approximately one-third to one-half an adult or child’s height. For example, a person six feet tall would cover 20,000 to 30,000 feet or approximately 4 to 5 miles with 10,000 steps. In contrast, a child three-feet tall would cover two to three miles with 10,000 steps. The idea of 10,000 […]