The art of a parent or a teacher is to keep a child’s environment predictable enough to feel safe, but challenging enough to be exciting. Winston Churchill wrote, ”Human beings are of three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death and those who are bored to death.” So it […]
Category Archive:
Great parenting tips
To Have Peace, Teach Peace
In the minute-by-minute clash of news from around the world, peace seems an elusive goal. Peace, though, is not dependent on rest of the world’s cooperation. Peace begins with the individual and the individual’s decision to lead a peaceful life. Peace must be chosen, and we need to teach others to choose peace, joy and […]
Addressing Key Frustrations With Your Children
”If life is a bowl of cherries, why am I in the pits?” Erma Bombeck knew how to see the humor in day-to-day reality. Maintaining a positive and forward-moving life is a challenge to say the least. Life has a way of helping us misplace our senses of humor in a hurry. Some days the […]
Ten Conversations
A small red book holds a lot of wise parenting advice. Shmuley Boteach in his book, 10 Conversations You Need To Have With Your Children, tells us about essential and ongoing chats we should have with our children. Boteach, a rabbi, and former host of The Learning Channel’s Shalom in the Home and father to […]
Talking to Teachers
Walking in from lunch, you see a message that your child’s teacher has called. For most of us, we get a knot in our stomach because we aren’t expecting good news. Plus we’ve been conditioned for twelve or thirteen years that being talked to by the teacher or being sent to the principal’s office is–well, […]
What’s Scary About School?
As the first day of preschool or kindergarten approaches, some children feel anticipation and excitement, while others are anxiety-filled. Here are situations that your child might find fearful about going to school. Separation. If your child enjoys new situations and adjusts quickly to unaccustomed people and places, going to school probably won’t be a scary […]
Letting Children Learn From Mistakes
Warm summer days remind me of my first cooking experiences. The summer I was six I longed to make cookies. The neighbor girl had an Easybake oven, and we made unsatisfying miniscule cakes from baby boxes. I yearned to cook real food from a recipe. Dreaming of a fabulous from-scratch concoction I raided my mother’s […]
And They Call It Veggie Love
When do we learn to love vegetables? For most of us, it is usually before the age of seven. During the first six years of life children are in a sensitive period of learning that involves refining the senses, which includes, of course, taste and smell. Introduce new foods ten times. Presenting a variety of […]
Declaring Independence
As the Fourth of July nears each year, I read the Declaration of Independence to remind me how life under a tyrant might be. This reading helps me appreciate how precious our Constitution and Bill of Rights are to my life. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, thought and wrote extensively on […]
Asking For Assistance
Can you help me, please? These five words seem to be hard for many people to say. In airport check-in lines, at fast food restaurants, or in grocery stores, we may react negatively when someone neglects to ask, “May I help you, please?” But at those times when we feel that no one is trying […]