Category Archive:
Social/emotional needs

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

Childhood seems to have become a pathology. If children don’t do what the adults around them deem to be “good behavior”, a diagnosis, or label of some type is given to the child: Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD), Conduct Disorder. There is a long list of learning […]


Laugh And The World Laughs With You

laugh and the world laughs with you

Some of the good news about parenting is that you can use your sense of humor. And it may be best if you can learn to look with humor at some of the predicaments you will find yourself. The young child under the age of six years is a literal learner and doesn’t get jokes […]


Just Say No!

just say no

Probably the hardest word for us to learn as parents is ‘no’. Children wouldn’t be children if they didn’t test the boundaries, and when we say no, our children are determined to find a way to get to yes. There are many strategies they use to try to get to yes: complaining that we aren’t […]


Letting Kids Figure It Out

letting kids figure it out

How are you going to find a way to use words to solve problems? Use the five-step problem solving method. In last week’s post we laid some ground rules for our family: that we will work together, as we are all in the same boat; and that we do not act or speak in a […]


Create A Relationship Toolbox

create a relationship toolbox

What are simple ways we can create a lifetime of good health? In this series of articles we’ve looked at the positive benefits of… All of these are effective, low-costs way to improve your health and your family’s health. We’ll finish with a discussion of the importance of having the right tools to building robust […]


Don’t Snooze, You Lose

don't snooze you lose

After reading John Medina’s book, Brain Rules, and William DeMent’s The Promise of Sleep, I began to see sleep as an important way to maintain optimum health. Medina tells us that people fall into three kinds of sleepers: Larks, Hummingbirds and Night Owls. Dement says that adults need 7 to 10 hours of sleep per day. […]


Tips to Focus

tips to focus

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The age long problem of trying to figure out cause/effect is part of the issue of trying to deal with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. Are people unable to calm down and focus because of their brain chemistry, or is their brain chemistry created by […]


Sugar Blues

sugar blues

When we first were married, my husband’s habit was to drink a 16-ounce glass of orange juice for breakfast. To that we added pancakes with maple syrup. During my honeymoon year I found that by ten o’clock in the morning I was nauseous and sweating. After weeks of these episodes, off I went to the […]


Time Out Or Time To Think?

Isolating children when they don’t meet our expectations of behavior is one method of implementing time-out. Using time-out may be one of the most popular discipline methods used by parents today. Carl Larsson, the Swedish artist, did a painting in 1897 of an older boy sitting in time-out. The time-out technique has been around for […]


Welcome Mistakes

welcome mistakes

“Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment,” read the sign in the gift shop. Since mistakes are at the forefront of learning, it is best if we can be friendly with error and welcome mistakes for the learning opportunities that they are. What have most of us been taught about mistakes? […]