Category Archive:
Social/emotional needs

What’s Scary About School?

what's scary about school bus

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 […]


Teaching Values

teaching values

”Do you teach values?” a telephone caller asked. Back in the early 90’s parents were upset that values were being taught in school. Controversy brewed and bubbled. Do you teach values? The question caught me off guard. How can you not teach values, I thought, because of the very nature of values? Whether we are […]


Letting Children Learn From Mistakes

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 […]


Declaring Independence

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 […]


Cloud Watching

cloud watching

Summer will officially begin today with the summer solstice. For kids, I believe in the words of the Nat King Cole song, ”Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.” June, July and August should allow all of us time to luxuriate in some slow goofiness. Summer is a period of tremendous physical growth […]


A Thank-You To Fathers

thank-you fathers

During the time that the phrase ”real men don’t eat quiche” was heard everywhere, Roseanne Barr called out through the television screen with this line: ”A real man is one who can look a thirty-year mortgage in the eye, and not blink.” In many ways, signing up for a thirty-year mortgage requires more commitment to […]


Asking For Assistance

asking 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 […]


The Danger of Fantasy

The Danger of Fantasy

Dear Father, hear and bless thy beasts and singing birds; And guard with tenderness small things that have no words. Perhaps you remember this childhood prayer. For me it is a call to duty. Young children often do not have the words to express themselves. I see our job as adults is to help children […]


Writing A Thank-You Note

writing a thank you note

During a visit with a group of ladies in their late seventies, I discovered that they each had notes tucked away, written by their children and grandchildren. Not every note from every child, but ”treasures” from letters, notes and cards received over the years. I’m imagining that a piece of paper that someone’s held onto […]


The Compliment Game

compliment game

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.Proverbs 25:11 Our daughter, Dana, came home from her freshman year of college and suggested that we play the Dana Game. ”I’ve taught all my friends at school how to play it.” ”How do we play?” I asked. ”We’ll go around in a […]