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 […]


Let The Sunshine In

let the sunshine in

How much of the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D3, do we need to maintain optimum health? The major biological function of vitamin D is to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus. Vitamin D aids in the absorption of calcium, helping to form and maintain strong bones. It promotes bone mineralization in concert with a […]


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? […]


Do You Know Who Your Children Are?

know who your children are

Summer nights, years ago, right before the news there was a public service announcement: It’s 10 o’clock, do you know where your children are? What I’d like to hear today is this: Do you know who your children are? When parents or grandparents contact me asking for advice about how to handle a child who […]


Setting Limits

setting limits

At a neighborhood coffee, my friend, Cheryl, announced that she had stopped eating sugar for several months. Several women gasped at the thought. “But that’s so limiting,” said one. Cheryl smiled and said, “Actually I find the limitation is quite freeing. I don’t worry any more whether I should eat something or not. Drawing the […]


Offer Freedom Within Limits

offer freedom within limits

Many of the difficult situations we have with our children involves getting them to do something they don’t want to do in a reasonable amount of time. Eating, getting dressed, going to bed, or taking a bath may be familiar conflict areas. When we give our children choices we can avoid conflict. These choices, or […]


Family Meetings

family meetings

As parent leaders, we have many tools we can learn to help us create an atmosphere of trust in our families. One tool is using family meetings. Family meetings can help our families learn how to problem solve together, as well as learn important communication tools, cooperation, creativity, respect, appropriate expression of emotions, and how […]