By: Karen Pace/ You can nurture your child’s mental health and their emotional and intellectual development by learning how their brains work. This is according to neuropsychiatrist, Daniel Siegel, M.D., and parenting expert, Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., who stress that parents and other adults play essential roles in helping kids learn to use their brains…
By Cary Zavala / Self-control is an important skill for all children to learn. It refers to having power or control over one’s own actions. It also means that an individual knows right from wrong. If children are taught self-control at an early age, then they will feel better about the choices they make. If…
By Cary Zavala / As parents, we admit we sometimes come to the “end of our rope.” With the stressors of daily living, our children’s challenging behaviors can sometimes send us to a “10” quickly on the Feelings Thermometer! If you missed this month’s Parent Network Series, our topic of the evening was Emotional Regulation,…
Brooke Borton shares a reflection after spending a few weeks with her newborn. I was sitting on the couch this morning, baby asleep in my arms, trying to come up with a clever Facebook status to post about the multitude of baby fluids present on my shirt and sweatpants. I could say something about seeing…
As I write this, it is 10:00 am on a Saturday. Thus far, Rita has cried six times, over the following things: She wanted to play school with Ruby, but she didn’t know Ruby would want to play in the living room and not the dining room. She wanted to take a bath, not a…
I have read enough John Irving novels to know it is impossible to construct a figurative protective dome around one’s family. As our sons, Evan, 5, and Sean, 3, experience more of the world and its many wonders, I struggle with the balance between letting them explore and stumble or being a “helicopter parent,” hovering,…
…I need it. Just a little here and there, but I definitely need it. Being a Mom is hard work, no doubt and hearing just a little validation from the outside world brings me up from the depths of meltdowns, blow outs, time-outs, sibling fights, and overall exhaustion. Over the last few weeks my youngest, who…
This post might seem rather late, considering Japan has been dealing with results of their massive earthquake for 10 days now, but it is still relevant. I subscribe to a parenting newsletter by Chick Moorman. Mr. Moorman and his buddy Thomas Haller are on a mission to help parents, teachers and couples learn new and…
I recently came across a great parenting talk on the TED site. For those of you who don’t know, the TED site (ted.com) features a huge catalog of videotaped talks by all kinds of people–from authors to academics, from business tycoons to kids who have important things to say. Anyway, the talk I listened to…
It doesn’t take much to turn a great day into a total melt down. Tantrums, hissy fits and straight forward “NO’s” always seem to come at the wrong times. When is the right time? Should your child be allowed to express his feelings of anger or should we teach him it’s an inappropriate feeling that…