I’m so pleased to introduce Fern Weis of Your Family Matters. She is a certified coach helping parents of teens to change silence to sharing, apathy to responsibility and to raise them to confident, self-sufficient adulthood. As the founder of Your Family Matters, she works with parents privately, in groups, and leads a variety of in-person and virtual workshops. She is also a middle school teacher,
What? Brownies? I know you thought this site was about children’s behavior. Well, kids need lots of vitamins and minerals to help their brains learn – and the brain gets really involved in learning new behaviors. So that brain needs good fuel. My son likes white foods. He’s one of those. Been that way he was a very little guy. At ten, there’s more
I’m excited to share this guest post by Angel Rodriguez of Wise Learners. He is an educator with over 17 years of experience in early childhood education. He currently works as a Parent Instructional Support Coordinator for the largest school system in Georgia, specializing in brain-based learning. He’s also served as a foster parent to children with severe physical, emotional, and mental disabilities. He’s
I love how much easier music makes everything. Here are FOUR surefire ways to use music to make your parenting life easier. 1. Find a Signature Song First pick an easy go-to song that you can use for most everything. It saves you from running through a list in your head, trying to decide, and most likely, missing the moment where a song was
Of course, A comes before B in the alphabet. But what does that mean in parenting? It means the child needs to BECOME ELIGIBLE. They need to fulfill certain expectations before they have privileges. Here’s an example. Most children love sweets. They want dessert. Healthy foods often pale in comparison. My son loves dessert. When we told him, “You’re not eligible for dessert until
Of course, it’s already starting. As close as the three of us are, Zed is spending more time on his own. He wants more peer time and less family time. As my friend Ben said, my son is “growing away.” The main focus of “growing away” is giving the child permission to make their own decisions – and allowing the child to deal with the
In an earlier post, Close the Distance, the idea was to get closer in physical proximity to avoid raised voices, tension, and misunderstandings. What about closing another kind of distance – a distance that may have developed when what the parents are doing isn’t working? Or when children get to that age where they seemingly want little to do with their parents? Prepare Before closing this
I’ve tried punishment. It doesn’t work. Well, it might work. Actually, it’s pretty darn effective at creating an immediate behavior change – maybe even more than just short-term behavior change. But at what cost? Who benefits from punishment? In the bigger picture – no one. Certainly not your child. In many circles of parenting, private corporal punishment is looked at as an ineffective form
Today was my son’s 11th birthday. It’s traditional. Dinner at a restaurant of birthday person’s choice. He’s so very grown-up in many ways. All decked out in his fancy collared shirt. Making eye contact with the waiter. Things like that. And still so young. Sticking his face close to his plate and picking up the mochi ice cream with his mouth. Lying down with
Measure How do you measure the tone of a number, how six sounds different than three? Or the way purple feels, the kind of purple when you hear the word quintuplet? Is it the same as when the butter knife levels the pillow of flour from the steel hash-marked cup on its way to making bread? Or the error inherent in weighing a puppy? There
