Articles

Once each of my kids had a strong enough grasp on language, we started prompting them to say ‘please’ when making a request and ‘thank you’ at the time of receiving something. Reinforcing sincere usage of these magic words is vital to helping children understand the concept of gratefulness…

Sometimes, working through a specific behavioral challenge with our child can be utterly exhausting.  Most of the time, a behavior plan only requires one person to actively be implementing at any given point. Develop a system where you can ask for help from your partner, co-parent, family or friends…

As our children become adolescents, they enter the most fragile period of life.  Because their sense of self is still so unformed and malleable, adolescents are left vulnerable to influence from others. The best way to combat peer pressure with your child is to have a more solid parental influence that wins out…

If one of our main purposes in life is to teach our children by helping them learn things, then we better learn the best way to do that; right? To start, there is a huge difference between helping your child and doing for your child. One action encourages independence whereas the other action encourages dependance.…

The reality is that kids are bound to witness their parents disagree, argue, and maybe even fight.  For children, parents are models of adulthood, relationships, communication and more. So, we would like to argue (no pun intended!) that it’s actually incredibly beneficial to allow our children to observe healthy argument and disagreement…

Our parental instinct is to protect our children and help them to succeed. But, if we don’t allow our children to fail – to do something on their own, the wrong way – then we rob them of the opportunity to learn how to do it better next time. It’s not winning or losing, like everyone says. It’s winning or learning… 

If you notice your child engaging in a higher frequency of inappropriate attention seeking behavior, let that be a cue for you to provide more attention at other times. We firmly believe that there is no such thing as a “bad kid,” but rather that our kids do bad things to communicate what they need from us.  It’s our job to tune in and listen…

If you acknowledge the curse word and use that moment to teach your young child that it is not an appropriate word to use, you run the risk that your child might not understand or care about your lesson. Worse yet, the attention provided may be enough to increase your child’s use of the word in the future…

If you establish a healthy house rule, and that boundary never shifts regardless of how you are feeling, then your child will come to understand and follow the rules more easily.  As a result, you can fall back on implementing your boundaries rather than allowing your emotions to take over…

Let's talk about rules!Are they important?  They SURE are!  Our society is governed by rules - so it's important to start helping our young childr...

The early years are the time we set the stage for the adults that our children will become.  Think about all of the things you hope for your child...

It’s always going to be difficult to tackle some of the issues that our children are struggling with. Oftentimes, addressing those issues can seem overwhelming, and easier to push down the road to tackle later, when “things slow down.” However, those issues will continue to get worse if we don’t address them...