Tag Archives: parent-child relations

One Lump Sum(mer)

This gallery contains 35 photos.

Greetings virtual villagers and family, new and old. We’ve been up to our eyeballs in home living and working (and playing!) for the last few months; having long, flash-past days, and short, did-I-even-sleep nights; squeezing the most out of every 24-hour cycle … Continue reading

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Holiday Highlights — Belated, Yes, but Beautiful!

This gallery contains 31 photos.

Greetings and Happy New Year, dear family, friends, and fellow virtual villagers! I resurfaced from our two-plus-weeks of holiday stay-cation almost a week ago, but I’ve been playing simultaneous games of catch-up and leap-frog since then, so this is the … Continue reading

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The Power of Empathy in Parenting — A Video Interview

Greetings fam-friends! The link below is to a video interview that Wendy McDonell of Compassionate Solutions did with me last week on the subject of using empathy in parenting. I hope you like it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_1cRqQCzE4 * Be well.

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The Myth of the Self-Soothing Infant

I can sum up today’s post in one sentence. That wasn’t it though… 😉 It’s simply this (and it may sound familiar if you’ve read many of my posts at all): The human brain is born without the ability to manage … Continue reading

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Happy Gratitude, Y’all!

Wow what a week!! It feels like so much happened that we had two weeks in one! In no particular order — here’s the view from here: 1. As I mentioned last week, Autumn is going out with a flurry, transforming … Continue reading

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Growing Self-Fulfilling Humans

I won’t lie to you, friends — sometimes, and really just sometimes, I still question what we’re doing here. I sometimes still wonder — if we stay off the well-beaten paths of modern parenting, if we tenderly nurture our kids, without punishing … Continue reading

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Digging a Little Deeper than “Misbehavior”

So — there’s this dirty little parenting myth that started decades ago and that lingers still in the rarely mentioned corners of the current social parenting contract corrupting the ears of those who listen, and driving opposition into the hearts of families everywhere. … Continue reading

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The Long and Winding Road…

One of the themes this week in the various social media parenting groups to which I belong has been “process”. Several times, I’ve found myself encouraging parents to remember that growing up, learning how to negotiate life, figuring out all the … Continue reading

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Making Friends… with Oxytocin!

 I bet you’ve heard rumors about it already. I bet word has already gotten upwind of you and drifted down to your eyes and ears about the effects of “that ‘love’ brain chemical”. Maybe in your prenatal class, in a prenatal … Continue reading

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Friday Family Updates — It’s Fall Y’all!

Greetings Fam-fans! I’m just stopping by with the first installment in the new series I’m calling Friday Family Updates. There’s a fair number of readers here, I know — our parents, family, friends, and followers — who use this blog … Continue reading

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The Power of Saying What You Want

In the Positive Discipline parenting course (in which Natalie and I were trained and certified as instructors last Spring…), there are a slew of different experiential activities  that instructors may share with parents in order to help underscore or increase … Continue reading

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The Lost/Last Month (pt 2)

This gallery contains 41 photos.

Ready for a mini photo album? In this and the next post, I am going to be sharing a smattering of the thousand pictures we (and other family members) took during our various epic escapades last month. Today, I’m going to … Continue reading

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Co-Operation Beats Compliance Every Time

“How many times do I have to tell you?!” “When are you going to learn?” “If you don’t listen to me…!”  If you’ve ever been around kids for more than a minute, you’ve likely heard some of their parents say at least something … Continue reading

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Out with a Splash!

This gallery contains 23 photos.

Well, for those of you who are new here or have not been following along: We’ve been in Santa Cruz for the last month and a half. Woohoo for “short Winter”, Missoula is getting hammered with some of the most … Continue reading

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Friend of Foe — Turning Children’s Upsets into Assets for the Family

Love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend. — MLK Pretty much every parent I’ve ever met, including myself (yes, I have met myself on a couple of occasions now…), has in one instance or … Continue reading

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