When my son was about 4, I was truly at a cross-road. I wanted to parent with love and respect, but I found myself using punishment to try to change his behaviors. I realized in that process that I didn’t want to hurt my child to teach him how to behave. I didn’t want to deal with him harshly. In
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Finding Our Own Edges We’ve been talking about boundaries – finding them within ourselves and with others outside of our families. Many of the parents I talk to who have trouble with the metaphorical “Uncle Bob” also have a challenge setting boundaries with their own kids. Today’s episode, Christy Farr and Rebecca Thompson Hitt talk about what healthy, respectful and
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Finding Our Own Edges We’ve all had those moments when we’re just not sure how to handle something from a relative or other person outside the family. Maybe it’s your mother-in-law who just doesn’t understand why your family is vegetarian and keeps feeding your child chicken every time you’re away. Or maybe they’re putting down your parenting in front of
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Finding Our Own Edges It seems to be in the air lately. “What do I do about Uncle Bob? He keeps telling me that I’m going to ruin my son the way I’m parenting. It isn’t working for me, but I have no idea what to do about it. I need to preserve this relationship, so I can’t tell him
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Creating Community It was 2004. I had a new baby, my partner was traveling a lot for work, we were all on a special diet, my oldest was having a very hard time with life and I was pulling my hair out. My neighbor told me that I should just go get McDonald’s to make my life easier, but that
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Continuum Concept and Community We’ve been talking with Scott Noelle about creating community. In our final episode of this three-part series, we talk about some real-life examples of how a community of families can come together organically and how our needs and our kids needs change over time. I’ve found in my own experiences of changing needs and changes in
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Continuum Concept and Community Finding and creating community where you are means that you need to find other people who hold some similar values. I remember wanting to find others who answered all the questions the same way I did- vaccination, circumcision, co-sleeping, gentle discipline, extended breastfeeding, healthy whole foods, working outside the home, etc. But the reality was that
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Continuum Concept and Community From the first time I read The Continuum Concept, I was struck by the completely different experiences that indigenous communities had compared to what I was experiencing in my own home alone with my baby all day. I longed for more connection, but had no idea how to create it for myself or my baby. My baby
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As parents, there are times when we are completely perplexed by our child’s behavior. “Why did she hit another child?” “Why did he just explode over that?!” And even, “Why did I just lose it over that?” Then, most importantly, “What can we do that will really, truly help?” When we remember that All Behavior is a Communication, it’s a starting
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Connecting Through Reading, Storytelling, and Singing Reading has always been something that I’ve loved to share with my kids. We’ve explored so many worlds together and have created the shared vocabulary from reading these books together. We enjoy books like Harry Potter and Septimus Heap where there is a whole world fantasy world being created through words. And I have
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