Transform Your Parenting Approach: The Power of Connection Over Rewards and Punishments Do punishments and rewards seem to create more disconnection than growth for your child, but you don’t know what else to do? You’re not alone. Many parents and caregivers grapple with how to foster a healthy, trusting relationship while guiding children’s behavior. Most of us grew up steeped
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I often see three groups of parents who are on an unconventional parenting path. (There are probably more, but this is what I’m sharing today…) The first ones are parents who know they want to do something different than how they were raised. These are the cycle breakers. These are the parents who grew up with abuse or neglect, or
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When a Relationship isn’t Working If an important relationship is feeling chaotic or disconnected, whether you’re struggling to parent a particular child, you’re in a parenting rough patch, or the strained relationship is with a partner, your parent, or another family member, you probably just want things to go back to peace, joy, ease, and fun. Or perhaps to experience
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We’re excited to announce the launch of our new space to connect consciously with yourself and with others at all stages of life. Are you a growth and holistically minded person? Do you have a relationship challenge? (Could be with yourself, or with a particular person in your life. Or maybe you want to better your relationship skills…) Are you
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I was talking to a mom about her holidays, and she was really feeling discouraged about how things had gone. Her kids had been fighting a lot and the image she had about how their time together would go didn’t match what actually happened at all. She felt really discouraged. I think so many of us hold ourselves and our
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In her book Connection Parenting, Pam Leo has a wonderful explanation for why it is so important to take this time to recharge ourselves, and it involves our brain-wave states. When we are alert, active, and thinking, we are in the beta brain state. Many parents spend time in this state all day long, until their heads hit the pillow at night;
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Few people disagree with the notion that taking care of ourselves is important. In fact, most of us usually get excited when we start talking about meeting our own needs. But most people don’t take the time to actually do it. There are too many other demands that need to take precedence. I suggest that we don’t have the time
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We simply cannot do everything that is on our list of things to do and care for the children in the way they need to be cared for. It isn’t that any one person is incapable, but rather that the job is too important to be left to just one person. The ideal ratio for children under six years old is at least four
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When we are calm, well rested, and fed, we are probably pretty good parents. We are able to handle the little bumps in the road—the lost shoes, the dawdling child— without much trouble. But when we’re not on a green light ourselves, we may lose patience during the minor challenges of parenting. And when we are overwhelmed by our own
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Behaviors can change by inflicting fear (emotional or physical pain, abandonment, separation), which creates disconnection, or by adding loving boundaries (understanding, keeping our child safe, curiosity about what is happening for our child), which creates connection. But when we inflict pain on them, we are saying that stopping this behavior is more important than the child’s need for connection. We
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