Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman share the skinny on sleep in NurtureShock: New Thinking about children. They collect in one place lots of the current science and sleep facts on different subjects. Often we as parents have a common sense notion about things based on us. But children are different they aren’t little adults. Sleep is one of those things. We… View Post
Who doesn’t love sleep? When I cut my sleep time I know what will happen and often we assume the same thing will happen to our children. We’ll just be a little blurry and we just have to get through it! Brain science is telling us differently now. Children with sleep loss have very different effects than adults. It’s… View Post
Screens are a magnet in some homes and not in others. Lisa Weiner from Handmade Parenting in this episode talks about what types of things children can be doing if they are not on screens. We look at other screen time woes in this interview and peek into a screen free home and ask those questions. During this episode… View Post
Here are 25 conversation task cards about Gratitude, Courage, Adversity, Unity and Cooperation Character Conversation Cards. They are designed to bring conversation between children and between families. It’s good for use during the 5 day week so can last a month giving a good amount of time for the conversations to develop. Gratitude, Courage, Adversity, Unity and Cooperation Character Conversation Cards Choose these cards if:
If I want to have quality verbal interactions, what are 5 ways that I can improve that? The famous Hart/Risley study showed us the massive ( 30 million) word gap that happens between a low income family and other families in a very specific age group. Further down I have lots of resources to learn about why that happens and… View Post
Getting the children to read is a step but getting them to read a range of books is another matter. It’s been my fault. Once I raised a reader I think I just assumed with all these books around they would read a range of them. I see they don’t. I know it doesn’t happen to every reader but for… View Post
It’s that time and you’re email address shopping for your child. We’ve had a family email account for a little while as a handy catch all for all the children. It’s been useful to not have to set up separate accounts and all the friends could get each child right there. It was a taste of what’s to come. As… View Post
It seems just when you have the family status quo you desire or you’ve got it to work something new comes in to throw a little chaos. Change is often hard in families because we all love routine so much, and rightly so. But most parents will find themselves at a crossroads sometime in their parenting journey around work commitments… View Post
Having conversations around media with our children is a really important part of growing up. We help to control, protect and teach in our homes but online, computers and mobile phones are three very different places. I’ve talked about how we’ve tried to maintain a media diet and the revision of it. But just like the birds and the bees… View Post
Not everyone in the family loves to talk and share. Finding conversation starters that match each one is often hit and miss. As the children get older there’s a lot more eye rolling and they spout what they think you want them to say. It’s time for a different type of conversation starter. Apart from the usual yes and… View Post
We all like change but something about childhood and children mean we can get stuck in too many fixed routines. Don’t get me wrong, routines are good but there are somethings that would be better if we switched who was doing it. Contributions are one of these things. If you call them chores see why we changed them to contributions… View Post
Most families like the idea of chores and have tried chores at sometime in their homes. At some point chores breakdown and they just don’t work. Slowly they slip down the list of things to do and gradually get done again by the parents. Chores are an opportunity for the family to work together without everyone doing the same thing…. View Post
