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Little kids are naturally creative in ways that we may all wish we still were as adults. The young imagination can create games out of thin air: toys come alive to perform rescue operations of the downtrodden or to live their best life in Malibu.

When my son and daughter were little, I loved to watch them explore how his action figures could go on adventures with her Barbies. Their toys would be swimming in a pool one minute, then saving the world the next, each adventure building upon the one before.

A whole new world of creative play opened up for them as their toys became not only a door to the pretend world, but also a tool to interact with each other in a way that challenged their imaginations. Watching them create story lines and themes almost felt like having a front-row viewing of the exploding growth of their young brains.

But as my kids got older, I witnessed self-doubt make its inevitable invasion as they began to compare themselves to other kids and formulate ideas about what is “normal.” Free play and unrestricted creativity gave way to self-consciousness and wanting to do things the “right way.”

Here’s the thing about creativity and children: as parents, we have the ability to encourage a free-spirited nature even as our children mature and learn more about the world around them. Creativity is important because it opens the door for so many other skills that will benefit our kids as they get older. [Read more…]

Our children all have days when their whole world seems to be falling apart. Is the universe really going up in smoke? Probably not, but our children may need a lot of help to see that.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, she suddenly began to make negative comments about herself and her abilities. She would often say, “I’m not good at coloring” and “sports are hard for me,” indicating that she had low self-esteem.

The overwhelming transition into the world of elementary school left her struggling to make friends and made her quick to compare her abilities to those of her peers. I noticed she would make comments about how other students performed on tasks as compared to herself, and as time moved on, these comments spiraled into negative self-talk.

At a young age, she was already feeling insecure. This saddened me but I was eager to do everything I could to help her. I knew that her skills were not inadequate, yet her brain was tricking her with suggestions of inferiority and inadequacy. To my daughter, it felt like her inferiority was very real!

What is negative self-talk and why does it happen? We ALL experience self-talk or the inner monologue of that internal voice that tells us to eat the cookie or to go out for a run. Self-talk is most often constructive to our well-being and can be a positive way to process what is happening around us and to guide us through a task.

At times, however, self-talk can become critical. While intermittent critical self-talk is not necessarily cause for concern, when we observe our children engage in frequent negative self-talk we may feel some worry creep in. [Read more…]

Not too long ago I realized that I had to do something differently when dealing with my child’s limit breaking. After one particularly intense “episode,” I could no longer ignore the fact that I was in a pattern of caving to my daughter’s demands, simply as a means of avoiding the full-blown tantrum.

These behavior episodes would occur every time I tried to enforce limits. If I attempted to follow through with the limit that had been set, the entire family would pay for hours. What had begun with the occasional rule breaking had quickly spun out of control and become a repeated, every day occurrence.

All children break limits occasionally; after all, testing limits is a way to experiment with independence. And while frustrating, it can actually be healthy for children to test boundaries, as the brain develops and a child begins to recognize the cause and effect their actions can have on the world around them.

It is when our children argue with everything we say or break the same limit repeatedly (such as with my daughter), that we can really begin to question what we could do differently. We may begin to feel like our children are making intentional, irresponsible choices, especially when they ignore our guidance over and over again. While we can celebrate their independence in decision making, we also want them to make the “right” choices!

[Read more…]

“No.”

I locked eyes with the deep blue irises of my son as he glared at me through his long lashes. While his eyes remained stubborn, I could see the small upward turn of his mouth. He was trying to hide it but the dimple on his cheek gave him away; he knew he was going to get me with that one word. 

“No.”

We’ve been down this road before. Setting up the day with lots of praise when I catch him doing something positive and a reinforcement system that involves his coveted iPad will often work beautifully. 

But…

After a week of long days at school (where he has to work harder than most to dial in his impulses), sports activities, and just not as much time for the direct attention from his mama that he reaped during the year and a half of quarantine, these moments seem unavoidable at times. 

My usually sweet and affectionate blonde-haired babe will suddenly reenact a Jekyll and Hyde performance that will leave my mind spinning long after he’s over it and moved on. It’ll usually begin small enough: a pouting face or a tear, easy enough to handle. But if the usual tactics don’t work, I’ll suddenly find myself in a face-off with a 35 pound bulldog. In those moments, it won’t matter if I’m asking him to recite the Declaration of Independence or eat an ice cream cone; the answer will always be a vehement “NO.” 

These moments leave me feeling like the sole purpose of his life is to get under my skin. I’m quite certain he knows what he needs to do, may even want to do it–yet refuses because he knows it is what I want him to do…and if he’s annoyed, he sure as heck wants to make sure I am too. 

I can feel my blood pressure rise, my hands start to sweat, and I have the sudden urge to yell. As a behavior specialist by profession, the editor of a positive parenting site by passion and a mom constantly working on personal growth, I can keep it together a lot of the time. But that “no” is my Achilles heel. In those moments, “no,” is a parenting trigger that I struggle with.

A trigger, according to psychologist, parenting expert, and author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, Dr. Laura Markham, is “anything you experience in the present moment that activates a feeling from the past.” Triggers are dangerous because they can elicit a feeling that in turn causes us to react in a way that’s not keeping with the present. [Read more…]

Five months into becoming parents, my husband and I had our first experience with a meltdown. As our daughter first started crying, we moved through the list of typical physical needs: is she hungry? Cold? Does she need a nappy change?

As we went through those motions, our daughter’s frustration and discomfort only increased to a complete state of emotional dysregulation. After we exhausted all normal parenting tricks, we resorted to random actions such as turning off the lights, turning on the lights, singing, rocking and bouncing. None of it worked. 

We felt like there was no way we could help her, and it was gut-wrenching. I found myself wanting to cry along with my daughter. We were two new parents feeling very helpless, alone and desperate.

After an hour of screaming, our daughter was so exhausted that she fell asleep. My husband and I were also exhausted, but too strung out to sleep. As we began to research what we may have been doing wrong, we made the surprising realization that the suggestions from sources that aligned with our attachment parenting style seemed to be the complete opposite of what we had done.

But how are we to do things differently if we don’t know any different? Many of us had parents who tried their absolute best to make us ‘feel better’ during a meltdown, or perhaps even walked away and left us alone. I have some such memories myself. 

I couldn’t blame myself or my husband for handling our daughter’s emotional dysregulation in the manner that we did, nor did I harbor any resentment against my parents for how they may have acted during my own childhood meltdowns. It seemed that the real issue was actually the misunderstanding of how to keep our children safe. [Read more…]