Parenting often involves a whole lot of scheduling. It’s your own schedule, it’s their school and activities schedule, their playdates and homework or screen time. It is a lot to juggle. Get a Master Calendar – We have a desk size calendar on our dining room table and have each year since our oldest was six. … Continue reading Answers to Overscheduling
I’ll admit, I am about to way oversimplify an issue about complex family dynamics. There are people who spend years in therapy unraveling the impact from the next few points. That said, there are some fairly obvious ways your own sibling relationships, from growing up and from current exchange, can impact your children’s … Continue reading How Your Own Sibling Relationships Can Impact Your Children’s Sibling Relationships
As a parent, there are so many potentially difficult conversations in front of you. This may include conversations about transitions like moving to a new place or a marriage separation. At some point, you’ll likely have to talk about the significant illness or death of a close relative. Also as they grow, you’ll need … Continue reading Having Difficult Conversations with Children
When my girls were little, I practiced Stanley Greenspan’s floortime with them as a way to really connect with them in play. Here is a post with the basic guidelines of floortime. As they got older, there was a gradual shift from floortime to open talk time. In my family, this shift started around 8 … Continue reading Want Your Older Children to Really Talk to You? Practice Open Talk Time
I made this list when we stayed home for yet another Spring Break, and thought it would be equally helpful to share at the start of summer! There are so many great things to do in the Northern Virginia area. The Smithsonian- Our family’s favorite museums include the Natural History Museum, the two Air and Space … Continue reading Northern Virginia Staycation (Updated 2017)
Kids getting up and down from the dinner table is such a common complaint. For the parents who are in the thick of this behavior, it’s exhausting. Here are lots of ideas for keeping them at the table. Continue the high chair or booster seat – I would keep the highchair with a strap as … Continue reading How to Get Kids to Stay at the Dinner Table
So often when I write about siblings, it’s about how to best manage the bickering and the fighting or how to get them to stop grabbing toys from each other. Happily, this post is about ways to encourage their relationships! Teach social skills in general – If your children have difficulty taking turns or grabbing … Continue reading Tips to Encourage Sibling Relationships
Absolutely yes! When most parents think about time-out, it’s often sending the child to their room or having the child sit out of play for a few minutes. When I discuss time-outs in the last hour of our positive discipline series, I often get a question about the use of a mommy time-out. The parent … Continue reading Is It Okay to Take a Mommy Time-Out?
It’s one thing to know positive discipline. It’s a whole other thing to apply this language consistently when there are siblings involved. With school letting out, families are likely to be spending more time together. Here are a few discipline rules between siblings to help for a smooth summer: Discipline individually – If you are … Continue reading Discipline Rules Between Siblings
Children can easily feel overwhelmed by other people’s emotional displays. This is especially the case if they feel responsible for the other’s negative emotions. This is often the set-up in a parent-child discipline exchange. Child misbehaves, parent feels angry, child feels responsible for parent’s anger. When children feel overwhelmed by other’s emotions, a natural defense mechanism is to … Continue reading Do Your Children Get Silly When You Are Angry?
Parenting by Dr. Rene 