Do you have weekly family meetings? Confession time: This is one of those tools that I’ve always loved in theory, but could never do for more than a few weeks in a row. Everything would go okay at first, but then we’d get busy and skip one.. and just keep skipping until a few months later when we’d do a few more.. and so on.

Eventually just the thought of keeping up with meetings every week left me feeling even more overwhelmed than usual. There was no way I was adding yet another task to my already very long list of things to do.

But nearly 7 months ago we chose to start up our meetings again- and now we’ve only missed 8 out of 30 weeks. And have even more time.

[Read more…]

I love that quote from L.R.Knost. Learning how to use this moment has made a huge difference in our lives. But we still fall back into old habits sometimes. None of us is perfect so we keep practicing, trying again, and making amends when we mess up.

If you’re just starting out, or keep getting stuck, I’ve put together a few suggestions that may help and a worksheet you can use to work through them: [Read more…]

Originally posted here on June 24, 2019.

My oldest was having some extra big feelings today over a disappointment at school, and all I wanted to do was make it stop, and say “OMG seriously”. But I’d just put this graphic together yesterday of a quote I liked so it was fresh in my mind, and I took a deep breath and chose to wait and connect instead.

I ignored the randomly thrown used tissues all over the floor, the raised voice, the whining.. and I looked at my daughter, who was sobbing and obviously struggling. [Read more…]

Sometimes we get so caught up in managing challenging behaviours that we forget about all the other parts of the child who’s behind them- his development, his strengths, his feelings.. When we take a step back and refocus, we see a different child.

Take the above picture, for example:

Did the child here just make a mess in the garden digging up a bunch of ugly weeds again, or did he lovingly pick two beautiful flowers for someone special? [Read more…]

Have your kids gone away at all this summer?

We just spent the weekend reconnecting with our girls after their week away visiting family. First there was the inevitable emotional and exhausted period- complete with all their stuff haphazardly unloaded back into our (previously clean) house, wanting to sit right on us, wanting nothing to do with us, excitedly telling us everything they did, crying about things that were hard.. and that was just the first two hours. [Read more…]

This has been a difficult few weeks for my immediate and extended family, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Three weeks ago I picked my girls up from school, waited until they were buckled, and then I climbed back to sit with them. I sat with them while tears were streaming down their faces, and while they yelled and sobbed and protested.

I had just given them the news that my family wouldn’t be coming up from the states the next day for their long-awaited visit because my sister wasn’t well, and they were devastated. [Read more…]

Okay, that’s not quite as easy or rhyme-y. And it sounds fairly ridiculous so I’d never actually say it like that. But the original phrase has bothered me for awhile.

Although I agree with the overall message that we can’t (and shouldn’t) always let our kids decide, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them getting upset about it. We all get upset about things. It’s a reasonable response to a stressful experience.

And it’s also an important part of developing resilience, self-regulation, and empathy. [Read more…]

I wrote this back when R was 1.5 and E was almost 4. It’s funny to look back on it all now, but it was so stressful being in the middle of it. I was thankful I’d already been working on calming strategies for myself for a year. There were many times I felt like yelling or giving up, but I breathed deep and refocused and made it through. Every time we do that, it builds new connections and memories in our brain- and starts to replace our old habits with new ones a little bit at a time.

(February 2013)

A few months ago I finally made a mind jar for E. I’d seen the link before and they looked really neat, but I’m crafting challenged so at first I just bought her a foldout princess sofabed to use as a calm place and tried not to think about how much neater it would be with the pretty sparkly jar. [Read more…]

It’s true- I don’t punish my children. But I usually don’t share that with others right away, because then they react with a pretty big dose of scepticism, and mild to moderate concern. Probably a bit like you’re doing now? I get it though. Everyone punishes their kids. If I don’t punish mine, what do I do? [Read more…]

If you haven’t guessed yet from my posts, I struggle with perfectionism. I have for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t know what it was until I was an adult. I just knew that everything felt so hard, and I never could get things quite “right”.

People typically think of a perfectionist as someone who’s meticulous and accomplished- always striving hard to do their best but maybe a workaholic. And there are perfectionists like that. But there are also many of us who are constantly thinking of how much better we could be if only we could figure it all out. And being consumed by the inability to live up to our expectations. We’re often stuck believing it’s all or nothing, so we sabotage ourselves by procrastinating, self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, overeating, starving ourselves.. all sorts of destructive behaviours. Why even bother trying if it won’t be good enough? [Read more…]