When you don't get help to go through emotional experiences as a child, you don't really learn from them. If, when a bad feeling arises, we are asked to go to our own room to calm down or to return to a social situation once "you can be nice", [...]
It can be heartbreaking to watch children struggle with mental health issues. Mental health statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that approximately 2.7 million children aged 3 to 17 live with depression. However, if you’re the parent of a child living with mental illness, do not be [...]
We are surrounded by a huge variety of things: some feel boring, some nice. However, our attention easily focuses on what is not well - this has been an absolutely essential skill for human survival. However, scanning for threats, unpleasantries, and “what I don’t have” is exhausting. Also for [...]
I had been scrolling through a superhero imagery recently, and I was a little appalled that the superheroes that kids would like to identify with are dry muscular figures. Yes, I understand that superheroes are super partly, because they are unreal fantasy characters. However, these superhero figures provide a [...]
We're all familiar with self-care for adults. There are a lot of lit candles, long baths, and many glasses of wine. Very rarely do we think of kids as needing self-care too, but of course they do! The only thing is, their time off often looks very different from [...]
My darling child, When you were born, I felt like I was looking at a miracle. A new and precious life in my arms. How on earth would I be able to be the kind of mother who would not presume things about you or push you a towards [...]
A mother of a toddler told me with pride, that she has the most amazing little family. She has a great job, a beautiful home, but she is so exhausted, she doesn't have the strength to enjoy her family and her blessings. She just wants to spend her weekends [...]
I've worked very hard to be able to have peaceful mornings with my children. I hate having to rush the kids to get dressed and then rush to daycare. I realized something during one of these precious peaceful mornings. Something that made my heart sink. Me and my two-year-old [...]
My husband and I were taking our five-year-old daughter to daycare. She was cycling with her little bike, and since no one else was on the road, we gave her permission to speed up towards the double gates on top of a hill. There was a space between the [...]
How can we as adults and parents do our very best to make children feel special and approved – just as they are, not adding anything or taking away anything from their precious existence? Every child deserves to be seen and heard, to have faith in themselves, and to [...]
