6 Ways To Strengthen Your Relationship with Your Child
There are days when I just can’t stomach the idea of sitting down on the floor and pretending I’m a lion. When I hear, ‘let’s pretend..’ I want to run for it - I’d rather clean the toilet.
I feel a wave of guilt - Am I a bad parent if I say no to playtime?
No. It’s okay not to play.
Even the most playful parent has these moments.
This is the time to remind ourselves of all the other wonderful ways we can connect and continue building the relationship with our child!
I’ve compiled a well-rounded list of 6 ways to strengthen your relationship - for days you’re feeling energetic or when you’re exhausted and just scraping by.
Read More
How to Handle Difficult Topics with Your Kids
While there has been no shortage of bad news as we’ve navigated the pandemic, the war in Ukraine brings a new challenging world event to handle with our kids.
I’ve compiled some resources on how you may wish to navigate this topic. But the short answer is, with children under 8, you don’t need to bring the issue to their attention. If it does come up, we want to keep it simple and focus on helping them feel heard and safe.
Read More
3 Steps To Keeping Your Cool
With the rise of the gentle/peaceful/conscious/responsive parenting approaches, it can easily feel like:
Calm parent = good parent
Frustrated parent = bad parent
It doesn’t matter if your three-year-old just called you stupid and threw a yogurt cup at the wall - you handle it like a serene goddess, never raising your voice, never dishing out punishments, always appearing warm and loving.
But here’s what I know:
Read More
My Three Year Olds Identity Crisis: the journey to independence
On the way to daycare this morning Emily asked for the story of how she was born. I told it two times before we arrived, and if the drive was longer it would have been three. As we parked the car she wistfully remarked, “I wish I was still a baby”
Yesterday she sat on my lap, curled up in a ball and told me she was a baby in my tummy. She then wiggled around, signalling it was time to be born and slid off my lap. I scooped her up and she snuggled into my arms. She does this over and over.
At 3.5 years old Emily is standing at a precipice - she’s growing every day and wobbling between feeling big and feeling small.
Read More
Making Peace With Our Unmet Goals: Pandemic Parenting 2022
…I’d like my child to sleep through the night
…We need a better morning routine
…I want more quality time with my kids
…I need to night wean
…We have to figure these meltdowns out!
…Tomorrow I WILL keep my cool
…<insert your unfulfilled parenting to-do here!>
Often it seems like that bright shiny future is dangling just out of our reach. If only we could muster up the energy and know-how and make it happen!
Read More
Supporting Your Sensitive Child Through the Holidays
It’s the holiday season and with some pandemic restrictions lifting, we are seeing the return of some events and gatherings - which is exciting but also a new experience for a lot of young families to navigate. We would all like to have a little fun, stay safe and hopefully not have too many public meltdowns (kids or parents ;)
I covered a few concepts that have the potential to shift your holidays from frazzled to feel-good.
Read More
Big changes and bad habits - what’s the right way to support your child’s sleep?
Bad habits - that’s the fear lurking in the back of parents’ minds when putting their kids to bed. The message that we must teach our children to be independent sleepers or suffer the consequences is a hard one to ignore, especially when it’s all around us and we are so very tired.
That advice (and guilt) is pretty useless when you’ve just had a new baby and your toddler is now sleeping worse than your newborn. Or you’ve just moved and your 3-year-old is scared of their new room. Or after a separation, your 4-year-old is determined to cosleep.
For us, it has been our 3-year-old starting daycare.
Read More
How I Got My Toddler Sleeping (without sleep training)
Never in the history of the world has there ever been such a loaded question as “How did you sleep?”
How much time do you have?
There is nothing more bonding than new parents sharing their sleep schedules, routines, failures and successes. This is prime-time material.
If you’ve read this far - if you get it, we are now best friends and I’m going to tell you the WHOLE story of my second child and how we eventually got some sleep.
Read More
Why Won't My Toddler Sleep? The Truth with Shock you!
I once googled, “What time should a 2-year-old go to bed?
A small voice in my head said, “Surely the internet can’t tell you when your child should go to bed!? There are too many variables!”
But if you have a question - the internet has an answer! Usually, something very clearly defined with no grey area
Read More
Why is Bedtime so Hard?
When I was pregnant with my first, a (childless) coworker gave me the book, “Go The F*$% to Sleep” by Adam Mansbach. Honestly, I didn’t get it. I gathered it was a joke but the punchline sailed right over my head.
Fast forward 3 years later, I pluck it off the shelf and my husband and I are crying with laughter. My favourite page is,
“The flowers doze low in the meadows
And high on the mountains so steep.
My life is a failure,…
Read More
