Parenting Articles

Choose a Focus for the Holiday Season

Fun Food Days to Enjoy This December

By / 4 minutes of reading

While we’re all focused on preparing for the big holidays of this month, there are still several special calendar days devoted to random things in December. We’re looking at two fun food days to enjoy this December, National Hot Cocoa Day and National Maple Syrup Day. During this month of sweet treats, these special days help us to enjoy them even more. Let’s think about a few ways to take a little time to enjoy some winter treats in the middle of our holiday craziness. National Hot Cocoa Day December 13th is National Hot Cocoa Day. And have you ever …

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make giving important

Make Giving Important with Your Kids

By / 4 minutes of reading

As we enter another holiday season, it’s likely that our children are in a mood of wanting, wanting, wanting. This is understandable, given our culture of gift-giving around the holidays. Even if we do teach that this is a season of giving, it really is a challenge for our kids to keep that focus. So how do we help our kids see the holiday season primarily as a time to give? Can we shift the focus from wanting to giving? Let’s look at a way to help our kids to make giving important this holiday season. Talk it up The …

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new ideas for expressing gratitude

New Ideas for Expressing Gratitude in Your Home

By / 4 minutes of reading

Gratitude is the topic at this time of year, especially with our kids. They are hearing about Thanksgiving and thankfulness at home, at school, and wherever else they spend time. We make gratitude trees, put thankfulness notes into a jar, or verbally express what we are thankful for. These are great exercises for our kids, and they can set up a habit of thankfulness, which really is quite important. However, we can all start to feel that this gratitude teaching is getting a little stale year after year. How many ways can we make gratitude interesting to our kids? Hopefully …

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celebrate world kindness day

Will You Celebrate World Kindness Day?

By / 3 minutes of reading

World Kindness Day is celebrated on November 13th, and what a great time it is to celebrate kindness! As we head into Thanksgiving season and the following holidays, would a focus on kindness help your family? I know it will help mine. So maybe we can use November 13th to kick off a season of kindness that can become part of our lives.  In 1997, Japan held a gathering of kindness organizations from around the world in an effort to start a global kindness movement. The World Kindness Movement was formed there in Tokyo, and then launched the first World …

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grow your family's reading habits

Enjoy Some Fun Thanksgiving Books with Your Kids

By / 3 minutes of reading

Here we are in November already! And so our thoughts turn to the Thanksgiving season. Our kids are focused on leaves and turkeys and gratitude exercises, and we begin thinking ahead to the rest of the year’s holidays. So as we enter this Thanksgiving month, let’s plan some time to snuggle up with our kids and enjoy some fun Thanksgiving books with them. We could learn some new signs to go along with those stories too! Reading Aloud It’s great for our kids to have their own stash of books that they look at. But it’s also great for them …

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teach your kids about voting

Teach Your Kids About Voting this Election Season

By / 5 minutes of reading

Election Day is just ahead! We tend to think of this as an adult responsibility. But as parents, we know we’re raising little adults-to-be. So let’s use this election time to teach our kids about this adult responsibility. There are some fun, simple things we can do to help our kids have a solid understanding of elections as they get older. So this is a great time to teach our kids about voting and good citizenship! Campaign signs are everywhere The signage is the main thing my kids notice about election seasons. Because of the campaign signs on every corner, …

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help our kids deal with loss

How to help our kids deal with loss in a healthy way

By / 5 minutes of reading

As adults, we know that loss is part of living. At this point in life, we’ve each had to deal with some kind of loss. It could be the loss of a pet, a loved one, a relationship. Even though we’ve been through loss ourselves, it can be difficult to know how to guide our children through loss. It can even be difficult to know how to process our own sense of loss in front of our kids. So how can we help our kids deal with loss in a healthy way? There is no “right way” to grieve Each …

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help your kids learn to use their voices

Help Your Kids Learn to Use Their Voices Against Abuse

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October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. This may seem to have little to do with our children, especially if you have healthy relationships in your family. But violence in the family setting goes much further than what we typically assume, and it is important for us to equip our children with the tools they need to combat abuse, no matter where they may encounter it. One of the key strategies for preventing any problem is awareness. When we know more about an issue, we are more empowered to identify it and prevent it. And with this knowledge, let’s help our …

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fun things to teach your little ones

Three Fun Things to Teach Your Little Ones in October

By / 3 minutes of reading

We are well into our transitions from summer to fall. New school routines have settled in, and hopefully they are working out well for your family. Brand new preschoolers are real pros now, and even parents may have adopted new routines after a busy summer. For our really little ones, though, days can run together and life might be getting a little uninteresting. At this point, we parents start looking for more ideas to keep our littlest ones busy at home. Thankfully, they are easy to please, so let’s look at three fun things to teach your little ones in …

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make a plan for a better breakfast

It’s Time to Make a Plan for a Better Breakfast

By / 4 minutes of reading

We’ve all heard that breakfast is an important meal. After fasting all night, our bodies need some fuel before heading into another day. This is especially true for children. And since September 26 is National Better Breakfast Day, it’s a great time to reconsider how we do breakfasts with our kids. Let’s look at how we can make a plan for a better breakfast for our families. The convenience issue Mornings are hard. If we aren’t heading to work or trying to get to school, then we might be juggling young children at home after very little sleep. No matter …

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