On Our Blog:Information for Parents on Parenting and
Childhood Development
including Early Childhood and Teenagers
How you as a family can bond together and work through things, caring and supporting each other, even when the going gets tough, making the bonds and connections even stronger than before. Talking about things that are hard and how you are coping can be an eye-opener, sharing perspectives and solutions very empowering!
Providing stability, order, schedule, routine and a firm foundation amidst uncertainty is a huge responsibility BUT also an immense opportunity to remain connected with each other.
Communication lays a solid and important foundational element and nature to the family relationships and unit. It strengthens it and deepens the bonds, connections, trust andintimacy you share. Making it a home of comfort, reassurance and shared love.
Establishing regular family meetings will give everyone in your family a chance to work toward a central goal. Everyone gets to voice their opinions and help make decisions in a family meeting. Your child who hasn’t been very good at expressing themselves in the past may finally find their voice and be willing to make their feelings known.
Parenting is not all about chores, its is also about playful enjoyment and celebration of family life, each other and your interaction.
Play, from the earliest days of baby and parent is the way of choice for us to engage and interact with each other. This does not have to change necessarily. Although life is no game and can throw some terrible punches at us, we can get through it together. They who play together stay together! Foster this closeness as opposed just doing your own thing alone as a single parent. You do not have to ‘isolate’ yourself and your family due to your situation. You can and should GO IT TOGETHER.
After years of research, experts in child development and child psychology have come to agree that the ideal style for parenting is what is know as the Authoritative style. This is best depicted by a coach. In that role the parent guides and encourages a child to reach his or her true potential.
- Parents guide by providing goals and limits that are appropriate to the age, ability and interest of the child.
- Parents encourage through praise and celebration of accomplishments.
- Parents affirm through a positive relationship that includes time to play and have fun as well as time to communicate and reflect.
- Parents also provide training rules to promote healthy development, learn self-discipline and develop a healthy respect for themselves and others.
We provide parents with the knowledge and tools necessary to become a parent/coach who can raise a child that can be a winner in life.
We encourage you to read and reflect on these materials and discuss them with your spouse or other care givers so you will all be on the same page.
News Parenting & Family Issues
Feature Article
Listening to Your Child’s Inner Voice You walk softly past your child’s room at night, lower the light in the hallway, and then you hear it; a quiet song, a joke from TV, or maybe a soft voice repeating something heard at school that day. Listen to the tone, and most of the time you’ll hear a soothing timbre or quiet reasoning, like the tone of a good friend or supporter. Your child’s personal narrative, his or her self talk, serves several crucial purposes in maintaining his or her emotional and psychological health. Let me repeat that, because it is so important – a healthy internal tone is the basis for psychological and emotional wholeness and well-being. Self talk is the voice of social problem solving, helping to work through an emotional exchange or relationship conflict. It serves as a criticizer, a supporter, or a worrier when its role is to interpret something that has happened in the past or to plan a way of coping with the future. Since we are all destined to have this internal companion whispering in our ears for our entire lives, or what psychologists sometimes call the dialogical self, the importance of helping our children develop healthy “inner voices” is apparent and clear. More —->
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