KEY POINTS
-Parenting is full of contradictory emotional experiences (e.g., wanting to be with and away from one’s kids).
-The principle of dialectics involves acknowledging that seemingly opposing forces or ideas can coexist.
-Acknowledging conflicting feelings is an integral part of regulating emotions.
Janet discusses the challenges and benefits of authenticity — how being real with our children helps us to achieve our goals as parents, strengthens our relationship, and even makes our lives easier. Janet says that it was Magda Gerber who…
Children are constantly working to make sense of themselves, their experiences, and their worlds. One way that children tend to do this is through creating artifacts. By engaging in discussions around, and interacting with these artifacts, teachers and educators are…
You may be thinking, “I can barely get my child into clothes – how am I supposed to dress my child for cold, wet, and snow?” Most of each day, Apple Orchard learners are outside, so dressing for the weather…
Why not let them walk to school alone? Parents and communities are figuring out ways to give their children more independence—and it just may help them to become less anxious, more self-reliant adults. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-overprotected-american-child-1527865038 (Wall Street Journal subscription required)
Most American kids don’t spend large chunks of their day catching salamanders and poking sticks into piles of fox poop. In a nation moving toward greater standardization of its public-education system, programs centered around getting kids outside to explore aren’t…
As parents, we want our children to be emotionally resilient — able to handle life’s ups and downs. But parents’ ability to foster resilience in our children hinges a great deal on our own emotional resilience. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/well/family/to-raise-resilient-kids-be-a-resilient-parent.html?smid=pl-share
Benefits of early education found to persist for years, bolstering graduation, reducing retention, and reducing special education placements. www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/17/11/lasting-payoff-early-ed
It’s a brisk winter morning in New York City and a class of bubbly preschoolers have burst into Room 5 of the Brooklyn Heights Montessori School for a period of free play. Amid an explosion of drawing, coloring, and play-dough…
Pity the poor parent whose child is throwing a public tantrum. No, don’t come up with a list of excellent parenting strategies that you’re quite sure would have averted this unhappy scene. And don’t use it as an opportunity to…