Some suggestions from Ms. Gestwicki and her “Gaggle of Grandmas” we’ve adopted, some are new, all bear repeating and re-posting ;) A gaggle of grandmas By Carol Gestwicki What do you get when you have a gaggle of grandmas? A lot of thoughtful advice, that’s what. I recently asked several of my friends what insights [...]
Category Archives: Growing Child
How do you handle your anger?
HANDLING ANGER This is a tough one for me, personally, sort of an ongoing question. Some interesting suggestions came just now in my almost-four-year-olds’ Growing Child newsletter. How do you handle your anger? Everyone is born with the capacity to feel anger. Our culture may try to tell us that nice people don’t display their [...]
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Growing Child: Praise Junkies
Growing Child has a knack for knowing what my children are up to. This week I noticed that my newly-2 has begun to look at me whenever she’s doing really anything at all – leaning outward on the jungle gym, for example, or filling a cup at the sink – and saying “I do this!” [...]
Growing Child: On Sibling Rivalry
One of the things I struggle with most as a parent is when to be separate from my children’s emotions – when to know better, to counsel, to put things in perspective – and when to wholly empathize, understand where they’re coming from, and trust and honor the intensity of their emotion – and how, [...]
Growing Child: Babies – No Laughing Matter
One of the awesome highlights of 2010 for me was the documentary film Babies. I find I continue to think about it months later, and there’s even a thread about the film on our Q&A site here. I was happy to see one of our favorite parenting experts – Grandma of “Grandma Says” at Growing Child [...]
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Traditions
Holidays with young children are a great time to think about traditions. We’re thinking this year about the mix of Hanukkah and Christmas that we want to have in our nuclear family. And, after our first night of Hanukkah, we’re thinking about which parts were wonderful exactly as they happened, and which parts we might [...]
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Growing Child – Needed: The support of others
One of our favorite writers offers a note on “anti-child” sentiments on planes and elsewhere and a thought on combating them…. in particular, I love this line: “The very unpredictability of small children reminds me of my puppy… Why should parents and kids not be allowed the same latitude of tolerance and distance?” “Needed: The [...]
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Growing Child: The kids, they are a-changin’
I’ve never been so aware of and attuned to time’s passage as I am now with little ones around. Their growth and change is so marvelous, so awe-inspiring, it drives me to think about how I can grow and change, become better and realize my dreams, along with them. This week’s Grandma Says article from [...]
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Growing Child: Helping your child with social skills
Growing Child creates fantastic age-appropriate developmental / parenting e-newsletters. This month’s newsletter for my just-turned-3-year-old has a section that seems broadly applicable to any parent trying to help their child grow and be comfortable socially so, with Growing Child’s permission, I’m sharing it here. The bold, italics and bullet-formatting are mine. SOCIAL SKILLS AT THREE [...]
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Growing Child: Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
It seems that much of good parenting advice – good life advice! – can be summed up as “keep an eye on the big picture.” This one’s no exception – Carol Gestwicki proposes four simple big ideas to sanity check and make sure we’re getting across, versus a never-ending list of specific, always-outdated rules. Seems [...]
