At Home
A Punitive Seed
I was on my way to pick up my kids from school that day when I had an unusual impulse that I really wanted to just like, hang out with them, outside of the patterns […]
Regulation
At Home
Ice Creams & Same Teams
I told my kid that they could have an ice cream alongside their lunch. While lunch was cooking, they said something rude to me. My impulsive reaction was to want to tell them that they […]
At Home
The Messy, Frustrating, Work of Play
Sometimes when my kids are playing, one of them plays too rough or in a different way than the other one wanted them to. Sometimes they will appeal to me for intervention: “I said stop […]
Child Development
Windshield Wipers & Hitting Your Sibling
How is driving on the opposite side of the road like your kid hitting their sibling? *** My family recently moved to a new country. Now I’m driving on the right side of the car […]
Philosophy
Invisible Success
Sometimes success can’t be measured because in this instance, success literally means becoming unmeasurable. The meltdown that didn’t happen. The dysregulation that lasted only for a few beats before their safe adult was there. The […]
At Home
Co-Regulation in Action
One of my absolute favorite things about our new life in Australia is that we’ve made best friends with the neighbours, who have several kids close in age to both of my children. All of […]
At Home
Behavior Is Communication…On Purpose!
A year ago, my children, who were 5 and 6 at the time, had similar-aged friends come over to the house. The four of them all played together, running around the house and roughhousing. One […]
At Home
Dysregulation at Home
During one of the recent snow days home, my kids were getting really sick of being cooped up inside and struggling to be able to play with one another successfully. They both needed more space […]
At Home
Rage For No Reason
We came back from the usual 2-week holiday break, and then had school cancelled for an entire week due to snow and road conditions. So, when my kids went back to school yesterday (with a […]
At School
Push Them To Breaking…
(All I’m doing in this post is describing adult/child interactions that I observed, but I want to give you a heads up that it’s kind of infuriating. I think that’s important to share and to […]