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 could no longer have ice cream alongside their lunch. (Deep breath.) That reaction is wholly, exclusively, punitive. That reaction is … Read more
My kids got new water bottles and were at the table having a rare treat of red juice. While they can normally carry their water bottles freely around the house, I told them while they had red juice in them, and were inside, they needed to stay at the table. Several times, they both got … Read more
Pretty much the entire public school system in Western society (which is the only school system I have personal experience with, hence my qualifier) is rooted in: Adults decide when kids need to know stuff. Adults tell the kids the stuff. Adults test to see if the kids retained the stuff. Adults try to enforce/motivate … Read more
Last year, when I was writing my book, I was trying to find a source and got sidetracked reading a bunch of stuff about moral development in children (as one does) and I was just cracking up reading it because it was like this study about children age 4-8 and the researchers showed them pictures … Read more
Do you understand the difference between wishes, limits, and boundaries? If you find yourself saying the word “want” or “need”, a lot of times you are expressing a value, a wish, or a feeling. Same with the word “let”, as in “they won’t let me…” Limits are a decision that you are enforcing about the … Read more
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 our kids are neurodivergent and watching these gorgeous ND friendships flourish is giving me life every day. (All of this … Read more
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 friend didn’t really get physically hurt, but the play got too rough and they were emotionally a little overwhelmed and … Read more
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 than was available inside, and they were both sick of trying to play bundled up in the snow, and the … Read more
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 2 hour delayed start, on top of everything) for the first time in 23 days, I knew it was going … Read more
(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 talk about, but I wanted to put this heads-up here because I know that some readers have been more intensely … Read more