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 and the left side of the road, instead of the left side of the car and the right side of … 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
#5 – Culture does not dictate children’s development. Just because a teacher, grandparent, friend, book, or person on the internet thinks your child “ought to be ready by now” does not necessarily mean that they are. #4 – Hurting kids—emotionally, physically, or mentally—does not make anything better. If you’re looking for a book to tell … 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
Books In Your Child’s Point of View: Understanding the Reasons Kids Do Unreasonable Things, the Occuplaytional Therapist (Kelsie Olds) combines reassuring knowledge, modern research, light humor, and empathetic imagination to provide helpful insights and collaborative strategies for solving common adult/child challenges at home and at school, with an emphasis on meeting everybody’s needs in a … Read more
We have been through some wild things as a family in our lives, but none of them have strained us as thoroughly as these past few weeks. They’ve been the hardest for our family’s well-being, the most difficult to parent, and the worst my mental health has been in a long time. I’ve been struggling … Read more
(Content warning: This post contains discussion of physical child abuse.) *** When I was nine or so, my family went on a road trip. I read all the books I’d brought with me. Bored, I picked up some parenting books someone else had brought, and read them too. I read about the best way to … Read more
One skill that has been really helping me in these past few weeks has been the skill of being able to describe to myself in my head, in detail, what feels bodily wrong when things feel wrong. This is a relatively new skill for me. For the majority of my life, if I felt bad, … Read more