Activities
Painting with Brushes
When I introduced watercolors to my children for the first time (back when they were 3 and 2), I thought that the concept of dipping the paintbrush in the paint, wetting the paint, cleaning the […]
At Home
A Successful Meltdown
(At the time of my writing this, my son was 3 years old.) Yesterday evening was the best meltdown we’ve had in a long time. How’s that for a starter sentence? This is an incredibly […]
Personal
“Stop Crying”
“Stop crying” was one of the most repeated things I heard in my childhood — definitely the most repeated “correction” I ever heard. I was constantly crying too much. And constantly in trouble for it. […]
Personal
Positive Expectations
You may have heard the advice to tell your kids what they CAN do, and not what they CAN’T do. Or, to say your POSITIVE expectations, not your NEGATIVE expectations. An example of this might […]
Personal
Half Donut
When I was ten years old, my family was helping start a new church. This is something we did often when I was a kid. The church had a pastor and many of the other […]
Autism
Explaining Neurodivergence with Phones
One way that I sometimes explain the concept of neurodivergence — that autism, or ADHD* are different wirings of the brain, without being something “wrong” with the brain — to children (or sometimes to their […]
At Home
Two Stories of Power and Powerlessness
Two stories about power and powerlessness. A child and an adult were entering a classroom, together, one on one. The child skipped ahead of the adult through the open door of the classroom, zigzagged to […]
At Home
Giving Kids Power
Okay, after my last post, you might be asking, how do we give kids power and autonomy? Honestly, a different way to ask this same question might be, how do we protect their right to […]
Elementary
Self-Autonomy
There’s a quote that I’ve seen on the internet that goes like this. “Sometimes people use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like a person’, and sometimes they use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like an […]
Philosophy
Feelings of Powerlessness
A couple of weeks ago my son, who’s 5, needed to have dental work done for the first time in his life. It wasn’t extensive and there wasn’t any drilling, but just the process of […]