❀❀ Here is a wonderful essay by Emily Perl Kingsley. She has given us all a wonderful snap-shot of the experience of having a child born with a disability, and allows us to feel some of the emotions that go along with it. ❀❀ When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip-to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It is all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day …
Kids and Technology: The “Guinea Pig” Generation
I should have seen it coming. Almost two decades ago, Daniel and I scrutinized the ten or twelve boxes of cutting-edge “educational software” at CompUSA, finally settling on Reader Rabbit. Back home, we devoted the evening to learning the program, ourselves, so that we could help our daughter with it, during the upcoming weeks and months. We stayed up past midnight, and I’m pretty sure we high-fived each other for being such with-it, tech-savvy, forward-thinking parents. Forty-five minutes. What had taken two college-educated adults hours to figure out together took our 3-year-old less than one hour, all on her own. …
Five Ways to Engage Disengaged Kids
By Featured Guest: Mary DeMuth In a world of Halo, iphones, and IM, how do parents strategically engage their tuned-out kids? How can we create the kinds of homes that are irresistible to our children, enticing enough to make them tune out from games, media and texting and tune in to the rhythms of family life? Five ways. One: Offer ‘em Something Better The most enticing thing to a kid is community—real, authentic, God-breathed community. To create this, learn to do the following: Say you’re sorry when you’re wrong and ask forgiveness. Strive to become the person you want your …
5 Ways to Help Kids Set & Fulfill Goals
As we enter a new year we find ourselves reflecting on where we’ve been and looking forward to where we hope to go. We make plans, develop lists and chart a course for the coming year. But what about our kids? Do you help your children set goals and then help them fulfill them? Do you help your children set goals and then help them fulfill them? Click To Tweet I remember when I was teaching my son to read more proficiently and I gave him his first real book. It was My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It wasn’t really …
Say You’re Sorry
Recently I watched my daughter-in-law teaching her little girl to say, “I’m sorry!” It was a heart-wrenching but beautiful thing. She’s only 2, but in many cases, she is already well aware of what is right and wrong. She understands that saying mean things, talking back to her parents or adults, taking toys away from her friends and lying are all bad behaviors. The Bible teaches us that we are all born with a conscience (Romans 2:14-15) and so we naturally know some things are just wrong. Understanding the scope and gravity of other behaviors and attitudes comes with time. That’s …
Preventing Picky Eaters
Is it really possible to raise children who aren’t picky eaters? Are there any tips to make mealtime a healthy haven of eating pleasure? It’s a dilemma most moms deal with at some time or another. The journey to healthy kids who eat healthy food and make mealtime more relaxing and less contentious begins before they are ever born and their propensity to prefer healthy foods over junk food is nurtured throughout their childhood. So, how can we prevent picky eaters… Begin in the womb and while you breastfeed. While your sweet little bundle of joy is developing within …