When your child behaves inappropriately, it’s easy to go straight to the thought, “They’re behaving like this because I’ve failed them. I’m a bad parent.” But you haven’t. This fear is especially common for (recovering) perfectionist parents, and can stop us from helping our kids improve their behavior and confidence. The tendency to feel like …
Even once we know it’s best to connect first with our kids before focusing on behaviour, we still often focus on behaviour first. How can we change that? It’s important to remember that we’re in the midst of a societal paradigm shift—and paradigm shifts take time. Many parents are trying to put their parent child …
The work of raising authentic kids is one of the greatest contributions we make to the world in which we live. When I became a parent, one of the most important things to me was that my son would have the confidence and self-awareness to be himself—his most authentic self. The goal of being authentic …
When you have a sensitive child who is hard on themselves, who is anxious, reluctant or unwilling to try new activities, you can build their confidence by avoiding the use of “good” or “good job” in your everyday language. It’s distressing when your child doesn’t want to do a new activity because they’re worried they …
For recovering perfectionists, a key strategy to both heal ourselves and prevent perfectionism in kids is learning to listen more astutely to our bodies and honour our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs. As a recovering perfectionist myself, I’ve spent most of my life pushing, pushing, pushing—and ignoring the signals of my body, regardless of …
Are you with me in wondering how you’ll get through the holiday season with a pandemic going on? Between having everyone home every day, limited ability to socialize with others, cancelled festivities, and no holiday gatherings with family and friends–it’ll be different for sure, and maybe even daunting in some moments. Whether you have active …
I want to talk today about the length of time it can take to make changes when you’re first learning how to use connected parenting strategies–especially if you grew up in an authoritarian household, or you had a lot of disconnection or maybe trauma in your family background. Maybe you look around sometimes and compare …
Children and teens may tell lies for lots of reasons. When kids are little, they’re often exploring the boundary between reality and fantasy. But intentional lies are different. And if you think about it, adults lie sometimes too and we often justify it.
If your child or teen’s behaviour is unusual or more difficult recently as school is starting, instead of worrying about their behaviour, look for how the structures that usually keep them feeling safe have been disrupted. The new school year can be fraught with anxiety-producing situations for all kids, especially our sensitive kids. But this …
When you raise your sensitive, spirited child to march to the beat of their own drum, be prepared that their drum rhythm will likely sometimes stretch you to outside of your comfort zone (and maybe even cause you anxiety). I’ve had glimpses of this experience throughout raising my son, but the waves of anxiety got …