Parenting

Raising a grateful child is a difficult task.  Gratitude is a difficult concept for children to grasp, especially in this day and time.  So many parents hand things to their children and often before they even ask for them.  How can you be sure that you are raising a grateful child? Insist on manners.  Gratitude […] More

Discipline is not a one way form of punishment that works for all children. There are so many different types of discipline that parents use to help keep their own children from misbehaving, but not all discipline works for all kids. For this reason, it’s important for parents to remember that all children are individuals […] More

Being a reader has many advantages for our children.  When your child loves to read, they will typically do better academically than children who do not.  Reading also is an alternative entertainment than watching television or surfing the net for hours on end.  Being a reader opens a whole new world up to your child […] More

Leaving your new baby is a big deal. Most parents are too scared to do it or they simply don’t want to do it. That’s fine. No one is asking you to leave your two week old child at home to go on date night. However, as your baby ages, you might realize it’s been […] More

Chances are, if you have children then you have dealt with feelings of failure as a parent.  Most of us aren’t parents for long until we feel like we have done something incorrectly.  We may have feelings of failure as a parent over anything from feeling we didn’t catch our child’s health problem early enough […] More

Being a patient parent is much easier said than done. When you are pregnant with your first child, you have an idealistic image of what parenthood will look like. You imagine yourself using positive discipline and having a child who doesn’t really misbehave. You imagine how patient you’ll be teaching him or her to tie […] More

Are your teens getting enough sleep?  Chances are, they are not.  Most of us don’t even realize how much sleep that our teens need.  Teens need an average of about 9 hours of sleep a night, according to The National Sleep Foundation.  Some teenagers can get by on 8 hours but the majority really need […] More

An internet curfew will not make you a popular parent but chances are it is needed as much at your house as it was at mine if you are a parent of teenagers.  Most teenagers live on the internet.  Phones don’t ring with friends calling to chat.  Instead, they ping with texts constantly at all […] More

Having a daughter (or two, in my case) is a pretty awesome deal. They’re sweet, cuddly, funny, silly, smart and always fun to be around. Now that mine are growing up, particularly my oldest who is now five, I find myself inspired to spend some real quality time with her as her school schedule and […] More

Good sportsmanship is not a skill that our children are born with.  It is something we have to teach them through modeling good sportsmanship ourselves and having some open, honest discussions with them.  What are the best ways to pass this skill on to your children? Modeling good sportsmanship yourself is step one.  You cannot […] More

Parenting: As I sit here about to begin the second trimester of my third pregnancy with one daughter in kindergarten and another in midst of her terrible twos (which could be SO much worse, I know), morning sickness that lasts all day every single day and what I believe is now a full-blown head cold, […] More

If there is one thing that I’ve learned as a parent, it’s that Murphy’s Law applies most to children. Anyone with kids, or anyone around kids on a regular basis will get it. The rules that apply to real life do not always apply to children. Since parenting isn’t always serious, it’s sometimes funny to […] More