Today’s post is by Heidi Smith Luedtke, aka the psychologist next door and author of Detachment Parenting: 33 Ways to Keep Your Cool When Kids Melt Down. If you know me, you know I have a thing for psychology. I’m always reading pyschology-related books and like to study the motivation behind what we do. So…
Parenting
Why Bucket Lists Make Me Grateful (Mom to Mom Gratitude Gala Week 1)
Sunlight radiated off a nearby hill. Below us a small lake rippled in the gentle breeze. My daughter and I ate our lunches at a shady picnic table, watching archers arrange targets in the range across the parking lot. It gave us just enough time to observe the local protocol before pulling her bow and…
Announcing the Mom to Mom Gratitude Gala & Giveaway
Life is hard. Parenting is hard. But even in the midst of the toughest days, we can find gratitude if we know where to look. And that thankfulness can go a long way toward re-framing (and dare I say, sometimes even changing) those tough days. And on the good days? Well, it’s hard not to…
A Month of Thankfulness
Happy November! Have you started counting your blessings yet? You might want to think about getting a head start on it. Because by the time Thanksgiving arrives, we’re so revved up to launch into the holiday season, that Thanksgiving itself gets the short end of the stick. We spend one day watching parades and football…
Childhood, Halloween Candy, Autumn Fun, & A Confession
I hope your family had a fun Columbus Day weekend – with or without the requisite fall activities. Our family did a bit of this and that, including attending our high school’s last home football game. I had forgotten the electric excitement of being among the crowd cheering on the marching band – I mean…
One Way to Improve Your Kids’ Decision Making Skills
So much to do. So little time. But do you ever make your children choose? And could making them choose under the pressure of “not enough time for it all” backfire? It’s easy to want to avoid making our kids choose between activities. We don’t want them to miss out. We don’t want to shortchange…
Meal Planning, Pet Choosing, and Other Helps for Moms
Today I’m staring down two bushels of apples waiting to be cooked and pureed. That can only mean one thing: it’s fall. Cranking out our own fresh applesauce is a favorite (if time-consuming) tradition in our household. We also love jumping in leaf piles and visiting corn mazes. There’s so much to savor about autumn….
8 Articles to Make This A Great School Year
If you aren’t aware, I’m a parenting journalist and my articles appear every month in parenting publications around the U.S. and Canada. This month you can bridge the back-to-school transition and overcome a variety of school year issues thanks to the hints and tips I’ve gathered from experts in these eight articles: By now you…
Turn Back-to-School Blues into a Promise For the Future
It’s school time again. I find that among the moms I talk to there are two sharply contrasting reactions to the start of the school year: glee and sadness. And frankly I think many moms, whether they’re anticipating sending the kids off to school or dreading it, feel a mixture of both. If you’re sad…
Back to School Book Review: A Textbook for Moms & Dads
Almost every new parent wishes their baby came with a manual. Thankfully, as steep as the learning curve feels at the time, those early days and weeks of parenthood are relatively simple. It’s mostly a matter of learning what your baby’s cries mean, how to get him to sleep, when to feed, and how to…