Should Parents Take Expert Advice or Follow Their Instincts?

As parents, we love our kids and we try so hard to be the best parents we can. We know that the people historically raised kids, often with physical punishment or shaming words, was not good for them. So we look for good, expert parenting advice we can use to give our kids what they need.

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You Are the Expert on Your Child

Parents are under intense pressure to get their parenting just right for their child or risk “messing up their child for life.” Then parents doubt they know enough to truly be an expert. It’s a situation that affects everyone, even the super rich like Paris Hilton.

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Parenting When You are Sick or Tired, Part 1

I have a pet peeve. So much parenting advice assumes that parents are at 100%: they aren’t overly stressed about their job, they have lots of energy, they’re getting enough sleep, they’re not sick themselves or overwhelmed by a child’s needs. Because that’s the amount of energy it takes to apply a lot of that advice. Of course, that just makes parents feel bad.

How do you parent when you are sick or exhausted? What kind of parenting advice actually works at those times? For the last two and half months, I’ve had the opportunity to find out.

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How to Help Kids with the Sunday Scaries and School Dread

Helping kids who worry about the upcoming school week with a simple method.

Key Points:

  1. Kids get the Sunday Scaries when they dread school on Monday.
  2. School dread can prompt anxious or defiant behavior in kids.
  3. Use mindfulness with the Sigh, See, and Start method to explore that dread and help you connect with your child.

The Sunday Scaries

Who has not felt dread before work or school? Our kids feel it before school, and as adults, we can relate because we may feel it before work.

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Parents Can Use The Movie Dune To Help Kids With Fear

When our children are afraid, parents will do whatever they can to help them feel better. If children struggle with fear in an ongoing way, it can create a problem for the whole family. Parents want to both comfort their child and make sure that they gain the skills to manage in the world. But how?

The popular movie Dune holds a surprising answer: the content of the famous Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear. The litany may be fiction, but it’s packed with solid psychological advice. If parents use Dune, they can engage their child’s imagination and teach them how to overcome fear.

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Research Shows These Parenting Beliefs Help Kids Most

More than anything, parents want to do their best for their kids. But every parent I know lives in the pressures of the ShouldStorm, which bombards them with shoulds. Always telling them what they should and should not be doing to maximize their child’s development. 

Now, new research from the University of Chicago has shed light on a sinister way the ShouldStorm actually drives parents to undermine their child’s development, all while thinking they are helping. It all comes down to what parents are told is good for kids. 

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How Parents Can Help With Kids’ Back To School Anxiety in 2021

For kids, going to school has never felt more uncertain than it does in fall 2021, as they enter their third school year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Will they be able to keep going to school or will their school shut down, as some already are? What if they get COVID, or what if they bring the Delta variant home to siblings too young to be vaccinated? Will they be okay?

Now more than ever, parents need to know how to help their kids navigate all the usual school stress,  plus deal with the fear and uncertainty they face during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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Mom Rage: It’s Okay To Talk About It

Mom rage is something moms don’t talk about. The ShouldStorm tells us we should be patient all the time. But moms feel anger and it’s normal.

As parents, our stress has been through the roof with back to school coming up. We are all wondering how we are going to make this work? But sometimes that stress shows up as anger, and that can make moms feel terrible guilt. It’s time to talk openly about it.

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11 Ways to Help Kids with Special Needs or Autism Wear Masks

So many parents are worried that their child with special needs, sensory processing problems or autism will not wear a mask. A school principal shares her secrets.

Parents of kids with special needs are worried about their kids ability to keep masks on at school this year. Kids with sensory processing or autism can really struggle to tolerate something on their face. The good news is that there are ways to help them do it.

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