i am busy compiling a list of 40 Tips for Parents which will hopefully encourage, inspire, challenge and give some new and fresh ideas or perspective on how you can parent well. Here are the first five in the series: 40 Tips for Parents: Tip #1 Love your children. Let them know you love them by telling them. Often. Not you love them IF or you love them WHEN - never let it seem [...]
This one is for the parents i am not a parent. Well, not biologically. Or even adoptionally. But i have been a child. And a teenager. i had friends who were children and teenagers. i have been a leader on and directed a very large number of holiday clubs and camps where children and teenagers were the main participants. i studied as a primary school teacher and did about a year's worth of practical [...]
Is it okay for us to hit our kids? Is the question a lot of parents are asking, especially in light of the new change to the law in South Africa. i was going to do next week's Facebook Live video on it, but the conversations were happening thick and fast and so i decided to actually do one today, which is worth watching and reading the accompanying comments to. Teacher Tom has some helpful [...]
i am so grateful to my friend Geraldine Walsh, who recently joined the @AFrikkinHashtag Hashtagging team on Twittter for sharing such a vulnerable story about her time as a new mom as well as letting me link this to her post on post-natal depression. Make sure that you sign up to follow her blog after reading this: Today is B’s birthday. Instead of it being a lovely family day with nice surprises for [...]
When we moved to South Africa seven years ago, being an American family and transplanting ourselves into the middle of a new country, new culture, and living in a township community, we knew there would be many challenges ahead. There is so much we have learned while living in South Africa, and our lives and hearts have grown in so many ways on the journey. We never could have imagined that our greatest challenge in [...]
So I offered to write something for Brett about parenting a child with Aspergers, and I immediately went blank. What do I know? Sure, Tim, my son is nearly 16, and he has Aspergers. But what can I tell you that might be helpful? I dithered, wrote things, deleted them. Tried again. And so finally I decided, let me write up the questions I most commonly get asked, and the answers I try to give. [...]
I’m. So. Tired. And I’m scared. Scared to admit how hard I find it. Scared to let people in to see my struggle. Scared of the judgment I expect to see. Because I knew motherhood would be hard. But I never expected it to be like this. It’s like boot camp. You get dumped in the deep end and you learn to swim through it, while somehow in the process you earn entry into the [...]
Parenting is the hardest thing I have ever done. That’s stating the obvious, right? I mean, one can’t open Facebook without finding a meme that involves children and the need for copious amounts of wine (or maybe that’s a reflection on how mommified my Facebook feed has become?) I don’t think there is a parent out there who doesn’t feel tired (emotionally, physically, mentally) MOST of the time. Steve and I have been married for [...]
Last week i invited a number of people who love children and know a decent amount them [despite not being parents themselves] to share some thoughts/advice/suggestions and encouragement to parents of young children. You can catch both parts of that over here. A number of parentals wrote some thoughts on the "I'm going to ask you for thoughts" post and so i grabbed those. You don't have to agree with all of them but just [...]
So yesterday's post looking at Parenting Ideas from non-parents generated a lot of healthy conversation. i had a few more people share some more ideas and while me sharing them is not an endorsement to all of the ideas [this is honestly meant to be some input to reflect on, consider, see if there is any good worth holding on to] there are some things here that i really think are helpful. And so parentals, [...]
