I started Kindergarten two months after turning five, and eight months after my father died. My teacher was Miss Neronovich. She smelled wonderful. She was young and pretty with a tall golden beehive hair-do, short bright-coloured skirts, and the most inviting smile and warm eyes I could imagine. I fell in love with her on…
My daughter was having a hard day. As the youngest of three she was trying to keep up with her older siblings and the neighbour kids – attempting hold her own in a series of rousing outdoor games. It didn’t go well. Nobody was being mean to her, or excluding her, or teasing her, but…
Some time ago friends of ours were hosting a cultural exchange program participant in their home. “Esther” was a preschool teacher from Zaire working in a public daycare here in Winnipeg for the year she was in Canada. One day over dinner I asked her which cultural differences were most striking for her in adjusting…
Dr. Neufeld frequently compares our need for food with our need for relationship; the more I think about this the more it makes sense. It is easy for us to understand the importance of food for the healthy development of our children; we know they need sleep and safe shelter in order to grow. It…
When my eldest child was born the whole world shrunk down to the size of her face, the feel of her skin, the sound of her cries. The days grew long, I was bleary eyed with exhaustion, and all my energy went into the here and now, into meeting all the moment-to-moment needs of a…