This Winter, as the light dwindles in the Northern hemisphere and winter holidays approach, we here at the Neufeld Institute – faculty members and facilitators -would once again like to offer the gift of stories to you. This batch of holiday stories, our third annual collection, features stories about the incredible power of intentional togetherness….
As we begin another not-quite-usual holiday season, we wanted to share with you, once again, some seasonal offerings from our homes to yours. In looking at the writings that Neufeld Institute faculty submitted this year, it became clear that what I had in front of me was a collection of togetherness rituals— annual activities that…
With Thanksgiving already over in Canada and the United States, and with Hannukah, Christmas and other celebrations coming in just a few weeks, we are firmly into the holiday season. Like the rest of this year, it promises to be a season unlike any other we have experienced before. During a time of year that…
Health is something we all desire for our children. Physical health is fairly straightforward to assess, as problems usually show up in terms of pain and discomfort. Emotional health, however, is a bit trickier to measure; how do we even know what to look for? Consider this story from Tamara … I had a weeping…
When my now-fourteen-year-old son finished his first week of Kindergarten, I congratulated him on “finishing his first week!” He responded by asking me how many more weeks he had until he was done. This innocent question was one I couldn’t bear to answer: Was he wondering about weeks until he was done with Kindergarten? Until…
I’m on my way up to the mountains with my husband and two young daughters. It’s early. Still a bit dark. That’s how it is this time of year – January, on the other side of the winter solstice, and yet not very far from the shortest, and darkest, day of the year. That’s how…
When we give birth to a child, we also need to cultivate the village of adults that will help us raise them. This community may consist of daycare workers, teachers, coaches, instructors, and extended family. This is critical as children flourish in environments where there is a seamless connection or invisible matrix of adults surrounding…
This is a story about defensive blindness – insights thanks to Butterscotch the alpaca, a garage door, and a haircut. Every morning our alpacas move from the front field to the back. When we first took over the herd, they would follow our lead. We would open the first gate and they would follow us…
Editor’s Note: Mathieu Lyons is on Faculty and also the Director for the Neufeld Institute’s French program. We welcome this piece as his first editorial. This year, my daughter (Emma, four) started her first organized group activity. She requested for many months to attend gymnastics’ class, but my wife and I tried to push back as…
Six years ago, Neufeld faculty member Martine Demers took on a particularly noteworthy challenge: helping to turn around a K-6 elementary school nobody wanted. Over the 20 years that Martine has been the behavioural consultant at her school board in Quebec, she’s certainly run into her share of challenges. How could she not encounter some…