Since this is our first newsletter of the season and thus my first greeting to our newsletter readers, I think a New Year’s greeting is still appropriate. At least indulge me in this, because I want to use this traditional greeting as a launching place for some reflection and as a segue to our upcoming…
It was clear right from day one that there was something different about my son. He didn’t have that dreamy, half-conscious look of most newborns. He was unusually alert and awake with intense eye contact. The nurses on the maternity ward were calling him “the little professor“ or “Einstein”. Others said, “he’s an old soul”….
I used to think the mother in me was born when I had my first child. My first thought waking up after her birth was, “I’m a mother now.” My next thought was, “Where is my baby?!” When we assume responsibility for raising a child, the ignition of strong emotions such as alarm, joy, anticipation, and…
One of the most challenging and crucial questions of our time is why some bounce back from adversity, seemingly unscathed, while others fall apart and become emotionally distraught and dysfunctional. Once upon a time and not too long ago, the dominant idea regarding stress was that it was what happened to us that told the…
We are proud to share with you Dr. Deborah MacNamara’s address to the United Nations in New York for the Global Day of Parents, which she presented in June 2016. The digital age has reshaped the landscape in which we are raising our children. While our new tools and technologies allow us to do things…
Summer is here! Summer means trees to climb, beaches to explore, music to dance to … Summer means some space from school and work, and space from the have to’s in our life. We all need space – children and adults alike. Space to breathe. Space to express what is in us. Space to explore…
In the first part of this editorial on playful approaches to discipline, I talked about how we have become stuck in our misplaced belief that if we could control the outcomes of our children’s problem behaviour, discipline issues would be resolved. That is, we think if we could only get practical answers to our questions…
In this two-part editorial on discipline, Dr. Gordon Neufeld discusses the root causes of problem behaviour and their surprisingly playful solutions. Play has been on my mind lately. Perhaps it is the influence of three young grandsons. Perhaps it is because I want to stay young, and playfulness definitely helps with that. Perhaps it…
Halloween, among all our traditions, has a visceral feel of tapping into something very deep in our psyche. I am going to talk about fear. There comes a day when a young child suddenly realizes that bad things can happen to those he or she is attached to. Something might have already happened such as…
“All work and no play make Jack a very dull boy” What is the role of play in children’s lives and why would we want to make room for it? Play is often seen as free time that is spent without care and work. They formed some of my happiest memories as a child and…