Healthy Aggression

 

• Understanding Agression and Connecting

When a parent’s own distress distorts their ability to receive and contain their young child’s healthy aggression, a downward spiral of dysregulation for both parent and child may occur.

 

• Parenting Styles

The differences among authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting are important. Authoritarian parenting is linked to difficulty with emotional regulation in children. Authoritative parenting, in contrast, is associated with children having a greater capacity for emotional regulation, flexible thinking, and social competence. 

 

• Teaching Kindness

There is a Quaker saying: “Attitudes are caught, not taught.” Children want to be like the important adults in their lives. They’re watching and listening. Make your vote a teaching moment.

Encourage Pretend Play

• Playful Learning
Fred Rogers said “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play IS serious learning. At various times, play is a way to cope with life and to prepare for adulthood. Playing is a way to solve problems and to express feelings. In fact, play is the real work of childhood.”

Coronavirus and Toddlers

• Talking to Toddlers About Corona
It's important to confine your answer to the toddler's questions––and not your fears. Preschoolers live in the here-and-now and coronavirus is a momentary inconvenience (to them). Don't share adult worries by over-answering.

Keep Kids Busy (and Learning) in Quarantine

• Facilitate Active, Engaged Learning
It may be tempting to hand over an iPhone or iPad or but the younger the child, the worse this is for their language and cognitive development.

Location Trackers for Kids

• Digital Tethers Harm Children
Assuaging parental fears poses risk to a child's social and emotional development–– and it isn’t just about threats to autonomy; it’s also about the anxiety it can instill.

Making Mistakes

• Mistakes Are Opportunities
Just ask Fred Rogers, here with pianist Andre Watts. With children, comment on the process, not the product. Help children refuel so they can try again. Let children see that adults make mistakes, too. For more information, sign up for more information through the Fred Rogers Center. 

Early Intervention for Preschoolers

• Early Intervention Can Change a Life
Early Intervention is a free, national program to help children under age 3 who have developmental delays and disabilities.

Dressing Up in Costume

• The Meaning of Costumes and Masks
Much of children’s pretending and play comes out of their inner needs and feelings– and helps them work on their fears and master them. Fred Roger's said that play allows children to work on what’s close to their hearts, but from a safe distance.

Spanking

• Resolving Differences About Spanking
Teaching your children how to self-regulate requires tools and strategies for effective discipline. The word discipline, in fact, is derived from the Latin word discere, which means “to learn.”

Strengthening Social Skills

• What Is Social Competence?

It's about being able to deal with conflicts, frustration, jealousy and disappointment and involves skills like problem- solving, self-control, self-regulation, communication, and seeing things from another perspective. It's the foundation of academic success.

If You Ever Hurt My Daughter

• I Swear I Will
Let her navigate her own emotional growth.

ADHD for Toddlers

• Quick Fix is to Medicate
"In acting out and being hard to control, they’re signaling the chaos in their environment" The American Academy of Pediatrics standard practice guidelines for A.D.H.D. do not even address the diagnosis in children 3 and younger. Preschoolers are prescribed only after formal training for parents and teachers to improve the child’s environment were unsuccessful. The safety and effectiveness have barely been explored.

All About Mini-Me

• Mini-Me, Social Media, and Identity
What could be wrong (or right) with telling one’s child that he or she is small, cute and resembles you?

Smartphone Generation Statistics

• What Smartphones Are Doing To A Generation
iGen: a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media.

Boredom for Kids

I'm Bored
It’s especially important that kids get bored — and be allowed to stay bored — when they’re young.The ability to handle boredom is correlated with the ability to focus, self-discipline, resourcefulness.

Corporal Punishment is Harmful

• AAP Says No to Spanking
“One of the most important relationships we all have is the relationship between ourselves and our parents, and it makes sense to eliminate or limit fear and violence in that loving relationship.”

Why Child-Parent Separation Matters

• Child-Parent Separation as Trauma
When separations are beyond a young child’s ability to manage, the capacity to recover is compromised. Time is of the essence. With too much time, “stress” is transformed into “trauma.”

Inattentional Blindness through Tech

• Head Down Interactions
More and more is we’re not talking to our children––we put them in front of the tech when they’re young and parents are absorbed in their own tech.