Do you have a love-hate relationship with summer when it comes to your kids? Especially your teens?

If you answered yes, you are not alone! I get this a lot from the parents I work with.

Summer used to be the ice cream truck, spending hours in the pool, and riding our bikes around the neighborhood.

Now it’s feeling torn between work and being there for our kids, logistical nightmares of getting kids to a different camp every week and spending the whole summer feeling guilty that our kids are spending too much time on their screens.

4 Steps to Engage Your Kids as Critical Thinkers

One of the negative effects of all this technology at our fingertips is that we are not asking our kids to really think things through or be critical thinkers. Our kids today are used to getting instant gratification by the ease of finding information online --that use of tech together with our tendency to helicopter parent and plan everything out for our kids--we are essentially imposing our executive functioning instead which doesn't allow them to use their own executive functioning. We as parents may be taking over too much which doesn’t allow our kids to learn how to be critical thinkers.

Critical thinking is the logical planning, evaluating, looking back, and looking forward in the process of making a decision. Parents are automatically doing this instead of letting their kids learn it naturally.

This can end up being a real problem for our kids!

Engaging our kids as critical thinkers is going to help kids across multiple measures. It's going to give them a sense of efficacy, a sense of autonomy, and of self-confidence because they are thinking things through and figuring things out on their own.

Independence, Parent as teacher, ParentingElisabeth StittApril 25, 2022critical thinking, training

5 Ways to Motivate Your Kids

At the start of the new school year, everyone feels motivated—teachers, students and parents. As the year wears on, however, especially students—even more so tweens and teens—lose their motivation. That stresses and concerns parents a lot (In my Middle School Moms FB group unmotivated kids is a topic that comes up fairly often). And it should concern us because how miserable is it to send our kids off to school every day if they are not arriving happy and eager to learn.

So let’s look at how to motivate kids (and how we can keep from demotivating them).

Savoring the Silver Linings of Covid

A lot of people—parents, kids and teens—are anxious about returning to “normal” whatever that is going to look like post-covid. It is my sincere hope that families work to incorporate the silver linings of #parentinginplace into the new school year. That might include family dinners, kids doing chores, family meetings or even new hobbies that keep us grounded and relaxed.

What do you wish your parents had talked to you about?

I hear from a lot of people, “My parents never talked to me about that.” The “that” could be sex, sexuality, rape, relationships, a family history of mental illness, divorce, money, suicide, smoking, drugs, alcohol or addiction, dating history, you name it.

Many adults report wishing their parents had been willing to talk to them about difficult subjects and reflect that maybe if their parents had talked about these issues, life for them might have been easier.

Wondering How do I talk to my kids about sex? About drugs? etc. Here are some general guidelines to consider.

3 Keys to a Harmonious Home

The tagline to my business Joyful Parenting Coaching is Be the Architect of Your Family. With that, I really mean to parent deliberately. Here are three reasons I see structure as supporting a happy, harmonious family life: It makes kids feel secure; it gives opportunities for independence; and it can improve connection among family members.

Parenting and Finding Work/Life Balance During COVID-19

Have you been looking for a break all summer but still haven’t gotten any vacation? Do you resent your kids lying around all day? Here are some reminders how both working parents and stay-at-home parents need to reinforce their work life balance routines.

Are You Your Kid’s Cruise Director?

Now that we are parenting 24/7, it can feel like we are responsible for engaging our kids 24/7.

What if we didn’t? What if we left children to their own devices so they could discover learning on their own? What if by doing so, we were actually helping our kids develop some important independence and autonomy?

Got Stress? Your Kids Do. And It Is Keeping Them From Performing at Optimal Levels

The levels of stress our kids are feeling today is part of the reason levels of anxiety and depression are sky rocketing. But parents can help kids choose healthy stress and assure they have enough downtime to push the reset button, so they can perform optimally.

Should You Pay Your Kids for Good Grades?

Recently in my Middle School Moms Group on Facebook a lively conversation about whether we should pay kids for grades came up. What do you think? Here I share comments of parents in the group and then provide my own views on this issues.

7 Steps for Standing Up to Bullies

The new school year brings new hopes but also new fears about acceptance and fitting in. This is never more true than for middle school students (though the advice here is good for all grades). Parents can be proactive about talking to their kids about how to handle bullying before it even comes up as a problem.

3 Tips for Deciding What Extracurricular Activities to Enroll Your Kids In

One of the reasons that we are seeing anxiety and depression increase at such alarming rates is because children are so over programmed that they do not get the downtime they need. Additionally, getting kids to their additional activities adds stress to the whole family system. Parents feel a lot of pressure to provide their kids enriching opportunities, but that learning is coming at a very high cost.

3 Metaphors for Parenting Teens

Parenting a teen is a new game! The main goal of parenting a teen is to raise an adult. That means your main parenting task between roughly 12 and 18 is to make the shift from being the captain of the ship to being the wise guide. After all, it is simply not possible to drive down the street for you child and to claim that your child is learning to drive. Before he or she can get a license, your child has to get behind the wheel and drive down the street without you in the car. Keep these three metaphors in mind in helping you be the parent of a teen.

How To Help Your Teen Daughter Boost Her Self Confidence

This piece is written by Tyler Jacobson. I like having a dad’s perspective and find his wish for his daughter especially touching because I’m not sure men always articulate in their mind how much they want their daughters to have a voice. Tyler expresses it as, “ I wanted [my daughter] to be confident and comfortable in who she is, in spite of constant outside voices clamoring for her to conform and be someone else.” In this blog Tyler describes his own personal approach with reference to what the experts say about each step.

How to Bring Out the Best in Your Kids

Parents often worry that their kids aren’t motivated to do anything beyond play video games or post on social media. The truth of the matter is is that there is a lot in kids’ daily lives that works to squash personal motivation. Here are some tips parents can use to rekindle their child’s natural eagerness to interact with the world and to take pride in what they do.

How One Dad Rebuilt Trust with His Daughter Even After She Broke the Rules

Every once in a while I publish a guest post—either because the person’s expertise in a given area is much more sophisticated than mine or because they offer a perspective I cannot. In this blog, dad Tyler Jacobson shares how he handled it when his 13 year old daughter broke some big family rules. I especially love the understanding he shows his daughter as well as the problem solving, all while keeping her accountable for her poor choices.

What's Your Plan for That?

Are you concerned that you are a helicopter or lawn mower parent? Do you know that you are one but don’t know what to do differently? One of my favorite techniques for giving our kids some space and encouraging some independent thinking is What’s your plan for that? Instead of mapping out how our child should tackle a homework assignment or chore or even a conflict with a friend, we give the problem to them for consideration. Of course, if they are floundering too much, we step in and help with some course correction (but resist the urge to take over!)

SETTING YOUR KIDS UP FOR SUCCESS WITH HOMEWORK

Once the shine of the new school year wears off, it is time to settle into the routine of school. Here are steps for helping your child figure out how to handle the homework the teacher’s give her. Aid her in problem solving but recognize that if you tell your child how and when to do her homework, chances are it won’t work. At this stage, it is more important to help her develop her own tools for managing her work.

How Play Leads to EQ Which in Turn Leads to Happiness and Success

As there is more and more artificial intelligence (AI) in the world, there is more need than ever for little humans to learn Emotional Intelligence. Play is a tremendous vehicle for one’s own and others’ emotions. Being able to relate emotionally allows kids to function in school more effectively and therefore to be more ready for learning.

Call it backbone, courage, determination or fortitude, it is all about GRIT and how we foster that in our children

When most people think of grit, they think of “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” While that is an example of grit, most grit is of the less dramatic kind—the kind which allows a person to keep trying in the face of obstacles large and small.

Setting out to develop grit in your child sounds a bit draconian, but you do want your child to develop the kind of persistence that will allow her to pursue things even when the pursuing feels hard or not worth it. The best way to do this is to help your child see herself as being in process and to see challenges as something to go around rather than as something to stop you in your tracks.

GET 3 TIPS FOR HOW TO DEVELOP GRIT IN YOUR CHILD.

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