by Susie Windle | Jan 7, 2009 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions, Your Child's Brain
Social experience plays a part in the development of emotional understanding. In fact, preschoolers whose parents explicitly teach them about diverse emotions and frequently acknowledge their children’s emotional reactions calmly and with care are better able to judge...
by Susie Windle | Dec 31, 2008 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills
As Lawrence J. Cohen says, there are a lot of great reasons to choose a “meeting on the couch” over a “time out.”* Whenever a problem of any kind arises, a meeting on the couch will allow parent and child to reconnect. Having “a problem” means that somewhere a...
by Susie Windle | Dec 17, 2008 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions, Your Child's Brain
Distinguishing between a tantrum for control and a distress tantrum is important so that you can respond in a way that will be most helpful to the development of your child. The two tantrum types require two different reactions in order to nurture essential brain...
by Susie Windle | Dec 10, 2008 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
Temper tantrums for control, referred to as “Little Nero tantrums” by educator and author Margot Sunderland, are very different from distress tantrums. During a distress tantrum, a child’s brain and body are flooded with stress chemicals, and the child experiences and...
by Susie Windle | Nov 26, 2008 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions, Your Child's Brain
Temper tantrums are the expression of intense emotional storms. Because they are so intense, temper tantrums can be frightening to the child experiencing the storm and overwhelming for a parent. To avoid the whole situation turning into a matter of who “wins,” it is...
by Susie Windle | Oct 21, 2008 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills
Although generalizations of any sort must be carefully examined, it is important to try to understand factors that contribute to observable gender differences that may have real consequences. Let’s take hearing, for example. Research suggests that baby girls hear...
by Susie Windle | Sep 30, 2008 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
Reading is good for kids, and their stage of cognitive development will determine the types of books that will be most engaging for them. If you want to choose books that will nurture your child’s brain, having an awareness of the following early stages of reading...
by Susie Windle | Sep 23, 2008 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills
Last week, Parenting Playbook offered a few suggestions about how parents can help children resolve the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that are commonly associated with the catchphrase “sibling rivalry.” This week, Parenting Playbook will describe some of the...
by Susie Windle | Sep 9, 2008 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Power of Play, Your Child's Brain
Harold Gardner put forth Multiple Intelligence Theory (MI) in his book Frames of Mind in 1983. Gardner’s theory redefined aspects of human intelligence, and one of the strengths of Gardner’s work was that he could accurately pinpoint parts of the brain that correlated...
by Susie Windle | Aug 13, 2008 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions
Everyone has all sorts of emotions. We all can feel intense joy and contentment or we can feel hurt, afraid, frustrated, sad, angry, and anxious to name a few. If we are lucky, we have found a way to express our feelings freely, safely, and constructively. If feelings...
