by Susie Windle | May 9, 2012 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills
Disciplining your son or daughter can actually be an opportunity for enhancing your connection with your child. Discipline is something you and your child can do together. Punishment, on the other hand, is something adults do to children. Punishment creates...
by Susie Windle | Sep 14, 2011 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills
Children are much more likely to follow through on your expectations when your requests are stated clearly. Actually, we all are more likely to follow through on expectations that are clearly stated. Here are some thoughts about being clear: Watch your timing. Most of...
by Susie Windle | Aug 31, 2011 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions, Your Child's Brain
When parents have conversations with their children, it is important for them to reflect on what may be going on in the minds of those involved. Conversations that include attention to mental processes respect each person’s subjective reality. If mental processes are...
by Susie Windle | Jul 20, 2011 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions
When the excitement and novelty of having a new brother or sister wears off, the older child may begin to feel painful emotions. The older child can feel left out, second best, and invisible. These painful feelings are very real—real for the child on an emotional...
by Susie Windle | Jun 15, 2011 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
An attitude, or our state of mind in the moment, is more transient than a belief. Yet this temporary state of mind does affect how we perceive, interpret, and respond in any given situation. Our attitude in the moment shapes how we feel about someone or something, and...
by Susie Windle | May 11, 2011 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions, Your Child's Brain
As parents, we often miss making a connection with our children by responding to them only from our own point of view. Doing so leaves children feeling denied and all alone. One of the keys to connecting with children is to really listen to them and try to understand...
by Susie Windle | May 12, 2010 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
Beliefs are our ideas about how the world works, and beliefs are at the center of how we get to know ourselves and others. What we believe is cultivated by repeated experiences, which become the basis of generalizations in our minds—generalizations about how the world...
by Susie Windle | Sep 9, 2009 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions
Children often communicate through behaviors, so parents, to be effective, need to look underneath a child’s behavior before responding with disciplinary action. What need does your child have that is not being met? What feeling does your child have that he or she...
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...
