by Susie Windle | Dec 14, 2016 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Importance of Emotions
Children need constructive ways to deal with the range of emotions they experience. To develop constructive responses to emotions, children need to learn how to calm down. We all think more clearly when we are calm. When children especially are experiencing upsetting,...
by Susie Windle | Sep 7, 2016 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, The Power of Play, Your Child's Brain
Children develop their ability to reason at different chronological ages. Some children arrive at the age of reason when they turn four while others are seven or eight years old before they have reasoning powers. It makes sense then to instruct children accordingly....
by Susie Windle | Aug 24, 2016 | Parenting Playbook, The Power of Play
When kids play, they are not just having fun. Play allows kids to try out new ways of being, behaving, thinking, and feeling. When kids play, they are allowed to break out of established patterns and experiment with being a new self with new ways of interacting with...
by Susie Windle | Mar 23, 2016 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills
Thoughts are constantly running through our minds—often unexamined. We need to take a look at our thoughts and reflect on them. If we don’t, we run the risk of creating a reality that colors the ideas and opinions we form about ourselves and others. If we let our...
by Susie Windle | Feb 17, 2016 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
Self-talk is powerful because having conversations with ourselves—even silently—links thought, language, and action. Self-talk is really like a delay switch to action allowing us to think things through. Children are great teachers for showing us how language can...
by Susie Windle | Apr 8, 2015 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Parents: Practice Self Care, The Importance of Emotions, Your Child's Brain
Thinking clearly is a lot easier if we have a way to keep our emotions in check. Some researchers refer to this as “separation of affect.” This ability to detach from emotions caused by frustration is a skill that allows people to think through solutions to problems...
by Susie Windle | Feb 25, 2015 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
Words are powerful. Words can build up or break down your child’s confidence, shape her identity, and affect her emotions. And words are never just words. Words are voiced with tone and volume. When you speak to your child, the tone and volume of your voice are...
by Susie Windle | Jan 7, 2015 | Parenting Playbook, Your Child's Brain
Children are often given opportunities to learn and develop beliefs about how to fairly divide material goods. Concerns can surface and debates grow loud over what size allowance siblings of different ages should receive and who gets to play longer with their friends...
by Susie Windle | Dec 24, 2014 | Discipline and Trying Times, Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
Nearly every parent has watched a child refuse to share his or her toy. The child who is not sharing may even know that the fair and acceptable thing to do would be to share, but for some reason, he or she just can’t seem to resist grabbing the toy and holding on for...
by Susie Windle | Jun 4, 2014 | Parenting Playbook, Parenting Skills, Your Child's Brain
When you stretch out conversations with your toddler, you give your child an opportunity to connect his or her inner thoughts with the outside world. It’s really simple to stretch out the chatter when you take time to talk about everything under the sun. Conversation...
