Parents, Teachers, There Is No Right Way Right Now

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Parents, Teachers, There Is No Right Way Right Now

…Many of us, especially parents and teachers are feeling tremendous pressure to make everything as capital-R right as we possibly can for the children in our lives. Why wouldn’t we? We love and respect the children and childhoods that are entrusted to us. It is literally and figuratively our job to give children consistency, security, and ensure they have everything they need to develop with the best chance of success and well-being.

But what do consistency, security, and development even mean in a life-changing crisis?…

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T’was The Month Before Kindergarten: Supporting Children with Big Transitions and Big Behaviors

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T’was The Month Before Kindergarten: Supporting Children with Big Transitions and Big Behaviors

“…Over the next few years I started to see, every year around summertime, pre-kindergarten children just...got like that. The calmest, most predictable children would have moments of pure unadulterated push-back against their care-takers and friends, strange bouts of anxiety before school or during drop-off, or sometimes they’d have accidents again after being toilet-learned for years. I started to call this phenomenon kindergarten feelings…”

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Ask NML: A New Big Sister Bites At School

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Ask NML: A New Big Sister Bites At School

“… ‘normal’ though a behavior may be in theory, the lived reality is that this is your specific child who is away from you all day, for whom you worry and love and wish you could be with, and whom you know as a complex and vibrant human being - and they are hurting someone else’s. That’s hard. Very hard…but it’s not forever.”

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Practice, Not Magic: Toileting Regression

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Practice, Not Magic: Toileting Regression

“…Bathroom accidents are physiological responses to the complex logistical, cognitive, and emotional complexity of learning about and living in the world. Young children are tasked with developing so many parts of themselves simultaneously - it is reasonable for the child (and the caregiver) to get stuck or overwhelmed occasionally...”

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The Child's Job Is To Test

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The Child's Job Is To Test

“…Young children, especially, are scientists tenured at the intersection of nature and nurture. The drive to constantly learn more is natural -- children have a physiological need to experience novelty and integrate new information into their thinking. Supporting that growth is about providing meaningful experiences and useful, developmentally appropriate feedback. The way we as adults respond nurtures either the development, refinement, or inhibition of children’s understandings…”

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Practice, Not Magic: Cleaning Up (Part Two)

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Practice, Not Magic: Cleaning Up (Part Two)

Practice, Not Magic is a series of posts about the practical aspects of living alongside young children.

…To a child under the age of about 6, stopping mid-game really can feel like it’s the end of that  play experience forever. Our goal as the adult, beyond just getting the space cleaned up and facilitating a transition, is to support the child to move from a mental place of scarcity (“I must do this now because I will never have what I want again”) to one of trust (“I know my ideas and my things are safe in my family/classroom and will be available again”)…

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There is No Magic Lecture

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There is No Magic Lecture

“…no matter what happens or how beautifully you’ve prepared a speech about kindness, the power of literacy, or why germs make us sick sopleasestopsuckingyourfingers, there is no one perfect thing you can say that will change someone’s behavior once and for all. This understanding can free us up to really see children for who they are, developmentally and as individuals…”

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