The early morning hours find our king-sized bed full of children. Sometimes they are snoozing. Sometimes I awake to the chatter of tiny voices. Quite often I am reminded of the elementary school song, “Ten bears in the bed, and the little one said…roll over…I’m crowded.”
Yes, it is crowded, but I wouldn’t [...]
“Just a minute.”
How many times a day do I put my children off? I’ve become more aware lately as I push and drag myself into parenting consciousness.
I adore my children. I want to know all about them. As I saw them acting out my failings on me, I realized that love [...]
My friend has multiple chemical sensitivities. Neither her ex-husband nor her parents seem able to grasp how the environments they create effect her. When someone tells her she is imagining health issues, I see her give up a little every time.
My friend blogs about environmental impact. Despite his ability to grasp environmental [...]
Do you leave space for your child to explore and develop?
Does your child have the time to ask her or himself, “What do I think?” or “Who am I?”
As I’ve been thinking about parenting styles recently, specifically nonviolent communication and positive discipline, I find it very important to be conscious enough to [...]
Parenting by Nature just added a new department to our store, The Natural Library. Nature Mom fell in love with this series of books after receiving ‘I Love Dirt’ as a gift.
In ‘I Love Dirt’ there is a nature activity for each week (52 in total) that cover all four seasons. At the end [...]
We all want to guide our children to become confident, independent people capable of self-discipline. It isn’t necessarily obvious for a parent to figure out how to get them there, though. As a parenting model, Positive Discipline seeks to give parents tools to build independence and confidence in their children, avoiding the fear [...]
If your children are looking forward to making Valentine’s Day cards, help them celebrate by sharing the coming spring. Children can easily make plantable paper, embedded with seeds.
This is a simple craft project that could even be a step into more serious and creative papermaking.
Materials
Recyclable paper - Make it porous paper like a [...]
Mmm. Chocolate. Valentine’s Day approaches, and there are many opportunities to indulge in a little piece of delight as it melts at your body temperature spreading across your tongue. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate nibs, chocolate cake. I adore chocolate.
Once your body chemistry returns to its pre-cocoa levels, or [...]
I aspire to meet my children’s needs through clear, honest communication. I first met attachment parenting while pregnant with my first child, and I first met nonviolent communication (NVC) while pregnant with my second.
“NVC shares two key premises with attachment parenting: Human actions are motivated by attempts to meet needs, and trusting relationships [...]
Groundhog Day is one of my favorite movies—one of those I can watch over and over. Every time, it reminds me of such a great lesson: we have to live consciously and deliberately to get life right.
Phil Connor, the mean-spirited weatherman, wakes up and lives the same day every day for what [...]