Author: Shelly

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How to Teach Toddlers to Share

This week at our Montessori inspired home based preschool something truly magical happened. Two year olds began sharing easily and generously without being forced, coerced, bribed, or scolded. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

A couple of weeks ago there were a lot of tears as the children grabbed toys from one another, wrenched them out of each other’s grasp, hoarded and hid the coveted toys, and when they were recovered by the other party, a whole new set of tears ensued.

I enjoyed this humorous description I recently read online about how toddlers feel about possessions. This has circulated the internet so I’m not sure who originally wrote it, but here you go: read more

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Why Are Americans So Freaked Out By Nudity?

I was on Facebook yesterday and I saw this article about a man who is being charged with child pornography because he had videos of his naked children on his phone. He didn’t send them to anyone. From what I read, the content sounded harmless. And the only reason the videos were discovered was because his phone broke and the technician was transferring his photos and videos to his new phone.

I think we’ve taking “protecting children” a bit too far in this case. Yes, sexual abuse of children is a real problem and deserves a swift response. But since when is taking a video of your children dancing naked, considered pornography? read more

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Forced Apologies Undermine Conflict Resolution Skills

Remember what it was like when you got into a squabble with your siblings or friends and at the end there was the inevitable, “Say you’re sorry” and you half-heartedly responded, “I’m sorry” and then the two of you were supposed to “make up” and play together again as if nothing had happened?

I don’t know about you, but I felt angry and frustrated when this happened to me as a child. And I never really meant it, even when I said it. And the other kid knew that I didn’t mean it. They didn’t mean it either. And it took a while before we were able to actually let it go and be true friends again. read more

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Circumcision is Genital Mutilation

OK, now that I’m sure I’ve got your attention, I can’t believe I never realized this before. When we think of genital mutilation, most people think of the African practice of removing a young girl’s external genitalia purportedly to reduce libido.

International organizations have joined together to help end the horrific practice of female genital mutilation. But there is a socially accepted form of genital mutilation that happens to newborn baby boys every day here in America and elsewhere. It’s called circumcision. read more

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I put myself into hypnosis to deal with the pain of breastfeeding

Wow, breastfeeding. It’s one of those things I always knew I wanted to do, but until I experienced it myself, I had absolutely NO IDEA how challenging it could be. I thought, “We’re all built for this, so it will just automatically happen and it will be easy.” Unfortunately, that was not the case for me.

Breastfeeding did happen, but it certainly wasn’t easy. For the first two weeks, my milk didn’t come in so I pumped like crazy and gave my daughter syringes filled with milk donated to us by a neighbor. If you’ve ever had to use the syringe method to supplement your breastfeeding then you know that you need about six hands to be able to accomplish it, especially when both mother and baby are new at breastfeeding. But we got through that hurdle and my daughter started gaining weight. Hooray! read more

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