Author: Shelly

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“Back Off!” Empowering Young People to Claim Their Personal Space

Most of the stuff I write about is focused on peace, love, and compassion, but there’s a point where the best defense really is a good offense. Several weeks ago my daughter was at the library and a bigger kid ran over to her and pushed her down. His mother apologized profusely, Julia was dazed and confused, and I was left wondering, “How could I have prevented this?”

My daughter is often quiet and reserved, especially when she’s in a large group or if she’s feeling overwhelmed. And the library is usually teeming with both kids and adults when we go there for story time. So I thought about how I could empower her to stand up for herself in the face of a larger child intent on pushing, hitting, or biting her. read more

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Our new favorite geography game

Here’s a video of my daughter playing the new geography game  we invented:

A few months ago I found this National Geographic world map and decided to glue it to a foam board to see if my daughter was interested in learning the continents.

Then, on our recent airplane trips we brought a small ball/globe and she started to show a real interest in geography, learning the names and locations of several countries.

When we got home we started to play a new game with the world map. We put her toy animals on their countries of origin. She loves it! read more

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Taking a Tantrum as a Compliment?

OK, I know it sounds strange, but when my daughter has a meltdown I really do take it as a compliment. Her tears and upset are so rare, partly because she’s just an easy-going person and partly because she trusts all her caretakers to listen to her and work to help her meet her needs. But there are times when she’s just too tired, or too hungry to stave off the tears and then she cries, throws herself down, throws whatever is within her reach, and pushes large objects around.

After we returned from a recent trip to visit my family, Julia was just a bit unglued and prone to crying and tantrums for a couple of days while she readjusted to being home. At first I was annoyed. I kept thinking, “Why is she acting like this? Why can’t she just listen? What can I do to get her to stop?” But every time I approached her with that attitude, the tantrums just increased in severity. read more

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Testing the waters: How setting boundaries builds trust

I was on a family vacation to Hawaii last week (Happy Mother’s Day to me!) and we had a wonderful time. About half way through our trip we were in the kiddie pool and J was feeling hesitant at first. She wasn’t so sure that the water was such a fun place to be until two young boys started splashing, playing and having a great time. And then she was convinced. The boys’ parents were in the adjacent pool with a young baby and they kept calling out to the boys to settle down, stop splashing, and be nice. But I didn’t see anything at all wrong with the way the boys were behaving. They were just having fun and playing! read more

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My Screen-Free Airplane Adventure (with my 21 month old Daughter)

I took my very first solo airplane ride with my daughter last week and at first I was not sure how it would go. As I began to pack, I realized that I was really nervous about being stuck on an airplane alone with a toddler and for a couple of days I considered nixing my previous commitment to screen free living for my little one. I thought it might be easier to manage the trip if I brought along my husband’s iPad and chocked it full of children’s books and fun drawing apps.

But after some consideration, I decided that I just didn’t feel good about introducing my daughter to the iPad because I was scared she wouldn’t be able to entertain herself on the airplane. Instead, I came up with a solid plan to entertain and engage her with books, rhymes, toys, finger puppets, a small doll, crayons, and stickers. And it worked! read more

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