Time for a Parenting Check-In

Thanks to all that we're juggling -- work, meals, household chores, home improvements, upcoming trips, kid activities, playdate, etc. to infinity -- sometimes you just lose sight of your parenting goals and strategies. Am I right? Plus, you constantly have to adjust rules as they grow up. It's a lot.

For example, my focus on family meals started strong but has really dropped off lately. As has controlling the screen time the girls are getting during the day. (It's winter, we're all sick of being inside. Sure, watch another Nick Jr. show.)

So, a few weekends ago it seemed the right time to pull out my parenting books and remind myself of my own little parenting curriculum by realigning my goals and rules with the some of the advice I get from my current two go-to parenting books. The books in my repertoire have changed over the years, I once had tantrum books and "how to say no" to two-year-olds. Now, I'm currently hanging on to these two:

My Two Current Parenting Handbooks

Bebe Day by Day by Pamela Druckerman is basically Bringing Up Bebe with less memoir and more straight-up "do this!" advice. You can't tell from this picture, but there are purple tags highlighting favorite tips on how to get your kids to be more adventurous eaters and show better manners. The French mamas and I agree on raising independent kids, so I'm on-board with a lot of their standards -- as impossible as I sometimes find them to push.

The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson is helpful for my drama queen. Emotions hit these little girls like tidal waves and events like not being the "first to shower" turn into end-of-the-world disasters. It's not about stopping these overreactions, but helping them deal with their Big Feelings. Because life is full of Big Feeling events they'll need to manage with and without me. And this book gives valuable advice on how to talk to kids in the midst of an Oscar-worthy breakdown.

I'm sure this library will change again in a few years as they continue to be more independent and need more guidance than straight-up parenting. For now, these will do. What do you read?



Related posts:
More of my Parenting stories and posts

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Behold! Everard Blue!

Image
Here's the After picture of our master bedroom now that the walls are a dark and moody blue. Maybe the best part is I was at work while the painters were here, so I walked in and found -- as if by magic -- the room no longer minty green but a bold blue. That's pretty awesome. They also painted the trim an eye-popping white, which I just love against this blue. And the angle is a dark beige-y, tan color that I hope goes with the headboard. I spent the evening cleaning and re-hanging the drapes, and moving the furniture back into position. It will be a while before I dare hang anything in here. I'm too in love with the walls to put too many holes in them right now. So, just in case I'm looking for this information later: The walls are "Everard Blue" by Benjamin Moore . And the tray is "Curly Willow" by Behr . Now, does that furniture look too dark against the walls or is it just me? And wouldn't a lighter wood or white look fabulous agains
Keep reading »

Family Calendar Improvement

Image
 Made a quick improvement at the start of the school year that I'm pretty excited about.  And yes, I'm probably the only one excited about it, but here goes ...  Here's our "command central" in our kitchen. This is a good landing spot, and a central place to all look at the family calendar ... it's that huge wipe board in the middle of the photo. All our activities are supposed to be written on here and our electronic family calendar on Google.  (Brief aside: my family is the WORST at writing their plans down in either calendar and Dave still doesn't share his events on our Google Shared Family Calendar consistently, which makes me nuts. And they all ask me "what are we doing today?" instead of looking at the calendar, usually directly behind me. But, that's another post.) I went to so much trouble putting this little area together and that huge calendar with wobbly writing was really killing the sophisticated look of that space. PLUS, we don
Keep reading »

Basement Shiplap Project

Image
The guys left me all the unused shiplap from the bathroom and I've been trying to think about where to use it. I had so many ideas but not a lot of shiplap, so I eventually settled on this corner of our basement. It's where the exercise mats and treadmill live, right behind the sofa. And also where the Marvel-themed bathroom with shiplap is located. So it made sense. It took much of a rainy Sunday to cut and nail up the new boards ...    I even had enough to do on the "backsplash" of our little kitchenette in the basement I've been slowly building out.  Next up will be to patch all the nail holes and calk around the edges for a clean look. And then the best part ... picking out paint color. Since this is a "free" project, I'm hoping I can find a color in my paint cabinet.  I'll keep you posted. 
Keep reading »