Empathy — the “vitamin” for emotionally healthy families

Would you like a world in which everyone only looks out for themselves or one in which people genuinely care about one another? How about in your family? Would you prefer to have a spouse that believes only his experience is correct or one who treats your perspective...

Prioritizing your own self-care

I started this series with Self-care for Parents, a post that defined parental self-care and suggested ideas for assessing how attentive you are to caring for your needs. In the second post, What difference does parental self-care make?, I wrote about how taking...

What difference does parental self-care make?

“There’s this perception that if you worry a lot and if you look really busy and stressed out then you’ll be more successful.” ~Nancy Mayer I’m not sure how parents make it through that first year with a newborn. Even in homes where...

Self-care for parents

For many of us, our children occupy our first thoughts upon waking and our last ruminations or prayers as we fall asleep. We may choose paying work that allows us access to resources that we deeply want to give them. We may choose to have our family be our work and...

Better parenting starts with better beliefs

Parents (and non-parents alike) have plenty of opinions on what makes “better” children and “better” parents. Nursing. Attachment parenting. Continuum Concept principles. Bed-sharing. Early literacy. Limited media. Time outdoors. Unschooling....