by Cecilia Hilkey | parenting
I hate cleaning up. However, I do believe cleaning up is a valuable skill for kids to learn—not to perfect, but just participate in … at least a little bit. How do you get kids to clean up? Normal people would offer ice cream or time outs. But if you don’t want to use...read more
by Cecilia Hilkey | parenting
Sometimes young children do things that we’ve forgotten how to do–like to play. When we look at what kids do, and really take on their perspective, the courage of children is often staggering. Their wisdom can bring me to tears. And their delight at life, trust...read more
by Cecilia Hilkey | parenting
Usually I don’t get this personal in our blog posts but today if you will indulge me…. Jason and I, of course, are classroom teachers and the end of the year for us is crazy busy. We worked most of our waking hours at school last week. Then hauled our kids to school...read more
by Cecilia Hilkey | parenting
A couple of weeks ago we talked about what to do, in addition to empathy, to create calm and peace in your family, when yelling or fighting is happening, and how to create your own personalized “calming plan”. Jason and I made a downloadable list of all of the things...read more
by Cecilia Hilkey | parenting
Ok, I know that the following formula doesn’t follow the rules of mathematics. (This could really bother Jason who actually has a degree in Math.) However, isn’t the following formula an illustration of what happens in families? Kids upset + parent upset = recipe for...read more
by Cecilia Hilkey | parenting
First, let me say you made our week last week. We got so many comments and Facebook shares about our “Worst. Morning. Ever.” blog post that our hearts were filled up with love and appreciation for you (even Jason, who lost the debate). Thank you for making that happen...read more
