Behavior & Environment
Positive parenting can be difficult to implement, but whether you’re just getting starting or you’re already a pro, here’s a quick and easy tactic you can try today: Ask questions! It’s one of the best tools you have in your caregiver toolkit. Let’s take a look at the Positive Discipline tool, “Asking vs. Telling”. Telling: […]
How do the kids you care for respond to a child who is displaying a challenging behavior or has made a mistake? Do they make fun of them, ignore them, ostracize them, or support them? Teaching kids to be supportive of siblings, friends, classmates, playmates, and that random kid on the playground is a gift […]
Often when faced with a child’s challenging behavior we think, “How can I help them change that behavior?” In many situations, the question we should be asking is, “How can I change the environment to support this child and their challenges?” When kids are learning a new skill, including emotion and behavior management, they need […]
We often neglect the importance of environment and routines for our kids, even school aged ones. If you’ve been struggling to get your kids to do their homework timely, follow these tips to make homework time more effective and less stressful: 1. Make sure their basic needs are met before you start. Before kids can […]
It’s our job as caregivers to teach our kids the skills they need to navigate all the different situations life presents. We do this in lots of ways, one of the most important and simplest is talking to them. Not all conversations are impactful, many are just part of the daily business of being together. […]
Routines are the framework for smooth running days when working with kids. Routines give kids the consistency they need to feel safe, navigate transitions, and manage their emotions and behaviors. To help kids understand the daily routines you can use routine charts. Routine charts are helpful tools that outline what tasks you do and in […]
All kids have social and emotional needs that we need to meet throughout the day. However, some kids have a very high and seemingly never-ending need for attention, physical touch and conversation from their caregiver. These are the ones who run through every bad behavior they know to keep your attention on them, the ones […]
Great caregivers are always learning. Learning about new research, new theory, new ways of putting ideas into action, new strategies to deal with common and uncommon challenges, new hacks that just make life with kids easier. Great caregivers also know how to unlearn things. One of the toughest things to unlearn is the negative language […]
Many of us are aware of how important it is to acknowledge our kids’ feelings, especially the negative ones. We do it every day. However, how often do we share our negative feelings, our process for moving through them, and our behavior choices around them? It’s easy for us to share our feelings when we’re […]
One of the hardest skills for kids (and adults) to learn is how to manage their big emotions. When kids are in situations where their anger, impatience, fear, sadness, guilt or even happiness is sparked, they often are overwhelmed by those feelings and as a result, have a hard time navigating the situation in an […]
We’ve all heard the saying, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” That’s true for many of the instructions we give kids throughout the day. Often, we don’t realize how we’re phrasing things. We give lots of commands focused on what we don’t want – “Stop yelling,” “Don’t run in the house,” […]
