Forum

If you can stay awake, share your experiences of life with a newborn.

Talk about how to encourage sharing, cooperation, communication in your 2 and 3 year old children while maintaining your patience in the midst of it. 

Connect with other parents with children who have special needs and share your questions and expereinces. 

Speak from your experience about what really matters during these early years.

What techniques do you use to encourage positive sibling relationships between your children?

Dads play a unique role in their childrens lives.  What are your favortie ways to connect with your children?

Want to connect with a unique niche of other parents?  We can do that.  Let us know what additional conversations you'd like to have and we'd be happy to start them.

Stuart Brown, founder of the Natinal Instituite for Play and a medical doctor as well as a psychaitrist says, " Either through their parents or through their own initiative, many successful people have maintained a common thread between early natural play tendencies and what they do in their adult lives."  Parents can introduce play activities that lay the foundation for future learning as they bond with their children.

From: Susan

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Conflict resolution among siblings

We've started a conflict resolution technique we call the 'Solution Book.'  When there is a disagreement all parties go to a bench in the hallway and I get solutin book.  I record each side's story in a small notebook and then we brainstorm all possible solutions.  Nothing is discounted as 'not plausible.'  We tehn narrow down the possible solutions until we can arrive at oone that works for all involved (including me!) It's a longer process but I believe thatby including my children in coming up with a solution I am equipping them to eventually go through this process on their own (as they will need to do throughout life!).

From: Emily

Time Together

Spending time engaging with your young child is one of the most important things you can do.  Today there are numerous TV programs, computer games, and places that you can take your child to develop art, gymnastic, and other skills... what happened to simply spending time together?

From: Susan

IUGR baby

I was just wondering if anyone has an IUGR baby?  I would love to connect w/more Moms in the same situation.

Jen

From: liljenwi

table manners

I know it's good for babies/toddlers to explore with their food.  And obviously, it's easier to use finger foods.

But I'm wondering when playing with food becomes, well, playing with food.

Yesterday I was feeding Jovie soup.  She's not quite feeding herself, except if I give her the spoon/fork.  But many times she gets frustrated, and wants to just pick up the piece herself instead of driving it to her mouth.  Same with soup; she was picking out the chunks.

I kinda felt stumped.  I'd asked her to use her spoon, and was telling her not to put her fingers in the soup; we eat soup with a spoon... we don't want to be rude....    but really!   I just don't know about this.  Like most things I'm noticing:  there's a fine line.

So- when did you teach about table manners?

From: mpotter

Chocolate Milk Fridays and Full Moon Parties

After reading a little book on Family Traditions in a bookstore a few years ago I was inspired to start some of our own.  These traditions (however big or little) seem to create the kinds of memories that kids recall long past childhood and the ideas in the book were so simple.  Two that we do now are every Friday it's chocolate milk day all day (this also hold off requests for chocolate milk for breakfast on all th eother days of the week:) and we've marked our calendar for every full moon night and have a  party that includes a circle cake with white icing and when it's warm enough we go outside on those nights and watch the stars and talk about the world beyond our little earth!  

From: Emily