20 Ways to be Quiet with Your Family
Creating silent, mindful time with your children and teens IS quality time. Moments of quiet and calm support your family in developing openness and trust. Keep reading for 20 ways to enjoy quiet connection.
How to Use Giving and Receiving for Self-Care
This reflection on giving and receiving will help you step into deeper self-awareness. You will find out more about your personal patterns, needs, preferences, tendencies, and areas of growth, and you might even learn what your unique sense of “balance” is.
Real Talk for Teens: 5 Ways to Be Creative
Creativity is a part of every human being. But how do we create an environment that helps that creativity to come through in writing, artwork, or other projects? Keep reading for 5 key steps to inspiring your creative self and living like an artist.
Talking to Teenagers… About Routines
You support tweens, teens, and young adults in building daily routines that support their social, emotional, and mental development. Keep reading for 10 practical ways to support tweens, teens, and young adults in building daily routines for success.
The Practice of Parenting: Mindfulness as a Way to Authentically Connect
Let go of your idea of what a good or bad parent looks like. Let go of who you want your child to be, or who you want to be as a parent. Let go of the worry, the stress, the shoulds, or should nots and for this moment just stop. Keep reading for a meditation on The Practice of Parenting.
Top 3 Tips for Helping Your Teen With Autism Get Back to School
The transition from summer back to school can often be a challenging time for children and teens, especially for youths on the autism spectrum. Because autism covers a large spectrum and presents differently in every person, there are several ideas for ways to help your teen or child with autism feel that they belong and have significance during this time of change. Keep reading for top 3 tips for helping your teen with autism get back to school.
Quick Connection: The Power of Walk and Talks
Have you ever tried a walk and talk with your teen? This could be a walk for exercise, sure, and it can also be entirely leisurely. In either case, walk and talk is communication strategy, a tool to remember when you have a pressing idea to process with your teen or when you can tell they are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or frustrated. Being next to your teen, or "sideways talking," as opposed to face-to-face, can open the space for conversation-- literally and metaphorically. This orientation often feels less confrontational and more spacious for young people. For some teens, it can be safer to be next to adults when it comes to tough conversations and topics, or even asking for help.
10 Keys to an Intentional, Easeful Back to School Season
Some children and teens can't wait to get back into the routine of school; they might be excited to reconnect with friends, to resume extracurriculars, to get out of the house more. And others are dreading getting back to campus; they might resist or fear the structure, the workload, the socialization, the pressures. Regardless of where your teen is on this spectrum of back to school feelings, they are likely experiencing the energy of transition. And you too! Keep reading for 10 keys to an intentional back to school because the more aware we can be through this change, the more easeful this season will be.
Quick Connections: Asking Curiosity Questions
Asking curiosity questions to the children and teens in your life will not only increase their engagement (which brings confidence, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and so much more along with it), but it will also give you, as the parent or caregiver, more room to breathe. Keep reading to learn how to use curiosity questions in a wide range of opportunities!
Quick Connection: Making Agreements with Teens
You and your family can make agreements about screentime, chores, finances or allowances, curfew, and so on. When you and your child or teen reach agreements TOGETHER, the buy-in is stronger. They are more likely to follow through with genuine interest and commitment. Plus, there’s less weight on you! Instead of giving instructions or reminders-- which can feel like nagging-- you can ask/remind your teen, “What did we agree to?”