Helping Small Children with Big Emotions

Helping our small children learn how to express and manage their big emotions is one of the most important and difficult tasks of parenting. Read more for some helpful tips and strategies.

Parents are front line heroes, too!

While we celebrate and acknowledge the dedicated services of front line workers, let’s also recognize that parents are front line heroes, too.

Talking about Racism with Kids

Talking about racism with kids may feel like a difficult conversation to have. This article has many resources for parents to help get you started.

Coping with Stress

Now that we are a full two months into the Covid-19 Pandemic, many of us are looking for ways to cope with stress.

Tips for talking to children about Covid-19

How do we talk with our children and teens about what is happening in our world as the Covid-19 crisis unfolds? This article will give you concrete tips for how to best support our children.

Parenting Now: Report to our Community

Parenting Now launched to the public on October 21, 2017 and we have been going hard ever since! This report documents our activity and our learning over our first two years. Read on!

Positive Discipline, Cooperative Kids

What happens when your 3 year old pitches a fit and throws his toys all over the room and refuses to pick them up? What about when your 8 year old refuses to do her homework? Often, we jump straight to punishment. We want to make sure that the child understands what they’ve done wrong. That they’ve faced some sort of consequence to deter them from doing the same thing next time.  But what if there was another way?

Why take a parenting course?

There are many ways that learning occurs in our parenting. From Google searches to watching other parents to simply learning from our mistakes, learning as a parent is a constant.

Parenting Advice from a Teen

This is how to parent, from the point of view of a child. My parents are great, both of them. But there are some things that I would change.

Back to School

Is this a time of year that you welcome with joy and excitement? Or, is it a time of year you kind of dread, worrying what this school year will be like for you and your child?

Our Wild Ride with Infertility

Our wild ride with infertility was not something I expected.

I wasn’t one of those girls or young women who yearned to be married or for that matter, have children. I did not see myself as a wife or a mother. All that changed when, at 25 I met a guy who swept me off my feet. Within a year and a half, we were married and planning a family. 

Trying to get out of the door in the morning…

Parenting is a job like no other. Raising children can bring us joy and meaning. Yet it also brings feelings of frustration, being overwhelmed, and unsure of what to do next. The challenges of parenting can be magnified if you have a child who has big emotions or difficulties settling.

Family Literacy

When we hear the word literacy, we think it means learning to read.  But literacy is much more.  Literacy is being able to talk and write and listen and understand, use numbers, and use technology. We learn these skills, we are not born with them.

School Stress: How to Support Your Child

Fall has arrived and kids are back to school. This time of year can bring a range of emotions for kids and parents but as the days settle into a routine, you may find the initial excitement of back to school shifting to stress and anxiety.

Sleep and Your New Baby

Sleep is something that is constantly on the minds of parents; both their baby’s sleep and their own. In Waterloo Region, Sleep Sessions are available for parents of babies from birth to 12 weeks of age that help parents learn to understand their new baby’s sleep patterns and respond to their baby’s cues.

Family Play Builds Children’s Mental Health

When we play with our children, they get to experience how we love and value them. Play goes beyond words, to feelings and emotions that build our brains and bodies and, in turn, builds the confidence and self-worth our children need to navigate the world around them.

How to Talk with our Kids when Terrible Things Happen

How do we talk with the children and teens in our lives when terrible things happen in the world around us? Here are a few tips for talking with kids.

Let’s Get Outside and Play!

Let’s get outside and play! It sounds simple, but we often tend to see outside time as only for our kids. For parents, it’s not always a priority. We might squeeze in a quick walk, but if this is the only way we enjoy the outdoors, we are missing a wonderful and easy way of nurturing our relationship with our kids.

Building Connection: CORE Parenting Skills

Building connection is at the CORE of our parenting skills. Our ability to accurately read and respond to the needs, feelings, interests, strengths, and personalities of our children (regardless of age) are the most important skills we bring to our parenting. They can also be the toughest to learn!

Adult Children Living at Home

There are so many reasons why our adult children stay home or why they come back after they have moved out. Struggles with finding independence, relationship breakdown, affordable housing issues, lingering post-secondary education: there are lots of reasons. Really, though, it doesn’t matter how; they just are and I think the answer is to navigate a new way of living together.

Parenting from Fear

I had many a moment in my parenting when I realized I was parenting from fear. My stomach was often in knots worrying if I was being too hard on my children. This fear was with me a lot, particularly when I felt judged about my parenting ability—by others as well as by myself. In reality, this fear was coming from self-doubt.

A New Concept in Parenting Education

Parenting Now is a new concept in parenting education. It grew from everything we learned by talking to parents and caring adults in Waterloo Region.

Screen Time and Chore Issues?

Setting limits around screen time is something that my husband and I are learning to navigate as our boys get older. A recent family meeting helped us get input from our boys and come up with a great plan.

Saying “No” Says “I Love You”

Over my years as a parent, I finally learned the importance of saying “no” (and sticking to it). I learned that the structure those boundaries give is very important for our children—no matter how old they are.

Understanding Big Emotions

What happens when BIG EMOTIONS take over? We’ve been there. Maybe your face turns all red. Maybe you stomp your feet. Maybe you get a sick feeling in your gut or your head starts to hurt. We all have different ways of reacting when our big emotions have taken over but a couple of things are very common in these moments—our body is distressed and we are not thinking with our full ability.

Connection Matters

Many parenting books and websites focus on the importance of the parent-child attachment and emphasize the role of connection in our parenting. We intuitively know that our relationships with our babies, children, teens—and adult children—are important but, why? Why does connection matter?

The Joys and Challenges of Parenting

To me, parenting is the most important and the most unpredictable part of my life. For my husband and I, parenting brings us our greatest joys and our greatest challenges. We wouldn’t have it any other way!

Staying Connected with our Teens

Even though our teens look to their friends for some of their attachment needs, they still look to us as parents to be their “safe haven”- to be their source of safety, comfort and closeness. Despite what their behaviour might hint at, they still need us. Here are some tips to strengthen your parent teen attachment and help you stay connected with your teenager.

I’m Sorry

I’m sorry. Those little words are so much a part of our everyday conversations. Yet how we say these words can have a very big effect on our relationships.

Managing Meltdowns

No need to explain what a meltdown is! As parents, we have all experienced those moments when our child becomes overwhelmed by emotions and seems to lose complete control of their behaviour. We have also, likely, experienced feeling overwhelmed and powerless in these moments ourselves.