Kids & Company Blog

Inaugural Parenting Conference

Kids & Company’s Inaugural Parenting Conference on November 5 was a huge success!
Understanding that one of the biggest challenges of being a working parent is balancing professional responsibilities with the realities of raising a family, this conference addressed these challenges and offered advice on how to keep it all in balance.

The day began with a buffet breakfast at 8:30 a.m. at beautiful new hotel – Marriott Springhill Gardens in Vaughan.


To Hide or Not to Hide

How to Get Your Kids to Eat More Veggies:

My husband Derek and I grew up in households where at mealtime, we were served platefuls of what we were expected to eat, and we ate it. Sure, we each honed our different strategies for avoiding what we didn’t like, but our mothers didn’t alter their tactics. They continued serving up undisguised vegetables, plain and simple, like it or not.


Separation Anxiety: Not your Child’s, Yours!

As a woman with 8 children I can tell you that the evolution of being a parent contains many events that repeat themselves. Having children at different stages of development meant that I tackled developmental hurdles like a juggler on a tightrope attached to moving cars. I can tell you this though, there are certain feelings that come up over and over again, and separating from your children – be it for child care, sleepover camp, or university – always feels the same.


Transitioning from a Crib to a Bed

Children behave in such different ways. One small change to us could really be a huge change to them. I have children who really, didn’t even notice when something changed around them and others who if you changed the smallest thing, even the brand of cookies you were buying, they just could not handle it!


Teaching Gratitude

October keeps catching me by surprise. The cold weather comes and stays. Then I’ve got to excavate the fall and winter clothes from storage and pull out my favorite autumn recipes. I flip the page on the wall calendar and start thinking about Halloween costumes, pumpkin carving, booking holiday travel, and buying new snowsuits for the kids (when will they stop outgrowing one each year?).


Transitioning into the World of Child Care, School and University

There’s often a lot of emotions swirling around when you start dropping your babies off at child care. Sometimes it’s more likely for the parents to be more upset than the child. It’s an adjustment from being at home with your baby all the time to having to say goodbye on a daily basis and send your kids off to child care while you go off to work.

It’s important to remember that having your child in a social situation such as in a child care centre is highly beneficial for their development. I had all eight of my children in social environments at a very young age in order for them to develop their social skills and go through a far less intense period of separation anxiety.


What to do if your Child is Biting…

Some people think that the children that bite are “bad children”, this is not true. They are almost always just children that are trying to communicate and to get the attention of their friends and family members.

As a parent with a toddler in child care, you may find that yourself on one end or the other. Your child may be the biter or the bitee. This all might come as a bit of a surprise because most children don’t bite their parents! They are used to getting attention and having their “cues” met..


Welcome Autumn by Enjoying Nature

The list of potential disorders and neuroses our kids can develop keeps growing longer. It seems increasingly unlikely that any child will have a “normal” childhood, whatever “normal” means these days.

Over the past decade, more children are getting diagnosed with attention deficit disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse disorders, and mood disorders like depression and anxiety at younger and younger ages, but what is the root cause of all these afflictions?


The Daycare Drop-Off – Getting Kids Out the Door Without Losing Your Sanity

I’m happy to introduce another guest blogger to our page. Julie Cole who is a co-founder of Mabel’s Labels and mother of six. We’re so happy to be able to share her expertise with you. Enjoy!


Handling Daily Transitions

We would like to welcome our first guest blogger, Mitali Ruths. Mitali is the mother of two young girls who are both Kids & Company children, and she is also an M.D. who has offered some of her expertise and opinions to us. I hope you enjoy her article on transitions as much as I did.

-Victoria