Kids & Company Blog: From the Experts

Posted on: Monday September 29th, 2014

Posted by: Victoria Sopik

To follow up on my previous blog post about the importance of play, I thought I would share how children play at different ages. As every stage of development is drastically different, their ability to play will be too. Of course younger babies can’t toddle over to a toy and explore, but as a parent… [read more]

Posted on: Monday August 25th, 2014

Posted by: Victoria Sopik

In my family, we’ve always had lots of play. With eight children, they all at some point another played with each other and kept busy with great pretend games, sports play and sensory activities (even if that means making a mud pit in the backyard!). It is so important for children to explore through play… [read more]

Posted on: Tuesday May 27th, 2014

Posted by: Kids & Company

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: don’t rush your child into the next car seat stage. 40 lbs is the minimum (minimum) for a child to ride in a booster seat. They are not required to transition into a booster seat when they reach 40lbs. Keep them in their 5-pt… [read more]

Posted on: Thursday May 22nd, 2014

Posted by: Kids & Company

Best practices with forward facing and Canadian law are in direct conflict here. Best practices say to keep your child rear-facing as long as possible and to wait until they are at least two years of age to turn them forward facing. Canadian law, on the other hand, (different in every province) states that children… [read more]

Posted on: Thursday May 8th, 2014

Posted by: Kids & Company

Infant Car Seats  If you’re like many first-time parents, you don’t quite realize the seriousness of deciding on your child’s first car seat. But if you try to do your research, you’re buried in piles of blog posts, marketing materials and friendly recommendations – much of it contradictory. Cue breakdown.   Let me make this… [read more]

Posted on: Saturday January 21st, 2012

Posted by: Kids & Company

We’ve determined that we want to drop the rope and stop power contests with our children. We’ve used the D in the DROP acronym to determine that we are in the midst of a power contest. Now it’s time to R – reassess the situation and hand back responsibility.

In power contests, we lose sight of the goal and engage in the struggle itself. We want to MAKE our kids do what we say. Our kids want to retain their power. Two simple ways they do that are to refuse or ignore our demands. Getting on a coat evolves into a lesson about respect and manners and sometimes includes stories about the kind of spankings handed out when we didn’t listen to Grandpa.

Posted on: Wednesday January 18th, 2012

Posted by: Kids & Company

Recently, I wrote about power contests between parents and children. In her talk at the Kids & Company Parenting Conference, Alyson Schafer suggested that over time, we can’t “make” kids do what we want. Instead, we should drop the rope in our power battles and work toward getting kids to want to cooperate with us. This is where you pause to laugh heartily. But, I will swear on my beloved iphone that this is possible.

Posted on: Thursday January 5th, 2012

Posted by: Kids & Company

Guest writer Michelle Nelson talks about the presentation by Alyson Schafer, who spoke at our Parenting Conference in November.
Michelle Nelson is a marketer with 15 years experience in education and not for profits and enjoys a bit of blogging on the side. Food and parenting are her topics of choice. She lives in Toronto with her seven year old twins and husband.

Posted on: Thursday November 24th, 2011

Posted by: Kids & Company

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.