Kids & Company Blog: Parenting

Posted on: Tuesday February 21st, 2012

Posted by: Julie Cole

It’s quite common to hear someone say “I’m a single parent this week” when their husband/wife/partner is out of town due to work obligations. I certainly know that experience; Daddy-o is away on average four days a week. It’s no easy feat for a mama of six and it certainly takes its toll – but however tricky, you won’t catch me referring to myself as a single parent. Why not? Out of respect for all the real single parents out there. While I may be temporarily the only parent on location, I am not a single parent. Here’s the difference:

Posted on: Wednesday February 15th, 2012

Posted by: Julie Cole

So I managed to do my ankle in, which landed me in an Aircast and crutches. I know what you’re thinking and for the record, I was not walking and texting. In fact, I was attempting to walk and talk at the VERY same time and managed to go over on my ankle. It’s a good thing I wasn’t chewing gum or I may have ended up in a full body cast.

Clearly this cast/crutches thing is not an ideal situation for a multi-tasking mama. To further complicate the matter, Daddy-o was out of town for the week and the affected ankle was attached to my driving foot. The already difficult task of getting various children to various activities at the same time reached a whole new level of crazy.

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.

Posted on: Wednesday November 9th, 2011

Posted by: Victoria Sopik

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.

Posted on: Tuesday November 1st, 2011

Posted by: Victoria Sopik

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!

Posted on: Monday October 24th, 2011

Posted by: Kids & Company

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?).

Posted on: Monday October 17th, 2011

Posted by: Victoria Sopik

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.