Community Content
Meet Our Practitioners
Explore by Topic
Our Most Recent Post
Possibility within change
The meditation for July 16th in my Greg Henry Quinn book 365 Meditations for Teachers is: "Everything in Life is Cyclical." This axiom provides a warning: if things are going well, prepare yourself. It also provides eternal hope. No matter how bad things are, they must eventually improve." It's helpful to keep this in mind as we move further into the summer and closer to a school year that remains yet undefined. Knowing and believing in the inevitability of change can bring us peace. As bad...
Boundaries: From swaddling to schooling, they find comfort in consistency
Early in the parenting journey we experience just how important structure can be to a new baby: for some infants, the act of swaddling brings a visible relaxation response. Every family has its own lore about the baby who needed the snug safety of a car seat or would only slumber while in the arms of a loving parent. Children press into these boundaries, and by encountering a loving pressure, they find safety and ease of their surroundings. They relax enough to finally sleep. While children...
The Power of Paying Attention
From their very beginnings, our children demand, and warrant, a massive amount of attention. During the infant years, we’re paying attention to hourly shifts and changes so we can appropriately respond to their needs - does he need a new diaper? Is it feeding time again? Into toddlerhood, we’re monitoring the terrain dangerous to walking and small objects they could potentially swallow. This is the most basic way that we love our children through behavior: we keep them safe. As children grow...
Mindful Parenting Reading List
Our Mindful Parenting enrichment is based primarily off of two works, Parent Talk by Chick Moorman and Thomas Haller, and Everyday Blessings by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn. These provide the basic framework from which Holly Schweitzer Dunn, LISW, shares about understanding the role of the parent in the parent-child relationship and offering specific tools for responding to common frustrating parenting situations. If you’re looking to expand your personal summer reading library, or are just wanting...
Demanding Obedience vs. Building Respect
Previous generations often emphasized obedience in children as the ideal outcome of parenting. This arose from a hope that children would respond to a parent’s directives, as opposed to having a rebellious attitude. Ideally, however, at the heart of a child who responds to a parent’s instructions is not blind obedience but rather loving respect. How do we find this balance between obedience and respect? Is balance even possible, or are these two concepts mutually exclusive? Most parents...
“Marie Kondo” your behaviors, not just your closet
If you caught the Netflix miniseries Tidying Up, you’ve watched the ways in which she’s instructed families to sift through their belongings and release them back to the world when they no longer “spark joy.” In our office, we’ve discussed Marie’s wisdom and what it can offer to our clients and our own sense of well-being. Her first step is to bring out into the open everything you own in a particular category. We often don’t know what all we have hidden away until we’ve taken it from hiding...
The 5 Senses Check-in: Spring addition
Make note of the color that is quickly changing across the landscape - greener grass, bright crocuses, and longer hours of daylight.Sniff out the earth’s work - even the smell of mud and earth carry with it a promise of something new.Listen for new hope - baby birds in the morning makes it a more pleasant way to wake up.Get a taste for the greens - our early asparagus, kale, and arugula help us connect with the brightness and lightness that await our days. Walk (barefoot!) - notice the texture...