Johnson County will have the privilege of hosting Tina Payne Bryson, PhD, in April 2020 for a FREE workshop! Dr. Bryson has co-authored several books with Dan Siegel, MD, about brain development and the parent-child relationship. She will be speaking to parents in the evening of April 20th, and professionals on April 21st, at the … More Two Great Speakers Coming to Kansas in April!
A couple of weeks ago, some of my team and I attended a workshop on Becky Bailey’s Conscious Discipline, an approach to supporting the social-emotional development of young children. While it was created mainly for early childhood classroom settings, Conscious Discipline provides more examples of how to reach children through being in a relationship with them … More Conscious Discipline
As part of their Heads Together campaign, the royals talk about how being parents and siblings is a part of their mental health picture. Check out their YouTube video series of people sharing their stories here.
Brains aren’t just born. They are also built. If traumatic experiences can harm the architecture of our brains, how can we create experiences that help our kids’ brains become strong, healthy, and resilient? The best ways we know how to build better brains include engaged and attentive interactions with other people. Since 1975, the … More Building Better Brains with “Serve and Return” Interactions
Have you learned your ACE score yet? ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) occur when we are children, and can impact our health and well-being throughout our lifetimes. The understanding of ACEs is changing the landscape of healthcare and community support across the nation. This 5-minute video explains. Ready to discover your ACE score? Follow the link. … More ACEs
I just spent some time on a great website called Lives in the Balance, put out there for parents and educators by Ross W. Greene, PhD. Dr. Greene’s approach to developing social-emotional health (or reducing challenging behavior) is not unlike Tina Payne Bryson’s and Daniel Siegel’s ideas about discovering what social and emotional skills children … More In the Greene zone! If a kid looks bad, it’s because she has some lagging skills
I had a conversation recently with Becky, a LCMFT in our agency. It made me realize that many of the stresses that families have (including my own) are not going to be fixed any time soon. Challenges like poverty, long-term illness, a history of trauma, social isolation, disabilities, and loss of loved ones, are not … More Top 5 Protective Factors for Healthy Families
I don’t think I was very good at teaching my kids to use the toilet. As big kids, they do alright now, but the potty training process was not my favorite! I wish I knew then what I know now! Potty training is not unlike teaching a kid to ride a bike. Some kids take … More Potty Training Wheels
I’ve heard three descriptions of mindfulness lately that help me understand it better. Here they are, in order of difficulty! (Hardest) Mindfulness is the gap in time when our brain is not using us. It is the moment we can still our thoughts, calm our judgments, and separate who we are from everything we think … More 3 Ways to be Mindful as a Parent
Many of the best parenting and discipline approaches suggest that we praise our children to help them develop a healthy sense of themselves and a willingness to do what we tell them to do. We have known for a while that specific praise (“Thanks for touching the baby so gently!”) works better than general praise … More Praise that Works
roots of resilience 