Coming up with new and healthy snack ideas day after day can be frustrating. While you want to introduce different tastes, textures, and ingredients into your child’s diet, you also need reliable snack ideas that you can whip up in a pinch. Keep these ten healthy ingredients in your kitchen at all times, and you’ll never come up short. Bananas. Packed …
What Your Child Takes Away from Daycare and How to Reinforce at Home
In the hours between dropoff and pickup, your child’s world is expanding in a variety of ways as she learns new lessons, makes new friends, adopts new skills, and becomes immersed in the fun, dynamic world of daycare or preschool. And as a parent, you can help to reinforce what your child is learning at home, ensuring that her new …
Beyond First Steps: Your Young Child’s Overlooked Milestones
After you bring your baby home from the hospital, you and your pediatrician will be on the lookout for a variety of much discussed milestones. That first smile is so affirming to every new parent, and the much anticipated first laugh or ability to sit up or roll will surely be documented on video. Of course, everyone from parents to …
The Highly Sensitive Child: 5 Ways to Cope
Recently, a family we know was invited to a birthday party that took place at an indoor bounce house emporium. Bouncy castles, bouncy slides, cheers, screams, and laughter abounded. But this family entered the party with trepidation, because they knew that their three year old son might be overwhelmed by the noise, the energy, and the bright visuals. Their son was reluctant to try …
Family Chores: How to Get Kids of Every Age Involved
After years of cooking every meal, cleaning up every spill, and tidying up every toy, something amazing can begin to occur in your home. As your kids become better communicators, better with gross and fine motor skills, and more interested in the “grown-up” tasks that go on in a household, you can actually ask them to pitch in! Assigning chores …
Celebrating Diversity: Ten Ways To Teach Young Children About Tolerance
As your kids start to interact more with the world around them, you might find that they’ll become curious about other people, especially people and kids that seem different from them. Teaching your kids about the range of diversity that exists, and modeling tolerant and celebratory behaviors, is a great way to help your child contribute in positive ways to …
Teething 101: A Guide for Rookie Moms and Dads
You’ve made it through the sleepless newborn nights, and you’re finally settling into a schedule, only to be confronted by your next parenting challenge: teething. Teething and its profound effect on young children comes as a big surprise to unaware parents, so read on for the basics you’ll need to know. While teething can begin as early as 4 months …
Bad Weather? No Problem! 10 Activities to Keep the Kids Entertained
Rainy days and chilly mornings can put a damper on your weekend plans with your kids. While ideally, we’d like to get our kids outdoors, moving around, and stimulated at least once per day at daycare, weather, even here in south Florida, sometimes puts the kibosh on our day, and we know many parents feel at a loss for what …
Stages of Play: How Do Babies and Preschoolers Differ?
Is your ten month old obsessed with nesting blocks, but doesn’t seem to want to play with the other babies in daycare or at her playgroup? Or is your preschooler all of a sudden picking up new habits, phrases, and maybe a new friend? Children go through four main stages of play, from infancy up until school age, and each …
Three Approaches to Potty Training: How to Get Your Child from Diapers to Toilets!
Sometime between 18 months and 3 years of age, most children begin potty training. There are several different approaches to potty training, and depending on your child’s disposition, communication skills, and maturity level, you may decide that a particular method is right for your family. Read on for three of the most popular methods, and think about which one is …