The Invisible Art of Play

Originally posted at Pagan Families, 5/27/15.  Has creating spells and making magic helped you hone your parenting skills? I haven’t seen any experts list spellcrafting or analogical thinking as an important parenting ability, but maybe they should. Let me tell you a story. One time this rainbow snake toy saved me from the minor embarrassment …

Review: Parenting With A Story

 Originally posted at Pagan Families, 12/19/14.  I received a complementary review copy of this book. Paul Smith, Parenting with a Story: Real Life Lessons in Character for Parents and Children to Share (AMACOM, 2014). 272 pages. Once upon a time my mother stepped out of a friend’s car and down an open sewer grate. Fortunately …

Of Children, Paint, and Unplanned Sabbats

Originally posted to Pagan Families, 9/22/14. When Beltane came, we’d planned to dance a May Pole at my older daughter’s preschool.  Not exactly pagan, but I don’t know many pagan families locally, and the school May Pole was as close to traditional as we were going to get.  Well, my daughter lost all interest in …

To The Gates Of Dreaming: Using Guided Meditation to Help Children Sleep

Originally posted on Pagan Families, 7/16/14.  I’ve spent countless hours helping my daughters fall asleep, nursing and bouncing, massaging and singing and praying, lying absolutely quiet or else reciting Mother Goose.  By the time my eldest was preschool age, I turned to magic.  I began using guided meditations with my daughter around the time she …

Book Review (Lengthy): Healing Stories For Challenging Behaviour

In Healing Stories For Challenging Behaviour (Stroud, UK: Hawthorne Press, 2008), Susan Perrow writes about the success she’s had using stories to inspire a shift in children’s behavior, in the contexts of parenting and Waldorf education.   Healing Stories gives advice for creating your own stories, as well as fifty plus stories that Perrow’s used.  The …

Parents Are Different

We don’t use time-outs or other kinds of punishments; most people do. Whenever I get into a conversation about toddler discipline, the conclusion seems to be that kids are different, and different kids respond better to different parenting approaches. It’s true that kids are different! And aside from being true, it’s a way of giving …