Written by Darci Walker for Core Parenting. Remember in kindergarten when we learned the golden rule? Treat others as you would want them to treat you. Remember last week when you heard that parent say to their child, “If you want them to share with you, you might try sharing with them”? Now, remember that…
Category: Peaceful Parenting
What Every Parent Needs to Know About Praise
Written by Laura Markham for Aha! Parenting. Most parents know that negative judgments undermine children, and at least try to bite their tongue instead of saying “What?! Are you an idiot?!” But positive judgments like “What a smart boy!” also sabotage children. Kids who are told they’re smart don’t want to disprove it, so they avoid situations in which…
Traditional Human Wisdom of Child Development
Written by Cooper Zale for Lefty Parent. Once the hunter-gatherer child no longer needs to “ride” and can walk and speak for themselves, they are generally granted an autonomy that a society like ours (what Diamond calls a “state society”) might well consider criminal child neglect.Read the full thing »
Decoding Your Child’s SOS
Written by Laura Markham for Aha! Parenting. You’ve probably heard the term “Acting out’ refer to misbehaving. It actually means to act out a feeling that you can’t express in words. So when your three year old hits the baby, or your five year old throws a toy at you, or your seven year old…
7 Criteria For Good Parenting
Written by Darci Walker for Core Parenting. I was recently asked to name my favorite parenting philosophy or strategy. My response: “For what child? In what situation? In what family?” I don’t believe in any one perfect parenting strategy. Rather, I believe in good parents who utilize lots of different tools to make good parenting…
The Educative Value of Teasing
Written by Peter Gray for Psychology Today. Teasing gets a bad rap, especially in educational circles, because of its association with bullying. But not all teasing is bullying. In fact, in most settings (maybe not in our typical schools), teasing serves positive ends far more often than negative ones. This essay is mostly about the…
Children are Born Innocent
Written by Jan Hunt for The Natural Child Project. What do you see when you look into the eyes of a newborn? When I first looked into the eyes of my son, I saw trustfulness, curiosity and joyfulness. I saw no deviousness, meanness or selfishness. In that instant it became clear to me that if…
Effective Ways to Bond With Your Child
Written by Elizabeth Kane for Authentic Parenting. Is it just me, or does bonding always seem too romanticized for real life? We see it in the movies all the time. Kids and parents are smiling at each other in the perfect light. Everyone’s impeccably dressed, saying all the right things at the right time. And…
Teach Your Children Well
Written by tzo for Strike The Root. Government is actually a subset of the annoyingly persistent “external authority” meme, and that—underneath it all—is the real root that needs striking. A child may become exposed to multiple sources of “external authority” and may quite reasonably consider all of them to be of the same archetype, and…
Love It Forward
Written by Dayna Martin for NaturalChild.org. As I prepare for our next family trip, I am remembering a flight that my family took back from England where I was the keynote speaker at the first ever unschooling conference in London. On the flight home, there was a mother traveling alone with two kids who were…