During the last presidential election I had a child in kindergarten. It didn’t take long into the school year to understand that kids as young as five-years-old are already deeply invested in national politics. At drop off, kids would run up to me eagerly with all kinds of observations and questions typical of kindergarteners, ranging… Read More →
A single parent of a toddler sent me this message last week. “Figuring out how to participate in these movements for change during this pandemic with a young child is overwhelming. Most days we are just wrestling with screen time, Cheerios, and sharing toys. It’s so painfully mundane compared to what’s happening in the streets.”… Read More →
The lessons we learn about feelings are powerful. From a very young age we are taught in both spoken and unspoken ways which feelings (and associated behaviors) are welcome and which aren’t. A parent shared with me after a workshop a couple of years ago, “I was always told in one hundred different ways that… Read More →
As many of you who follow our work already know, our family lives and works in South Minneapolis. This week our city has been on fire in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. In reality our city has been burning for a long time. This is happening… Read More →
I had a summer screen time post all written and ready to post on the website. Then our family dog got very sick and eventually passed away earlier this week. In an instant work, emails, newsletters, and to-do lists flew off the priority list and grief took its place. Jasper, our thirteen year old husky… Read More →
We can’t just hand kids a book or download a podcast titled, “Get Empathy.” Nope. But well crafted stories do allow kids to get lost in characters whose lives both mirror and diverge from their own.
“Just guess!” I would say to the wall, purposely turned away from my mom perched gingerly on the side of my bed. “Honey,” she would respond, “It’s hard to just guess what you want to talk about.” I usually met this gentle resistance with more crying and an insistence that clearly she should just KNOW… Read More →
No matter your child’s racial or cultural identity, you can take a look at your bookshelf, tablet, or library loans to see where you can diversify your child’s story world and start important conversations about commonalities and differences.
“Whoever tells the stories, defines the culture.” My oldest son and his friends have been watching a lot of The Who Was? Show on Netflix. The series explores the lives of famous people from history. Before dinner recently he excitedly listed all the people he had learned about. After reciting the names he made this… Read More →
My mom had a consistent and clear response to me and my two older brothers when we complained of being bored. Her response was always simply, “If you’re bored, I’ll give you something better to do.” Keep in mind that her assigned activities didn’t include playing, Pinterest activities, or popsicles. We quickly figured out that… Read More →
