When I first saw this book, I was interested in the nonverbal communication aspect. Yes, there are lots of parenting books about helping your kids make friends and navigate social circles, but the nonverbal factors gave this book a bit of an OT edge.
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A little backstory for me. I was up in Virginia for work this past fall and was invited to come to my high school crew team’s afternoon practice. I was a crew coxswain for six years; starting in high school, through college and two years in Masters rowing. I’ve sat in on practices, but this was my first time a long while helping novice high school girls.
Crew is an amazing sport when it comes to culture, work ethic, and mental game. But the coach was quick to point out that he wasn’t seeing a lot of physical fitness and strength in this group of girls. While crew was fun and they enjoyed being on the water, they were still very much learning fundamentals and not speed. This is racing after all.
So how do you connect with a young person about being competitive? How do you motivate without turning into a zealous tiger parent? How young does this start?
Raising Empowered Athletes: A Youth Sports Parenting Guide for Raising Happy, Brave, and Resilient Kids by Kirsten Jones. Kirsten, a Hall of Fame DI volleyball player from The College of William and Mary, and fourteen-year NIKE executive, is now a motivational speaker, writer and Peak Performance Coach. Her clients include teen athletes (and their parents), where she helps them learn how to reach their goals and release their limitations. She co-hosts the #RaisingAthletes Podcast with Susie Walton on iTunes and Spotify.
Continue readingFirst playdate review of the year!!
Hear us out: Yoga… but with goats.
As our kids get older, experiences become less about laying a foundation and more about exposure. Yeah, we still want to show our kids something new; but instead of sharpening their motor skills or working with their senses, we’re also starting to integrate culture, instruction, complex skills and body control, and executive functions.
All that is to say that we want to give our kids a fun challenge. When we asked our kids to guess what we had planned, this was nowhere on their radar.
Continue readingFun Fact: Our Child(ish) Advice Amazon storefront actually made a commission! Oh, how our baby has grown. TBH, it’s only a little bit and it was on items that we haven’t actually promoted. The great algorithmic mysteries of life…
That being said, thank you to our audience and we’re happy you are reading our content.
It’s only been two weeks since our last personal check-in, but since November when we actually shared things we loved.
Last summer, we did a refresher post on Chores and Teaching Money Management. In mine and Mary’s households, we wanted to build in some type of money management structure because how money is handled now is vastly different than it was 30 years ago.
First, we don’t carry cash. I’m not actually sure how my kids think paying by card works. Any cash they directly receive comes from gifts and goes into a piggybank.
Second, I rarely give my kids the opportunity to spend money. That means, they don’t come with me running errands or stopping at Target. Whenever we do go shopping, or if we’re on vacation and they have the option to get a souvenir, they want EVERYTHING!!!
Obviously, how kids learn about money is going to be different from family to family. Learning about money management in school is also generally reserved for older kids. I remember a field trip we took in 8th grade about picking a job with a set salary and you had to make it through the month watching your budget and balancing your checkbook.
Through my work email, I got a Substack invite from Dr. Stephen Day, a Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and Director of the VCU Center for Economic Education. He was hosting a webinar on how to use Bluey to teach kids economics. I loved this approach and his writing topics, so signed up for another webinar on Mini-Economy at Home.
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Child(ish) Advice 