Child(ish) Reads

Child(ish) Reads: Raising Empowered Athletes

| Patti Webb

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.

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Child(ish) Reads: Class Mom

| Patti Webb

To close out the year, we picked a quick fiction book for Child(ish) Reads.  A nice little palate cleanser for the holidays.

Class Mom by Laurie Gelman is the first book in a series starring Jen Dixon, a SAHM mom in Kansas City. She’s been given the Class Mom position in her son’s Kindergarten class and we’re following her throughout the school year, one email at a time.

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Holiday Gift Guide 2024: Child(ish) Reads

| Patti Webb

We’re ending the week with books for kids 0-10. Publishing categories fairly closely match up with age groups, so we’re listing books by type this time. It also should go without saying that these should be physical books. We would hold off with eBooks until middle school, or when your kid can read on a device without it affecting their vision or attention.

Here are our book picks for 2024:

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Child(ish) Reads for Kids: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

| Patti Webb

Happy Halloween!

For this edition of Child(ish) Reads, we’re going into the ghost stories from our past. From my last trip to the used book store, I grabbed Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, In a Dark, Dark Room, and a handful of Goosebumps. Both of my girls like Halloween and spooky characters in picture books, but they have been particularly reluctant when it comes to scary reading and movies. So I wanted to try these on for size and see if they could turn the corner.

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Child(ish) Reads: Article Review

| Patti Webb

Welcome to October!

We usually reserve this month for #spookyszn content. But our October calendars are looking a bit…scary. So Child(ish) Advice will be keeping it light for this week, before heading into a much needed two-week break.

Today’s post is an article review, something we really haven’t done since our first year blogging. This article came out in March, but it fit our Gen A theme/Halloween transition so perfectly. Check it out!

Kids Media Is In Its Villain Era by Katy Hershberger, Romper.com.

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