We are in the doldrums of winter, but we know things are going to switch gears very quickly. Just a reminder in case you were “waiting for things to slow down.” We hope buying packs of class valentine cards didn’t sneak up on you too badly. Now that the love is over, here are the Things We Loved.
I usually don’t have two book reviews this close…
I received an advance copy of How to Raise a Healthy Gamer and was planning on saving it for May when we have a whole week talking only about video games. I’m only about 70% done with this book, but I think the psychology and framework can be applied to other things besides gaming.
Author Dr. Alok Kanojia introduces himself as a former video game-addicted undergrad who got kicked out of UT Austin for skipping nearly all of his classes. Kanojia then went to a monastery in India when he realized he did indeed have a problem. There, he learned the power of the mind to control his own thoughts (in addition to yoga, meditation and Reiki) and returned to college. He now has a medical degree in Psychiatry.
In addition to being a therapist, Kanojia owns a mental health coaching company called Healthy Gamer that provides resources to overcome video game addiction. The book, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: End Power Struggles, Break Bad Screen Habits, and Transform Your Relationship with Your Kids, helps parents understand modern video game addiction and work with their kids to create a plan to establish healthy gaming boundaries. It publishes March 12 and is available for pre-order.
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First Child(ish) Reads review of the year!
Today’s post is on Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors: Brain-Body-Sensory Strategies That Really Work by Dr. Robyn Gobbel. And of course, it has the magic word: sensory.
Dr. Gobbel is a psychologist with a Masters in Social Work, so this book is all about the neuroscience behind challenging child behavior. It had some pretty lofty goals in the Introduction: to completely change the way you parent. Challenge accepted.
Continue readingSifting through a year’s worth of posts to find a favorite one is hard. We covered a ton of topics this year, all of which I am rather proud of, as they’ve had a positive effect on me and how I parent as well. But for 2023, my favorite post is Coffee Chat: Dogs are like kids, right?
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“What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.”- Child development author Joseph Chilton Pearce, Teaching Children to Love
This post is actually part Child(ish) Read review and part Coffee Chat. I finally finished More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood by Majka Burhardt. Burhardt is a Princeton graduate, a professional rock and ice climber, and a twin mom. The book spans her pregnancy through her kids’ fourth birthday, compiled from audio and journal entries over five years. The book started out as letters to her twins and morphed into book-form when she could see the overall message not only to her children, but to all moms.
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Child(ish) Advice 