Playtime

Our Panda Fest Playdate Review

| Patti Webb

For this play date review, we’re tweaking it yet again. We’re sharing our first ever girl date!

Once Mary and I settled our spring break plans, we got tickets for the brood to go to Atlanta’s first-ever Panda Fest, an Asian food festival with dates in multiple cities across the country. Panda Fest vendors are mostly local and they specialize in Asian street food and snacks.

Attending were BOTH sets of twin girls, so no boys this round. My husband Troy also came for the food and to be an extra set of hands. H&K are two years younger than A&Z, so now we’re factoring in age gap for this play date.

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Our Rage Room Mom date

| Patti Webb

Yay! New blog feature.

We’ve written extensively on PPD and how important it is for moms to take time for themselves. This recharges our social battery and keeps us balanced, so our entire lives aren’t completely ruled by our kids.

Looking forward, I came across a teen parenting account that said that one of the reasons teens stop looking to their parents for advice and quality time is because their parents aren’t fun. During high school, my parents never really had friends. They would work, make dinner, and watch something on the couch…every…damn…night. I love an introverted bed rot, but seriously no other people anywhere in the radar? Not even a best friend that I’ve ever heard of?

I feel like most of the parents I appreciated growing up were those that had their own social lives; they played more roles than just being a parent or an employee. They had interests and hobbies and would go out for girls nights. Their personal schedules were just as involved as their kids’. Overall, I feel like their homes were just lighter; and consequently, their villages were bigger.

So, Mary and I would like to propose a trade. We will exchange two playdate reviews, for two Mom date reviews. We love doing fun stuff with our kids, but we’d also like to try out some fun, new things that are a little more age-appropriate for us.

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Playground Rules: Peers and Social Skills

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L
Image credit: Recess

Parents can only do so much. In our kid’s early childhood, we try our best to teach and model everything they need to know to thrive. But eventually, they need to test their skills in real-life situations, and that’s most likely going to come on the playground.

When parents in the clinic would stress over their child’s social skills, I would say “playground rules,” meaning that kids best learn socialization in a setting with their peers and with limited interference from their parents. While the home serves as a training ground for trial and error, peers provide real-time feedback and refinement of those skills.

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Child(ish) Reads: Raising A Socially Successful Child, Pt. II

| Patti Webb

When we say “socially successful”, we mean making friends. Yes, how our child conducts themselves in public spaces in a way that is socially acceptable is one thing. Manners and etiquette are explicitly taught.

However, making friends is not exactly easy for most. Confidence, self-esteem, temperament; these all factor into the process personally. But then there is the reciprocation, the two-way street. Does this person like me back?

In Raising a Socially Successful Child, Dr. Stephen Nowicki explains the Friendship process; the different stages of how we start and maintain relationships.

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