Parenting Goals

What Makes a Good Parent?

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

We all know that parenting is not for the faint of heart. Parenting is a skill developed over time and is influenced by many, many factors. We know families have tough days and we know to take people’s perfect Instagram feeds with a grain of salt. But whether you have kids, are planning to, or are watching from the sidelines, we all have our opinions on what good parenting looks like; and sadly, we are prone to judge.

We look at kids and how they behave, and we assume it’s because of parenting. We may witness a child have a tough moment and depending on how their parent responds, we judge if they handled it well or not. We might even investigate our own childhoods and determine what parental traits are worth keeping and which ones get the boot. But what makes a good parent, really?

Continue reading →

Coffee Chat: The Parent Test

| Patti Webb

Last month, I saw an IG promo for The Parent Test on ABC. It’s a competition-ish show, originally from Australia, on 12 different parenting styles and which one is the most effective.

Each week, four of the 12 families are given two filmed challenges. The other eight sets of parents watch and give their critiques based on how the parents handle their kids in the challenge.

Immediately, we knew we were watching and would most likely be cringing for every single episode. A tweet said it best, “This show is triggering, messy, and impossible not to watch.”

We watched the first episode together and the next with our husbands, and so far we’ve been decently surprised. Here are our initial thoughts:

Continue reading →

Patti’s New Year’s Resolutions: 2023

| Patti Webb

This Christmas, all of my cousins bought our grandparents Skylight frames. It’s a digital frame with an app that allows people to add photos and video directly. I sent four years’ worth of kids pictures to each of their great-grandparents and Lolo and Lola.

It gave me a chance to go through my phone and sort all of these photos of the girls. Reflecting back on everything we did with them when they were little, and now as school kids, the highlight reel really is heartwarming. That doesn’t mean that our day-to-day is any less challenging or that burnout isn’t perpetually looming on the horizon.

I did accomplish what I said I would do last year: to be more selective with my time and attention. I said no to more things and didn’t overschedule or overcommit. But that’s not just what it’s all about.

In a recent news article about Yale’s viral course on Happiness, it’s not about being time-rich. It’s about actually having fun. While we can spend time recovering from work or winding down, relaxing things are simply just relaxing. They are NOT invigorating.

Full transparency: I signed up for the Yale “Science of Well-Being” course on Coursera right after I finished listening to this article.

So now that we have this context, I’ll jump into my Resolutions.

Continue reading →

Mary’s New Year’s Resolutions: 2023

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Wow, Child(ish) Advice is now three years old. Thank you for all your continued support and trusting us to provide meaningful content as we begin the new year.

For me, if 2022 was all about laying the groundwork for personal and professional development, then 2023 is about reinforcing and refining these goals, trimming deadweight, and being more efficient and purposeful in my actions. So what do I plan to accomplish during this trip around the sun?

Continue reading →

Patti’s New Year’s Resolutions: 2022

| Patti Webb

The end of 2021 had a very different vibe for me compared to previous years. We planned a special trip to London for this Christmas and as always, there were last-minute complications and unforeseen events. By the time we made it to Heathrow and back, Troy and I were in unprecedented levels of parental burnout (which will be shared in a later post).

So that state of mental and physical exhaustion is the context going into this year and this resolution post. But it does have a silver lining, don’t worry.

Continue reading →