Coffee Chat: Week 2 Check In

So many First Day of School pics….

Our kids have been in school almost two full weeks now. For context, both Mary’s son and my twins are in their second year of elementary school. And even though we got most of the first-time student anxieties out last year, there is still plenty to go around for year two.

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The Gifted Parent

Last week, I did a Google and podcast search to see what resources or articles covered “gifted” parents. To be clear, this is about parents who were in the Gifted and Talented programs growing up in the 90s. Not parents of currently gifted children.

Both Mary and I grew up in gifted program in it’s various forms. In the spirit of Millennial Parenting, which has a sturdy base in self-reflection and re-parenting, we wanted to see how growing up as gifted students could have an impact on how we now raise our own kids.

My search ended up with not that many hits. Mary and I have five kids between us and for the most part, they are too young to be considered for gifted right now. So in this liminal time where our kids and their relationship with school is in development, how can we see what this academically-accelerated program has done for/to us when it comes to parenting?

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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Potty Training, Round 2

The first time we wrote this post, we decided it was not going to be a how-to on potty training. Instead, we wanted to share our different approaches and normalize the experience for parents. While going to the bathroom is obviously easy for adults, having the patience to coach your child through potty training is a whole different story, wrought with frustration and a lot of Clorox.
So now, two years later, we are on to Round Two.

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Child(ish) Reads: Podcast Playlist Summer ’23

It’s the last week of school in Fulton County and we are very excited to take our annual June blog break. We hope you are looking forward to a fun summer as well. So while you are making your to-do lists and packing your sunscreen, load these new podcast episodes up on your phone and give them a listen.

Yes, these are all parenting episodes, but all of my other listening has been #Scandoval and plant care. I’m in it deep, guys…

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A Personal Physics Lesson: Turning Your Child’s Potential Kinetic

On the banner for our site, you’ll see the tagline, “Turning your child’s potential kinetic.
Every company and organization has a mission and vision statement, but this phrase has been significant to my professional career long before Child(ish) Advice came to be.

Seeing Potential

As an OT, I recognize that everyone is born with the potential to do or be something great. When it came to the kids I’d see in the clinic, their potential would get stuck, perhaps by their own limited abilities, the environment, or the presented task. This affected their participation at school, home, or within their community. They would be labeled as “bad”, “disruptive”, or “difficult”; identifiers that lowered the expectation of these kids to do anything right.

What sucked was that some of these kids believed these descriptions and that their parents were at a loss for what to do. What potential did these kids have if they didn’t think they had any in the first place? How could they harness it if they didn’t know how?

That’s when my professional mission statement was born: “Turning a child’s potential kinetic.”

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