Today is National Coming Out day. This is a picture of my husband and I at our local Pride Parade this summer wearing t-shirts that said “Free Mom Hugs” and “Free Dad Hugs”. But we are more than allies. We are a straight-passing, mixed orientation marriage. That means that, in my case, I am attractedContinue reading “National Coming Out Day”
Tag Archives: Parenting
To A New Special Needs Parent As My Eldest Leaves For University
Welcome to a fantastic journey – one you never asked for, signed up for or (probably) trained for. As much as it feels that your world has come crashing down around you, or that you can’t possibly handle this, the truth is more complicated than that. The truth is that there will be high’s and lo’s to this journey that you may only be able to appreciate down the road. The truth is also that you already have the one key ingredient for success: you love your child.
“What Exactly Is a Life Coach?”
I was sitting with a friend the other day and she asked me, “Heather, what exactly is a life coach? What do you do?” And I figured maybe she wasn’t the only one who was uncertain…
Back-to-School Checklist – Rhythm, Ritual and Rest
Today we’re going to finish our ‘back-to-school checklist’. We’ve already looked at ‘next right steps’ and ‘celebration’, and today we’re moving on to Rhythm, Ritual and Rest.
Back-to-School Checklist – Celebration
The wonderful thing about ‘next right steps’ parenting is that it gives us lots of chances to CELEBRATE with our child! And children desperately need more celebration!
Back-to-School Checklist – ‘Next Right Steps’
This week I want to remind you of three of my favourite tools for raising adults by 18 – ‘next right steps’, celebration, and rhythm, ritual and rest.
Raising An Adult By 18 – Attachment At Every Stage: Celebration
Affirmation, support, responding to bids, giving words and celebration – those are our five keys to attachment from 0 – 18 and beyond. When we put these together with the other ideas we’ve explored this month, we find we can be increasingly successful at raising adults by the age of 18!
Raising An Adult By 18 – Flexibility Is Key
While I have seen charts saying children should reach this skill by such-and-such an age, or showing what chores kids should do in what grades, I think it’s incredibly important to realize that each of our children are unique, and each will develop in slightly different ways and slightly different speeds. This is particularly true for children who have neurodevelopmental issues such as autism, physical disabilities such as club foot or those who were born prematurely.
Because of this, my recommendation is to create a list of skills that you want your child to develop along each of these axes – heart, soul, mind and body – and for each of the values that you want your child to learn.
Raising An Adult By 18 – Creating a Plan
Last week we talked about how our values should be used as the basis for our parenting plan. How we need to figure out where we’re trying to get to before we can create a plan for how to get there, just like we need a destination before we can plot a course of travel on a map.
But once we have the destination how do we create the plan?
Raising An Adult By 18 – Determining the Goal
In an ideal world, we would be leaning into our values, with so much love and compassion and excitement and joy that our children would gladly follow us forward into these places and spaces.
Heather R. Morgan 