Helping your child read at home
The first set of school closings, stay-at-home orders and the like due to COVID-19 all came down the pipeline very quickly, without a lot of time to prepare or figure out what the next steps should be. As a result, particularly for those of us who are on social media, we started to become inundated…
Support for new moms
During my first pregnancy, I took all my prenatal vitamins, I avoided caffeine and sushi like the plague and I never missed a doctor’s appointment. I followed all of the rules and thought I was going to be the perfect mother, but then my daughter was born. It didn’t take long for me to realize…
Giving birth during a pandemic
Birth is normally a happy time of ecstatic anticipation for many women and their families, but this can be a scary prospect in the age of a global pandemic. Though we in central Illinois have been fortunate with social distancing and less population density to escape the full ravages of COVID-19 (i.e., hospitals being overwhelmed),…
Teens live in a different time zone
Teen sleep habits are an ongoing frustration and battle for countless parents. Many teens stay up into the wee hours of the night. Then they struggle to wake up during the week for school and sleep through the day on weekends. But sleep is crucial to adolescents’ well-being. School-age kids between ages 6 and 13…
Around the world at home
Two weeks ago, I could tell my family was feeling the strain of being sheltered in place. My husband had checked all the items off his honey-do list and started finding new projects to keep busy (this never ends well). My daughters, unimpressed with their new at-home teacher and missing their friends, were begging me…
Simple books with happy endings
Frustrated, excited, nervous, sad, jealous, embarrassed – sometimes we forget that kids deal with many of the same feelings as adults. Teaching them emotional awareness is important and can be complicated. “Reading fiction is a great way to develop empathy and social skills,” says Melissa Morrissey. In her books, Morrissey creates characters that speak to…
