Parenting with a Growth Mindset

I wanted to put this out there because I feel that sometimes we fall into that trap of needing to create the perfect portrait of the happy family and anything that mars that image is a sign of failure for us as parents. With social media often only showing the best face of our families, we sometimes forget

Lessons I Learned from My Son’s Teachers

After hanging around school enough, you pick up a few tricks that the teachers use to get the children to listen. Unfortunately, we can’t use them all at home, but here are a couple that have been quite effective at home on occasion (i.e. when I pull it off successfully)… 1. Sing it! G2 has one of the

Learning to Work Together with the Get Along Shirt

The “get along” shirt has been going around on the Internet for some time now and while it sounded like a good idea, I have never tried it before. But when my cousin started waxing lyrical about how well it worked with her boys, I decided to give it a go… The boys had come to me, yet

Help Me Be Good – Lying, Being Destructive and Other Undesirable Behaviours

This happened recently… If you can’t figure out what you’re looking at,  it is our dining chair with four pencil holes. After some investigation, we figured out that the culprit was G2 except that he refused to admit to it and he even lied to us saying that it was his brother who did it.

Parenting and Disciplining the Spontaneous Child

Being a parent will teach you this powerful message: Never say “never”. I broke my cardinal rule of discipline – I smacked Hercules. I felt sick to my gut when I did it but I am at a loss as to how to deal with this boy… You would think he would have learned after

Parenting and Discipline: Helping Your Child Understand Your Expectations by Using Examples that Your Child Can Relate to

You may have read in the news some time back about China passing a law that requires children to care for their aging parents. This particular issue that preyed heavily on my mind in recent times with two of my grandparents landing in hospital over the last few months (my maternal grandfather twice and my paternal

Parenting: Using Colours to Manage Your Child’s Aggressive Behaviours

Recently, I read the prologue of an interesting book called “Drunk Tank Pink” by Adam Alter. It discussed an interesting effect of colour – in particular, pink – that caught my attention. You can read more about it on Colour Matters but here is the essence of it: Alexander Schauss presented his research in 1979 on

Education of the Heart – on Raising “Good” Kids

“When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.” – Dalai Lama After devoting much time and attention to the growth and development of my boys, I confess that it still feels like a punch in the gut whenever I see them behaving poorly. Probably worst still is when

Positive Discipline Book List

Right Brain Education and Positive Behaviour Management I have been struggling a long time to correct the boys’ behaviours in a way that is in keeping with Right Brain Education philosophy. It seemed contradictory that I was always talking about love and connection, but was employing harsh methods of discipline – punishment and scolding (read:

Right Brain Discipline Equals Positive Discipline?

This post has been moved to the Right Brain Child. You can read it here: Right Brain Discipline Equals Positive Discipline?