Positive Discipline Parenting Blog

Empowering Teens: The path from enabling to positive parenting

Parenting is a journey filled with ups and downs, and navigating the teenage years can be particularly challenging. Many parents strive to raise responsible, confident, and accountable young adults. However, one common pitfall in parenting is falling into the trap of enabling rather than empowering our teens. In this blog post, we'll explore the transition from enabling to positive parenting and how it can benefit both you and your teenagers.

My Top 5 Toddler Parenting Tools

My little baby is now a full-blown toddler. Every stage of development has been such an exciting leap, but it’s at this stage that I’m getting a glimpse into the inner dialogue of my little one’s brain. He is learning to talk and along with language comes a newfound sense of independence and autonomy. This is great when I need to clean up after meals or shoot off a couple of emails, because he can now play by himself for longer periods of time, or even better, help me around the house. It’s a challenge when I have an agenda of what needs to happen now and it doesn’t align with HIS plan. I now understand why virtually every parent of a toddler says their child is “strong-willed”. There’s a parenting myth about the terrible two’s, but what I’ve found is that it doesn’t have to be so terrible if you have some solid Positive Discipline parenting tools in your back pocket.

Why I teach my nanny kids how to do things for themselves

If we want our nanny charges to learn life skills, we start by explicitly teaching those skills. Nobody just knows how to do laundry or scramble an egg - even basic life skills need to be taught clearly and explicitly with step-by-step training. Typically, the best way to do this is to model and narrate, then move into doing the task together, then the child does it while you supervise, and eventually the child is ready to do that task on their own. Think about making your bed, it seems pretty simple, right? Well, maybe not

5 summer ideas for nanny kiddos

Summer is fun, exciting, and a wonderful change of pace (especially here in rainy Seattle!), but it also means that the routines we’ve counted on and been polishing all school-year are about to change. For many families, nannies, and kiddos, summer means travel, playdates, and sunshine. How can we as nannies set ourselves, our charges, and our families up for a great summer?

Building the Culture of Teamwork through Chores

When I was growing up we did not have a chore chart. There were no stickers, or popsicle sticks or magnets on a whiteboard. There was just an understanding that we pitched in…all hands on deck. My father was in the military until I was about 7, and prior to that, my mother was very sick with breast cancer. For many of my early memories, she was in and out of the hospital and my father worked long hours. We had caregivers and help but there was still a lot to be done.