Parenting Tips

Dinner time. New veggie. Here we go! I placed a piece of sautéed bok choy on my 4-year-old son’s plate and said, “Hmm. This is a new veggie called bok choy. I wonder what you’ll think about it.” He closely examined this suspicious veggie while sampling some more well-known items on his plate. He circled back after a few minutes and willingly tried it. On his own time. At his own pace. At his own will. After his brave bite, I followed up, “Was it crunchy? Soft?” to which he replied, “Soft. I like it.”

Grit involves sticking with something until you succeed. It's another word for perseverance or resilience, and it gives us the strength to try, try, try again. Grit supports a "growth mindset" ― a belief that our intelligence and skills can grow with effort. Kids with a growth mindset thrive on challenges, show resilience in the face of obstacles and view failure as part of the learning process. For a two-year-old, grit might look like learning how to put on shoes, use the potty or use words when they feel frustrated.

Social media is abound with messages to parents that their love and attention is all their kids need during this stressful time. These messages are no doubt intended to be empowering.

Watching a child learn to read can feel miraculous.

And for good reason: reading is an incredibly complex process that requires children to recognize shapes (letters), match these shapes with their corresponding sounds, combine these sounds into words, and then mentally pair these word with their definitions. Emerging readers must also begin to understand and apply decoding rules, pause at punctuation, and infer word meanings based on context clues.

If I’m being honest, technology has been a saving grace for my family over the past year. Screens have given us opportunities for education, entertainment, and even respite as we’ve navigated life during a pandemic.

There’s a saying that the two gifts we give our children are roots and wings — a sense of connectedness to family, culture, and community and the confidence to move beyond what they know so they become their own person. I’ve seen this happen in my own life. The baby that my husband and I once nicknamed the “barnacle” (because of her desire to be held at all times) moved across the country to start college this past fall. As parents, we’re so busy with daily routines and responsibilities it can be easy to forget that part of our job is supporting this essential growth — with us and beyond us.

Expressing emotions and having them accepted and validated is important for both children and grown-ups. And there’s a whole spectrum of emotions to feel! While many grown-ups view emotions as good or bad, the truth is that emotions are not good or bad — they just are. Emotions are a gift. To be a well-balanced individual who experiences the full range of human experiences, we will eventually experience the full range of emotions that come along with that existence.