As parents, effective communication with our children is crucial for building strong, trusting relationships. One powerful, but often overlooked parenting tool is paraphrasing. By paraphrasing what your children tell you, you are not only enhancing mutual understanding, you are also engaging in many other beneficial practices.
When You Go Out to the Woods Today, You’re in for Family Nature Play!
What is family nature play? There is no formal definition of family nature play, but I like to think of it as any time when children and families are relaxing in, exploring, interacting with, and enjoying any type of natural environment …
Playtime Skills for Connecting with Your Child
Children require many hundreds, if not thousands, of positive face-to-face interactions with their parents or caregivers … parent-child or caregiver-child play activities are an excellent way to provide these interactions … In this article I would like to highlight for you the parental skills for playing and connecting with children that I outline in my book, Play Skills for Parents: Connecting with Your Child Through Play …
Mad, Sad, Glad, and More! Teaching Children About Feelings and Emotions
There are so many reasons why parents and caregivers should teach their children about feelings and emotions. Children are not born knowing the names for all their feelings they will experience as they grow and parents and caregivers can play a very important role in helping their children develop a feelings or emotional vocabulary.
What is Parent Directiveness in Playtime?
Parents may be unaware of an important concept that is fundamental in the field of play therapy. Play therapists know that there are two basic ways to interact with children: directive or nondirective. This is something I have explained elsewhere … but because it is such an important concept, I want to review it in this article.