Little Sprouts Readers Club

A good reminder.👇

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
— Robert A. Heinlein

My son and I were walking in our neighbourhood last summer when a father and little boy walked past us. The little boy was crying. The father said to the little boy, “Stop crying or your mother is going to hear about this when we get home.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I said nothing to my son and we kept walking.

Moments later my six-year-old said, “Why did that Dad tell the boy to stop crying? You can’t just stop crying when there’s a reason. You have to get the tears out. Why did that Dad even want him to stop crying?”

Our kids are wise. And when we parent through a relationship that is unafraid of tears and feelings of any kind, our kids don’t become scared either. They see them as normal. Sad, angry and frustrated are just as valid and necessary as their “positive” counterparts.

Just as the waves are not the ocean, our children are not their emotions. Their emotions pass and we need to learn to ride the waves, rather than try to bend reality. Many of us were raised to stuff “negative” emotions deep down where they couldn’t be seen. And so we repeat it, without a conscious thought.

Or we try to fix it by distracting our kids to make the hurt go away because it feels painful for us to see our kids in pain. But more often than not, what I’ve found is that when I allow my son to feel disappointment or sadness and walk through it with him, he bounces back far quicker than I expected.

We allow our kids to become resilient when we make space for their emotions. When we’re brave enough to sit with a crying child, whether in our living rooms or on the sidewalk, we validate their feelings.

They learn that we have their backs, that they’re not alone with their emotions and when we hold them up to the light together, rather than make them hide alone in dark places, they’re not so scary after all.



______________________________

🌻Peaceful parenting resources: http://t.co/T8goym3P6Z 🌻
______________________________


www.LRKnost.com

Fighting a rare, incurable cancer, but I'm still here!💞 L.R.

Big questions from young kids are hard. The balance between dismissing or overwhelming with too-grown-up answers is hard to navigate. Here's a north star to follow: most kids aren't looking for facts and forecasting, they are looking for safety.

We can soothe kids AND help build resilience to future adversity when our responses to these questions highlight strength, identity, and relationships- kinda like this otter mom who isn't dismissive or toxically positivity, but helps little otter know that they are in a family that will keep them safe and support them even through really hard things.



________________________________

🌻Peaceful parenting resources: http://t.co/T8goym3P6Z 🌻
________________________________

www.LRKnost.com

Fighting a rare, incurable cancer, but I'm still here!💞 L.R.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. We will miss you...

One of the delights of being a storyteller is being able to enjoy some of the most popular children's books.

Stories are memory aids, instruction manuals and moral compasses.

100 Children’s Books Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime Blossom a love for books and reading early in your child's or grandchild's life, and they'll reap the rewards for a lifetime.

"If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books." - Roald Dahl.

"There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place." - J. K. Rowling.