Urban Green Kids

Why Americans Refrigerate Eggs
https://fee.org/articles/why-americans-refrigerate-eggs/

No, there is not an age when this whole “trust your child” thing is suddenly untrue.

In fact, it only becomes MORE true as your child gets older. Trust that they are capable of learning what they need when they need it. The rest will fall into place.

It’s easier to trust when you know who your child is on a deeper level, especially how they learn. Make sure you register for our upcoming Speaking Your Child’s Learning Language Challenge, which starts on Monday. I guarantee you’ll walk away knowing more about your child than you thought you did! Link in bio and stories (first comment on FB).

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Confidence

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I Have No Idea What Those Kindergarten Teachers Are Up To

I Have No Idea What Those Kindergarten Teachers Are Up To When I have something to think about, I take a long walk. There is something about walking that tends to free our minds to t...

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Leave a 💗 if you agree. This is the essence of Raising Yourself.

For Young Kids, The Power of Play-Based Learning

“According to a new study, there’s a middle path.” At UGK we prefer the direct path to play based education but truly appreciate all the programs seeking to incorporate play into their day. It really does make a difference!

For Young Kids, The Power of Play-Based Learning New research shows play-based learning can be more effective than direct instruction at improving outcomes for early learners—particularly in the development of mathematical and spatial skills.

So much to look forward to! Happy New Year ✨🌟✨

"Just like we wouldn't punish a small child for tripping and falling, because it is to be expected when they're learning to walk, there's not need to punish a child who is using age-appropriate communication when the lack emotional regulation, self control, and coping skills. Instead, we respond confidently and kindly in the moment, and create opportunities to learn what to do or say differently when the child is regulated."

Meeting our children where they are, in the moment, and guiding them through the struggle, whether the struggle is academic, communication, or behavior, is an opportunity for us as parents to show what kindness, respect, and honor really looks like.

(From our Mean, Bad, and Tricky Words workshop: https://bit.ly/3u011gt)

A Mental Health Mantra for Parents and Kids - Janet Lansbury

A Mental Health Mantra for Parents and Kids - Janet Lansbury I’ve noticed that I am much more confident and in control of my emotions/responses on the weekend when I have not spent the majority of my day at work, away from my son. The rest of the time, especially when I’m tired or unfocused, I feel that I am poorly responding to his tantrums, demands, …...

Photos from Taniesha Burke, PhD; Parenting Coach's post

The Unconventional Handwriting Guide (Part II): Less Sports, More Dirt.

The Unconventional Handwriting Guide (Part II): Less Sports, More Dirt. “Any OT will tell you that the foundation for fine motor skills lies in strength and stability of the core…

New Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment | Kerry McDonald

New Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment | Kerry McDonald “Our findings suggest the possibility that large numbers of kids are being overdiagnosed and overtreated for ADHD," said Timothy Layton, an assistant professor of health care policy at Harvard. 

Via A Peace of Werk 💙

Our Mama Village ❤️

When did you stop playing? | Alliance for Self-Directed Education

When did you stop playing? | Alliance for Self-Directed Education About play and learning in teens

The Genius of Childhood meets the Genius of Play
There is no mystery on how to 'teach' child geniuses:
• The first thing you do is treat them like human beings.
• The second thing you do is you love them.
• The third thing you do is create the right environment so they can engage their being in child-led play.
Bingo!

Giving Children the Gift of Healthy Eating - Janet Lansbury

Giving Children the Gift of Healthy Eating - Janet Lansbury The old adage “We are what we eat” is true, but we are also the way that we eat. This distinction is particularly important when teaching kids how to eat balanced meals. The manner in which we present and handle mealtimes with our children is more vital to fostering healthy eating than the food ...

What if They Spend Their Whole Childhood Playing? - Happiness is here

What if They Spend Their Whole Childhood Playing? - Happiness is here “I couldn’t homeschool, my kids would just want to play all day!” So what if they did? Really. Think about it. What […]

How to Teach Kids Manners Without Asking for the 'Magic Word' - Raised Good

How to Teach Kids Manners Without Asking for the 'Magic Word' - Raised Good Why prompting, prodding and "teaching" children manners doesn't work and eight respectful, positive parenting strategies that do.

If winter has you daydreaming about your next warm-weather adventure, you’re not alone! This time of year can be hard to get outside with kids. So, why not use this season of staying warm and close to home to clean, prep, and maintain your gear for your upcoming adventures.

https://runwildmychild.com/winters-chores-for-kids/

Friendly reminder that impulse control is a developmental milestone that really starts developing around age four in neurotypical children, and takes several years to develop! A good way to know how your child is developing when it comes to impulse control is to play Simon Says or Red Light, Green Light. If they can't "win" when they're in a regulated, focused, and connected state, they're not going to be able to resist the impulse to play with shiny Christmas ornaments within reach! Help your little one out by putting chid-friendly, non-sacred ornaments on the bottom part of your tree.

📸: Occuplaytional Therapist

We can’t control what happens in the external world, but we can decide how we wish to show up every day.✨

(Don't let who you were talk you out of who you're becoming.-Bob Goff)

7 Gifts That Encourage Child-Directed Play - Janet Lansbury

7 Gifts That Encourage Child-Directed Play - Janet Lansbury In case you haven’t noticed, play is hot. Once taken for granted as a universal childhood right, in the last decades aggressive marketers of early learning products and a focus on standardized testing have horned in on this valuable developmental time in a child’s life. But lately, it seems our ...

"Children Are Constantly Healing Themselves"

"Children Are Constantly Healing Themselves" Wrestling was a regular feature of our curriculum at Woodland Park. Of course, it happened spontaneously, as it does in ever...

Credit unknown ❤️

is an awareness of the good things that happen in your life. Gratitude is both a fleeting emotion and a stable trait—you can be a grateful person or experience a moment. Gratitude involves a warm sense of for somebody or something—it's a sense of goodwill that you can feel in your heart. And gratitude can be cultivated​.

For more than two decades, Robert Emmons Ph.D., author and professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, has been studying the effects of gratitude on physical health, on psychological well-being, and on our relationships with others.

Dr. Emmons and his team studied thousands of people, from ages eight to 80, and found that people who practice gratitude consistently report a host of benefits:
💐Physically
•Stronger immune systems
•Less bothered by aches and pains
•Lower blood pressure
•Exercise more and take better care of their health
•Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking
💐Psychologically
•Higher levels of positive emotions
•More alert, alive, and awake
•More joy and pleasure
▪︎More optimism and happiness
💐Socially
•More helpful, generous, and compassionate
•More forgiving
•More outgoing
•Feel less lonely and isolated

So what's really behind the research results—why might gratitude have these transformative effects on people's lives?

The social benefits are especially significant here because, after all, gratitude is a social emotion. Gratitude is a relationship-strengthening emotion because it requires us to see how we've been supported and affirmed by other people.
Indeed, this cuts to the very heart of the definition of gratitude, which has two components. First, it's an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we've received. This doesn't mean that life is perfect; it doesn't ignore complaints, burdens, and hassles. But when we look at life as a whole, gratitude encourages us to identify some amount of goodness in our life.

The second part of gratitude is figuring out where that goodness comes from. We recognize the sources of this goodness as being outside of ourselves. It didn't stem from anything we necessarily did ourselves in which we might take pride. We can appreciate positive traits in ourselves, but true gratitude involves a humble dependence on others: We acknowledge that other people— or even higher powers, if you're of a spiritual mindset— gave us many gifts, big and small, to help us achieve goodness in our lives.

The Brain Science of Gratitude
Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a prominent positive psychology researcher and the author of “The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want,” believes that gratitude is a meta-strategy for health and well-being.
In her book she writes: “Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present-oriented.” Her research recommends gratitude as both a pathway to experiencing more positive emotions as well as a motivator for self-improvement.

An active practice of gratitude can increase neuron density and lead to greater emotional intelligence, as an article in Wharton's Healthcare Monthly describes. In neuroscience research, Hebb's Law says that “neurons that fire together wire together.” The more you practice gratitude, the more you strengthen the brain's neural circuits for gratitude, making it easier to focus on feelings of gratitude. When you start to focus on the things you already have in your life that are good, your brain becomes better at discovering similar things. For example, if you consciously notice how beautiful the stars in the night sky are, you will be more likely to notice the stars and feel gratitude again. Even though the stars are always there, the gratitude focus is like a signal to your brain to notice them.

Let's take a deeper dive into what happens to your brain on gratitude.

🧠Increased Dopamine
Research has found that when we express gratitude, the brain releases a surge of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in many vital functions, including pleasure, reward, motivation, attention, and bodily movements. This surge of dopamine gives you a natural high, creating good feelings that motivate you to repeat specific behaviors, including expressing gratitude even more.

Dopamine also increases the experience and duration of positive emotions. In short, it helps you feel good— and research shows that when you feel good, you are more likely to spread your positivity to those you work, live, and play with. As one study found, showing gratitude promotes prosocial behavior, the kind of behavior that endears you to others and moves you to act for the greater good rather than only for your own benefit.

🧠Increased Serotonin Production
In addition to increasing dopamine, gratitude has also been associated with increased serotonin production. In his book, The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time, researcher Alex Korb writes, “One powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin.”
Serotonin is often called the happiness chemical because it contributes to feelings of well-being, stabilizes our mood, and helps us feel more relaxed. According to Korb, the simple act of being grateful increases serotonin production in the anterior cingulate cortex.

🧠Greater Activity in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex
The medial prefrontal cortex is an area of the human brain linked to learning and making decisions. In one study, fMRI scans were performed with two groups; the first were directed to think of a recent time they felt really grateful and replay it in their mind, while the second group spoke their gratitude aloud as though it was being recorded to be shared with the person they expressed it to. The scans showed that there was a surge of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex area of the brain when subjects expressed gratitude that was different from the brain activity seen when the subjects were feeling grateful but didn't express it. The benefit to the prefrontal cortex doesn't come from just being grateful, but from expressing gratitude.

🧠Activation of the Brain's “Altruism” and Reward System Regions
A recent study found that practicing gratitude activates a part of the human brain—the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC)—associated with what the researchers describe as neural pure altruism, which basically means that your brain craves the experience of giving. In the study, two groups of participants were asked to write in a journal every day for three weeks. The first group was given general prompts unrelated to gratitude, while the second group was prompted to write about experiences of gratitude and things they felt thankful for. When the fMRI scans of both groups were compared, the results showed that the group that had focused on gratitude had greater activation of the VMPFC and neural pure altruism. The researchers concluded that “gratitude biases the brain's reward system toward rewards for others versus oneself.” By giving, you become more likely to want to connect with others by giving again in the future. Gratitude truly seems to be for the greater good.

Challenges to gratitude
Just because gratitude is good doesn't mean it's always easy. Practicing gratitude can be at odds with some deeply ingrained psychological tendencies.
One is the “self-serving bias.” That means that when good things happen to us, we say it's because of something we did, but when bad things happen, we blame other people or circumstances.

Gratitude really goes against the self-serving bias because when we're grateful, we give credit to other people for our success. We accomplished some of it ourselves, yes, but we widened our range of attribution to also say, “Well, my parents gave me this opportunity.” Or, “I had teachers. I had mentors. I had siblings, peers—other people assisted me along the way.” That's very different from a self-serving bias.
Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment. Sometimes with gratitude you just have to accept life as it is and be grateful for what you have.

Finally, gratitude contradicts the “just-world” hypothesis, which says that we get what we deserve in life. Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people. But it doesn't always work out that way, does it? Bad things happen to good people and vice versa.

This goes against a message we get a lot in our contemporary culture: that we deserve the good fortune that comes our way, that we're entitled to it. If you deserve everything, if you're entitled to everything, it makes it a lot harder to be grateful for anything. Even though these, often ingrained challenges can be difficult to overcome, they don't have to stop us from gratitude. So, how can we go beyond just occasionally feeling more grateful to actually becoming a more grateful person?

Ways to Cultivate Gratitude for yourself and your family
1.Keep a gratitude journal. Keep a small book on your bedside table and each evening write three things you were grateful for that day. Small colorful notebooks with blank, or large ruled paper are perfect for children's gratitude journals.
2. Have each family member write a gratitude letter to a mentor or teacher. Write the letters, preferably by hand on nice paper, explaining what they did, how it affected you, how you felt, and why it is so important to you still.
3. As a family, count how many things you can find to be grateful for in each room of your home.. See just how many things your kitchen has (like ice, running water, a beautiful view, etc.) that you can celebrate.
4.Listen to a guided gratitude meditation. For our children, there are many free guided meditations specifically geared towards younger people.
5.Start dinner conversation with a “what went well today?” one-sentence of reflection. This opens up dialog for family to share, and share about what inspires them.
6.Savor receiving thanks. Notice if you are better at thanking than you are at being thanked (this applies to a lot of people). Work on receiving thanks with grace.
7.Take a daily photo of something you are grateful for and create a gratitude album on your phone. Print out a yearly family gratitude photo album.
8.Try a family gratitude jar or tree. Take a decorative mason jar or a small wooden tree and place it some place you will see it every day, like the foyer or your kitchen counter. On a regular basis (daily or weekly), have each family member write a gratitude message. At the end of the year, read the messages together and enjoy the memories of gratitude.
9. Start a giving bucket. Find a container large and sturdy enough to hold handfuls of coins. At the end of the day, place loose change in the giving bucket. When the bucket becomes full, as a family, donate the money to a good cause within your community.

Practices like this can not only teach children the importance of gratitude but can show that gratitude impels people to “pay it forward”—to give to others in some measure like they themselves have received.

The importance of practicing gratitude, in small steps throughout your day, is a vital tool in maintaining optimal mental, physical, and emotional health. It also acts as a ripple of positivity in your relationships, social circles, and community. We can all practice gratitude and pay it forward for a better, kinder world.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/.../why_gratitude_is_good
https://chopra.com/.../the-neuroscience-behind-gratitude...
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/.../can_giving_thanks...

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[ID: an adult’s hands are seen close-up cradling a child’s hands, all the while the child’s hands are cradling a delicate flower. The words “Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present-oriented.” –Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky is written on top of the image.]

"BAD WEATHER" IS GOOD FOR YOU

"Studies suggest that inhaling these compounds improves our mood, while the abundance of negative air ions – created as water and air molecules collide making a molecule with an extra charge – can improve respiratory health and immunity."
Annabel Streets

KEEP READING....
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/29/bad-weather-is-good-for-you-take-a-walk-in-the-wind-and-rain

2022 are now available for purchase!

Permits can be purchased for $10 at Forest Service offices or at local vendors. Local vendors include: Albertson's in McCall, Ridley's in Weiser, Jay's Sinclair in Cambridge, Farmer's Supply Coop in Council, and C & M Lumber in New Meadows. Permits can also be purchased by searching "Payette Christmas" on Recreation.gov

Did you know that fourth graders with passes can get a free Christmas Tree Permit at Forest Service offices? The passes also allow free access for all children under 16 and up to three adults at hundreds of parks and forest recreation sites nationwide. Check out https://everykidoutdoors.gov for more information on obtaining passes and program guidelines.

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"It's great if a kid finds manipulating numbers comes naturally, or starts reading at age three. But it's just as wonderful if a child has a real sense of when things are out-of-place and likes organizing, or loves working with wood, or has a knack for growing things, or a seemingly innate sense of the right thing to say when someone is sad."
—Idzie Desmarais

ADHD, Creativity, and the Concept of Group Intelligence

ADHD, Creativity, and the Concept of Group Intelligence Two brains that work differently are better than two that work in the same way.

NEW on The Artful Parent today: 15 children's books PERFECT for Thanksgiving!

https://artfulparent.com/15-thanksgiving-childrens-books/

See any of your favorites in that book stack?🤔

THIS! Therefore they are safer.

Wisdom from Magda Ge**er. Thanks to ITANA and Richard Cohen’s “Zen and the Art of Early Childhood" for posting!

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Today is World Day for the Prevention of + Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse + Violence, a day to raise awareness of the issue of childhood sexual violence + advocate for change.

Survivors, you are not alone.

📣 Join our movement! https://keep-kids-safe.org/world-day/

Pediatrician is changing the way we think about teens with 'lighthouse parenting' tips

💯 agree that raising teens is awesome!!

Pediatrician is changing the way we think about teens with 'lighthouse parenting' tips Dr. Ken Ginsburg’s advice for parents is like a hug, TED Talk and Masterclass rolled into one.

❤️💚