guest posts

Guest Post at Her View from Home: Teaching My Kids Grit

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

No one wants failure. Most of the time, it kind of sucks. But it is a fact of life. And one that kids need to deal with on a regular basis. They can – and will – learn about it on their own. But they can also learn about it from us as their parents.

I recently wrote about how I’m using my own failures to teach my kids how to deal with theirs at my first post for Her View from Home, Teaching My Kids Grit by Modeling How to Fail Well.

Here’s the first paragraph:

Riding to my first community bike ride of the season, I rejoiced. The blue skies and perfect temperature surely meant plenty of families would show up. But as I waited at the community center with my young son, my hopes faded. A biker riding up the parking lot piqued my attention before I realized it was one of the other volunteers. Not a single family showed up to my family bike ride. Instead, my kid, my two fellow volunteers and I pedaled over to the ice cream shop anyway.

Read the rest at Her View from Home! 

Guest Post: 7 Ways to Engage Young Children in Gardening

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Lasagna gardening in process

It’s spring! Along with a lot of rain and a lot of tourists here in D.C., it’s also gardening season. We’ve sowed seeds, sprouted plants, and had a baby eating mulch. While not exactly always on task, my kids do love the idea of gardening. How do I get them excited about it?

I recently wrote how I’ve involved them over at Happy Science Mom in the post 7 Clever Ways to Get Kids Excited about Gardening.

Here’s the first paragraph of the article:

“Messing around in the dirt is a classic childhood activity. Gardening is just messing around in the dirt with a purpose. Growing fruits and vegetables together can actually be one of the most fun and engaging activities that you do with your kids. In addition to the general benefits of being outside, gardening connects kids with their food, provides them with a sense of accomplishment, and is a great way to teach a variety of important skills. In my own life, I have seen my son get so excited about the cherry tomatoes in our garden that he eats them right off the plants!”

Read the rest over at Happy Science Mom!

Guest Post: This is the Least I Can Do

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

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Privilege is a word tossed around a lot these days, often in the phrase “Check your…” But even though the words are new, the idea is something I’ve known about for a long time. My mom emphasized how I was lucky to have what I had. Sure, my parents and I worked hard, but what we had wasn’t through hard work alone. I hope to pass that knowledge onto my kids.

Knowing how damn lucky and I my kids are motivates so much of my activism. I got the chance to write about it for Mamalode recently, in a piece called My Privilege Protects Me and My Sons From So Much – This is the Least I Can Do.

Here’s the first two paragraphs:

“President Obama, I know you have two daughters. I know you love them. But I want you to know that I don’t know if I’ll have kids. That’s because I don’t know if they’ll have clean water to drink,” said Eryn Wise, a 26-year-old organizer of the movement against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. As she stared out at the crowd gathered in front of the White House, I gasped just a little. Of course, I know this is a calculation women make every day – whether the world they would bring their child into is good enough. And too often, that answer is no. But to hear a young woman say it in person made me breathe in just a little more sharply.

That’s because it’s a question I’ve never had to face.

Read the rest at Mamalode!

Guest Post: Spring into STEM!

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Cleaning out the garden with Sprout

Gardening is all about science, from the life cycle of a plant to the nitrogen cycle of the soil. I combined both of those loves in a guest post for Raising Nerd about using gardening to teach your mini-nerds about science, engineering and math. It’s heavy on the ecology, but touches on a bunch of areas.

Here’s a preview:

Dirt covered the table. Dirt covered my son’s hair. Dirt covered everything. While I wanted to be annoyed, I really wasn’t. It was all in the name of learning – and growing food in our new garden.

While trowels and compost may not seem like obvious tools for teaching science, vegetable gardens can be incredible classrooms. That day, my son was learning about the life cycle of plants while we started tomato seeds.

The best part is that gardening provides the potential for kids of all ages to learn. While my three-year-old is just beginning to learn the basics, even I’ve learned quite a bit in my years of gardening. If you don’t garden yet, consider planting a few flowerpots so you can share the benefits with your kids.

Read the rest at Raising Nerd!

Guest Post: How to Raise Kids Who Value Biking and Walking

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Bicyclists on a triple bicycle in the Tour de Cookie

Among the many skills I want to pass on to my kids, getting around on their own power is actually pretty far up there. Biking and walking places provides exercise, helps get kids outside (with all of the associated benefits!), and provides them a level of independence that they won’t be able to get any other way.

That’s why I’m thrilled that I have a guest post up at Parent.co on teaching kids to value  bicycling and walking.

Here’s the first two paragraphs:

“In my day, we walked a mile uphill both ways in the snow” is the ultimate cliche for cranky parents to compare themselves to kids these days. But walking and biking have huge benefits beyond the ability to complain later on.

Active transportation establishes lifelong healthy habits for life, builds relationships with neighbors, minimizes greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change, and increases kids’ independence. While our society advertises a minivan as the ultimate family vehicle, it is actually possible to shift trips away from the car.

Read the rest at Parent.co!

Guest Post on Raising Nerd: Top 5 Movie Examples of Female Scientists Who Will Inspire Your Nerds to Greatness 

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment


Nerds unite! At least that’s what the bloggers at Raising Nerd and I did over the past two weeks, exchanging posts on each other’s blogs. In case you missed it, Scott Beller wrote on here about how to get your kids thinking about Santa using terrible movies and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Two weeks ago, I wrote for Raising Nerd about five movies featuring awesome female scientists, from the women of Ghostbusters to Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park. 

Here’s a preview of my post:

From dinosaur bones to aliens, some of the best Nerd inspiration comes from the movies. Unfortunately, female scientists and mathematicians notoriously have been under-represented on the big screen. But with an all-female Nerd team leading the Ghostbusters reboot and the story of forgotten NASA heroines finally being told in Hidden Figures starting December 25, it seems like things just might be changing for the better in Hollywood.
For more, check out the post on Raising Nerd! 

Guest Post: Not Perfect, Still Amazing

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

shannon-brescher_image

The last two years were very challenging and last winter, the difficulties started seriously wearing on my mental health. Thankfully, participating in Stratejoy’s Holiday Council workshop (along with an appointment with a therapist) helped a lot. I wanted to give back, so I wrote a blog post for their website.

The post, called Not Perfect, Still Amazing, is finally up! Part of their Two Truths and a Lie series, it talks through a lot of the issues I deal with but I hope it helps you too.

With their forays into mutant beings, aliens, and time travel, I don’t usually look to superhero television shows for practical advice. But in Supergirl, I’ve found a couple of heroines that have taught me a lot about what means – and doesn’t – to be enough.

Read the rest on Stratejoy’s website! (And isn’t that photo hilarious? That’s a fantastic summary of my life right now.)

Guest Post on Huffington Post: Why I Love My First Child More than my Second (For Now)

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Kissing my boys

One of the biggest fears when I was pregnant with my second child was that I wasn’t going to love him as much as my first. And of course, people say, “Oh, I was afraid of it, but it just wasn’t true. I loved the second so much as soon as I saw their face.” Well, that hasn’t been entirely true for me. But upon reflection, I realized that it wasn’t such a bad thing. I write about why in a post on the Huffington Post: Why I Love My First Child More than my Second (For Now).

I love my firstborn more than my second. 

I love my second and expect to love him just as much as my first – someday. Just not yet.

My second child was born just six weeks ago. Like all newborns, he eats, sleeps and poops. I’ve spent most of my time since then soothing him, nursing him, and reading. I just can’t gaze at my baby for hours on end. 

Read the rest at the Huffington Post!

Guest Post on Pregnant Chicken: The Seven Stages of Picking a Name for Your Baby

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

While the physical discomfort was bad, the most stressful thing for me about pregnancy was picking a freaking name for the baby. (Especially this time around, when Little Bird’s labor was bizarrely quick. But that’s a story for another time.) As I’m sure I’m not the only one who struggles with this, I wrote a guest post called the Seven Stages of Picking a Name for Your Baby for Pregnant Chicken.

Besides labor, picking a name is one of the hardest things about having a baby. It’s rumored that there are couples who have a name for each gender picked out before conception. But for the rest of us, it’s a process fraught with uncertainty, frustration and confusion. We also kind of hope those prepared parents’ kid changes their name during a quarter-life crisis. While not everyone goes through these, here are seven common stages of naming a baby:

Read the rest at Pregnant Chicken!

Guest Post at Good Mother Project: Unexpected Complications

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Trigger Warning: Miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pregnancy complications

As I mentioned a few months ago, I had some significant complications with my pregnancy. In my tenth week, I had substantial bleeding – enough to go to the emergency room.  I recount this experience in a guest post called Unexpected Complications at the Good Mother Project, from the initial discovery to the lifting of the restrictions.  (This essay was originally written over a month ago, so we now know that the true resolution was actually wonderful.)

At the ten-week mark in my pregnancy, I was lying on the living room couch, still recovering from putting my toddler son to bed. Suddenly, I felt a bubble and then wetness. Running to the bathroom, I saw blood. My breath faltered and then emerged in gasps.

Read the rest of the post at the Good Mother Project.