parenting philosophy

How to Reduce Sibling Conflict Between Your Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Experiencing a lot of sibling conflict? If your kids are always arguing, try these eight approaches to building respectful relationships between your kids. 

How to Reduce Sibling Conflicts Between Your Kids (Photo: Two young white children walking down concrete stairs with the older one helping the younger)

“It’s mine!” my four-year-old yelled, trying to pull the slinky away from my two-year-old. In response, my two-year-old scowled and responded, “Mine!” holding it even closer to his chest.

In moments like this, I wonder if we’re raising our kids to respect each other.

The next day, my older son (nicknamed Sprout) peeled stickers off a sheet and handed them to my younger son (nicknamed Little Bird) for a 15 full minutes. That was despite the fact that I knew my older son wanted those stickers for himself. As I listened to him ask his brother over and over, “What sticker do you want, Little Bird?” I smiled. Maybe we aren’t doing a bad job after all.

While there are definitely days I question what the hell is going on, our kids honestly have a great relationship. Here’s what we did that I think has helped build that relationship and reduce sibling conflict:

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10 Big Ways Your Family Can Accumulate Less Stuff

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 8 Comments

Want to reduce the flow of stuff into your house? Here are 10 principles to follow to accumulate less stuff (particularly toys) and cut down on clutter.

10 Big Ways Your Family Can Accumulate Less Stuff (Photo: Toy plastic house and wooden walker on the floor)

Looking at the spread of toys and books scattered across our basement floor, I shake my head. “We have way too much stuff,” I think. “And we have birthdays coming up.”

Like many families, we suffer from the disease of Too Much Damn Stuff. While it’s frustrating, I take some hope in the fact that the flow of stuff into our house has slowed substantially in the four years we’ve been parents.

We’ve worked hard to cut down on the amount of toys in particular because having fewer toys can encourage creativity and reduce stress. When presented with four toys or 16 toys, toddlers who could choose from four toys played with individual toys longer and played with them in a larger variety of ways.  Laura at the blog YouShouldGrow has nine more ways that kids benefit when they have fewer toys. For more on the advantages of having fewer toys, be sure to check out the book and website Simplicity Parenting.

From an environmental point of view, producing and shipping all of these things uses natural resources and energy. Not to mention the waste when you need to get rid of them. Of course, buying all that stuff costs money that can be used in other ways!

As I’m (clearly) far from an expert in this realm, I asked my fellow bloggers for their tips on accumulating less stuff as a parent of young children:

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How to Limit Advertising’s Influence on Your Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Limit Advertising's Influence on Your Kids (Photo: TV playing a McDonald's advertisement)

“I think they’re trying to sell you beer,” stated my son after a Bud Light commercial during a football game. While I didn’t really need my kid to be watching beer commercials, I was proud of his analytical skills. After all, he understood that commercials are more than just fun little videos.

An average kid above the age of two sees more than 25,000 commercials a year. Although peers influence what toys children want, commercials play a major role in preferences. Ads also reinforce the mindset of needing to buy the latest and greatest “stuff,” regardless of what you already own. As hardly anyone advertises the benefits of playing outside, eating vegetables, and buying simple toys, most of us want to counteract advertisements’ influence.

My kid is inquisitive, so we’ve used his questions as an opportunity to help him become more savvy about advertisements. Here are four steps that can help you teach your kid to be more media-aware:

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The One Piece of Parenting Advice that Has Never Failed Me

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

The One Piece of Parenting Advice that Has Never Failed Me (Photo: Young white child holding the hand of a white adult)

“I can’t ask questions?” I asked my husband, my voice squeaking at the end of the sentence. “What am I supposed to say?”

When we decided to pursue speech therapy for my older son, we didn’t know what to expect. But whatever I was imagining, reducing the number of questions I asked my child wasn’t one of them. At the time, I felt like the speech therapist took away a core tool in my parenting and communications toolbox.

But since then, I’ve realized that no matter what parenting strategy I use, there’s one piece of parenting advice that has never failed me.

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How Parents Can Help Prevent Toxic Anger

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Worried about toxic anger in children and society today? Here are five steps towards supporting the kids around you in ways that will help them learn how to manage emotions in a healthy way. 

How Parents Can Help Prevent Toxic Anger (Photo: White boy with a angry or annoyed expression on his face)

Content warning: School and other mass shootings, domestic abuse

“That could have been our school,” I said, blinking, my breath catching in my throat. I think the first time I uttered that phrase was after the Columbine shooting in 1999, where two kids killed 12 students and one teacher. At the time, I was a junior in a large suburban, middle-class high school – one suspiciously like Columbine.

Back then, I didn’t think that I could be repeating that phrase so often as an adult. How I could have said it nine times in 2017 or a horrifying seven times by February of 2018 alone.

Like after every mass shooting, there’s endless discussions about how to prevent another one. Sadly, “thoughts and prayers” won’t cut it. I’m a huge proponent of gun control, especially bans on high-caliber automatic rifles and access to them for domestic abusers and others with violent histories. If you agree with me, I strongly recommend going over to Everytown for Gun Safety’s website and supporting that organization however you can.

But there’s another major factor that doesn’t get talked about enough: toxic masculinity and the anger that goes with it. In the wake of these shootings, people constantly talk about improving our mental health system. But the vast majority of people committing these crimes aren’t suffering from depression, anxiety, schizophrenia or other diseases we associate with mental health.

No, they’re suffering from anger. Uncontrolled, unstoppable anger. Rage.

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What Happens When You Just Trust Kids to Play?

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Young white boy looking at a large artificial mountain with green slides coming down the front of it

Kids of all ages and sizes were swarming a giant, gray artificial mountain. If it didn’t have green slides down the face of it, it would be easy to mistake for real rock. My older son stood on a small hill in front of it, taking in the scene. Then he ran down the hill with a yell, ready to scramble up the rock face.

Last weekend, we went to Badlands Playspace, the closest thing we’re probably going to have in our area to an adventure playground. While it was inside and they didn’t have any way to set fires like the ones in Sweden, they did have the mountain and they use real power tools in their classes.

Although the facility impressed me, the kids themselves struck me the most. One could easily imagine something like this devolving into a Lord of the Flies scenario, with utterly dangerous chaos. Sure, they tell you that kids need to take risks, but you don’t really believe it, right?

But what I saw gave me faith.

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How to Handle the 5 Stages of Annoying Child Behavior

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Handle the Five Stages of Annoying Child Behavior (Photo: White woman with her head in her hand)

“O kookamonga flakes, o kookamonga flakes, how lovely are your branches!” sang my older son, to the tune of O Christmas Tree. Over and over again. On and off for more than two hours.

Near the end, my hand was twitching. I never, ever wanted to hear those words again. It wasn’t bad behavior – just deeply, deeply annoying.

But the next time he sang it, that feeling started to fade.

Having mothered through a great deal of annoying behavior – and certainly facing much more in the future – I’ve realized parents’ reactions to this behavior proceed through five stages. They’re much like the stages of grief, but hopefully funnier. Whether your kid is a nose-picker, whiner, or a constant singer like mine, knowing these stages might help you work through them a little faster.

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How Becoming a Chef Turned My Husband into a Feminist Role Model

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

White man in a white chef's jacket in a classroom, holding a piece of French bread pizza

Two weeks ago, I was finally able to call my husband a chef. Looking at him in his white culinary school jacket with his name on it, I realized this situation wasn’t quite what I imagined when I watched him walk across that stage. Because instead of him being the head of a high-end fancy restaurant, he was teaching a bunch of preschoolers how to cook.

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50+ Awesome Acts of Kindness for Kids and Families

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Want to teach your kids kindness but don’t know where to start? From learning how to listen to fighting poverty, here are more than 50 acts of kindness with real, concrete impacts for kids and families to do together. 

Text: 50 Awesome Acts of Kindness for Kids and Families; Background photo: Hands clasped together

“Was that a kind thing to do?” I asked my four-year-old right after he snatched a toy away from his younger brother.

He looked down and said, “No.”

“What would be a better choice?” I said, hoping he can figure it out on his own.

Teaching kids what kindness is and how to demonstrate it in everyday life isn’t easy. Even adults struggle to listen to people without judgment or jumping in with their own opinions.

It gets even harder when you think of kindness beyond being “nice.” Compassion and respect for all people involves examining a number of our society’s toxic systems and working to change them.

It can be overwhelming.

To make it a little easier, I’ve assembled a list of 50 acts of kindness for you and your kids to explore together. I’ve broken them into five categories, from building a kind mindset to challenging inequality. Many of these draw on research from Harvard University on encouraging kindness in children. You can get more information on almost every activity by clicking through on the link.

To get five days worth of in-depth descriptions of some of the most high-impact activities right to your email, be sure to subscribe to our Family Kindness Challenge!

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How to Reduce Your Mom Guilt and Still Love Your Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Do you suffer from mom guilt, even when you spend as much time as possible with your kids? Try out these three tactics so you can be a less stressed, more content mom. 

How to Reduce Your Mom Guilt and Still Love Your Kids. (Photo: White woman and baby sitting on a furry beanbag.)

The last time my husband and I had a date night, my eighteen-month-old (nicknamed Little Bird) roamed his grandparents’ house, looking for us in every room. He called out “Mama. Mama” in this tiny little voice.

Thanks for the stab through the heart, kid.

Mom guilt is so real. Sometimes it’s deserved, sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes it doesn’t matter because your kids love you so much that they’re distraught if you leave for a split second, much less the entire evening. Yet we’re told to “take time for ourselves” and make sure you have “me time.” Good luck being able to minimize the mom guilt and still carry out self-care.

On top of the self-care piece, mom guilt actually hurts rather than helps our parenting. If we’re constantly paralyzed by feeling inadequate, then we can’t fully appreciate the times we are present.

As the Queen of Guilt – mom and all other types – perhaps it’s ridiculous of me to write this article. But because of my tendency to run right into Guilt City, no stops ahead, I’ve had to deal with it straight-on for the sake of my mental and emotional health. Taking these steps has helped me reduce my anxiety significantly. Hopefully, they’ll help you too.

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