parenting philosophy

How To Stay Sane When You Travel With Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Stay Sane When You Travel With Kids. (Photo of white mom holding a blond baby on her shoulders, walking down a path with trees.)

2014: Holding my one-year-old, I stared up at fireworks and started belting out Let It Go. Tears streamed down my face. It was the end of a week-long trip to Walt Disney World, during which I spent most of the time imagining my kid getting trampled. Earlier that week, my hands shook and mind went blank in the Tomorrowland snack bar as I had my first identifiable panic attack. That perfect girl is gone, indeed.

2017: Leaning over my four-year-old in his car seat in a parking lot in Nevada, I thought, “I hope he’s okay.” Right on cue, his cheeks filled, he leaned forward, and spewed out water and pretzel bits all over me. Touching my hand to my hair, it was wet and sticky. We were half-way through a three-hour car ride to Zion National Park. I breathed deep and said, “Hey honey, it’s going to be okay.” Then I got out the baby wipes and went to work cleaning up everything up.

What on earth happened in-between? In that three years, I had a second kid, started dealing with my anxiety, and grew so much as a parent. But I also learned a ton about traveling with kids. In-between the trip in 2014 and the one in 2017, we’ve been to Las Vegas, Cape Cod, multiple camping excursions, and so many day trips. While the anxiety still flairs, adjusting my expectations and my own behavior has helped me stay sane when we travel with kids.

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How to Prevent Raising An Entitled Kid

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

How to Prevent Raising an Entitled Kid. Want to raise a respectful kid who doesn't think they deserve everything? Try these seven things our family is doing! (Picture: Victorian illustration of a little girl asleep on the floor, clutching a box of chocolates with a dog next to her)

“Why did he think he was better than everyone else?” my four year old asked as we were reading the picture book Little Blue Truck. In the story, a huge construction truck comes barreling through a farm, proclaiming, “I’ve got important things to do!” As a consequence of his pride, he slides into a mud puddle and his huge tires get stuck. In the world of trucks, he’s a bit of an entitled brat.

Answering my son’s question was tough. Why do some people think they’re better than others? Why do some people think they deserve more or better than other people do? As challenging it is to answer these, they’re essential questions to figure out if we’re going to raise kids who respect and value other people. In other words, to prevent raising entitled kids.

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What is Sustainability?

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What is Sustainability? Sustainability is about a lot more than what we buy - it's about community. (Photo: A tree with red berries)

Pushing my son on the biggest tree swing I’ve ever seen, he declared, “This is fun!” As I half-listened to a talk on medicinal plants, I had to agree. We were at the second annual Paw Paw Festival at Long Creek Homestead, the home of a local family who grows much of their own food based on ecological principles. While we go to these events because they’re fun, it’s much more than that. I bring my family to these events so we can have a little glimpse into a possible potential, beautiful future. That’s because these kind of community events embody social and environmental sustainability to me.

Sustainability has become such a buzzword it’s easy to lose the true meaning. Companies sell us “green living” via labels on products that promise they will be safer for your family. (Never mind anyone else’s family.) But to create a just world that offers opportunities to all people in a way that’s environmentally sound, we have to go deeper.

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Five Benefits of Having a Strong-Willed or Stubborn Kid

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Finding living with a stubborn kid challenging? Here are five benefits of having a strong-willed kid to keep in mind at the toughest of times!

Five Benefits of Having a Strong-Willed or Stubborn Kid. Have a stubborn kid who won't do what you want? Here's some benefits you may not have considered! (Photo: Four-year-old white boy sitting on top of a rock structure.)

“Which set of pajamas do you want? The space ones or the biking alligators?” I asked my three-year-old.

“Nope,” he answered. Nope is the casual middle finger of answers. So much for offering choices.

“How about these?” I said, holding up a pair with bears on them.

“Nope,” he said, lounging with his hands behind his head on his bed like it was a pool floatie in Malibu.

After a few more choices, he finally acquiesced to wearing a pair. We don’t go through this particular back-and-forth every night, but it’s just one in his bag of tricks to delay bedtime.

My son – nicknamed Sprout – is one of those kids who doesn’t want to do anything that’s demanded of him. “Because I said so” is a foreign phase to him. He wants a good justification for every decision and preferably to feel like he came up with the idea himself.

Part of this is my fault, for better or worse. Our family practices positive parenting, which is largely focused on validating children’s feelings and perspectives while teaching them to do the same for others. And as a science writer and communicator, I love explaining our choices.

But some of it is just his personality. I’m pretty sure if we tried to be more authoritarian, he’d just dig his heels in harder. The times that I start to get bossy go downhill very quickly. Despite the fact that having a stubborn kid with a strong will is sometimes a pain in the butt, there are some definite advantages to it for our family.

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What Gardening Has Taught Me About Parenting

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

What Gardening Has Taught Me About Parenting. Kids and seeds are more alike than you may realize! (Photo: Young boy playing in the dirt with tomato plants behind him.)

“Look, those tomatoes are red! Can I eat them?” Sprout asks me, hardly waiting to pop them in his mouth.

“Just wait to get inside for me to wash them,” I say, brushing aside the overgrown zucchini leaves as I walk towards the garden gate. He mock puts them in his mouth and I roll my eyes at him.

Getting inside, he hands me the tiny tomatoes for me to place in a small orange plastic bowl and rinse off. I hand it back and he sits down on the couch to chomp down. (Despite our “only eat at the table” rule.)

I reflect on how much he’s learned from spending time with me in the garden: knowing how to plant seeds, understanding the role of weeds, composting, and judging when vegetables are ripe.  But I also think about the life lessons the garden has taught me that apply to raising kids.

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The 10 Things Parents Must Teach Gifted Children

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What do we need to teach gifted kids about life before they go out into the world? There’s a lot more they need to know than calculus and Shakespeare. 

The 10 Things Parents Must Teach Gifted Children (Photo: Kid with a backpack walking away)

Sitting in the private school’s admissions office, my mom faced a choice about my education. The admissions officer told her how much smaller the classes were than public school, how girls felt less pressure when they didn’t compete for boys’ attention, and how much more they could meet her gifted daugher’s needs.

But the tuition was as expensive as you would expect for a private school. We were a solidly upper-middle-class family, but a salesman’s and teacher’s salaries together meant we weren’t exactly rolling in the dough. Private school meant no new house. No vacations for years. Hardly any luxuries at all.

But wasn’t her daughter’s education worth it? Wasn’t public school going to hold her back? Would she be able to fulfill her potential?

As the daughter in question, I now know my mom made the right decision. With more hoopla these days than ever about the beauty and struggles of raising “gifted” kids, it feels odd to me. Wasn’t this stuff we should have figured out 20 years ago?

As a “gifted” kid who had lots of gifted friends growing up and is now an adult, I’ve thought a lot about what society does and doesn’t do well in terms of how we treat “smart” kids. From my experience and reading, here’s what parents must teach gifted children:

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Raising A Quiet Wild Child: How to Explore Nature with Introverted Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

How to Explore Nature with Introverted or Quiet Kids. Do you want to spend a lot of time outside with your kid but they aren't the adventurous or "wild" type? Here's how to make the most of it for both of you! (Photo: Child in red jacket walking in a forest)

“Look, there’s a rabbit!” I exclaim to my four-year-old son, trying to keep my voice down.

“Where?” he asks, as I point to the animal.

“Do you see it? Let’s be quiet so we don’t scare it away.”

“Yeah,” he replies, as he watches the bunny twitch its tail. It looks at us, then goes back to munching on the clover. It doesn’t think we’re a threat.

While the rabbits in our neighborhood do tend to be bold, my son’s calm demeanor definitely allowed us to watch it longer than if he had a louder reaction.

While we may think of a “wild child” as boisterous, exploring nature isn’t limited to adventurous extroverts. In fact, more quiet or introverted children can get just as much, if not more, out of being outside. While he sprints and yell-sings inside, my son is naturally a bit cautious and calm outside.

Here’s what I’ve learned from exploring with him:

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Parenting through the Looking Glass

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Parenting through the Looking Glass. What an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland taught me about adulthood, childhood, and parenting. (Picture: Illustration from Alice in Wonderland of Alice, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter at the tea party.)

The fairy-like White Queen gazed at me intently. Lying on a table, her look invited me into Wonderland, a place of childhood on the edge of adulthood. Then she shoved herself backwards, flew across the table, and jumped to her feet, towering over us.

This was all quite literal.

Last weekend, Chris and I took our first trip by ourselves since Sprout was born. The trip was nominally celebrating our eleventh wedding anniversary. So we were in New York City, watching a play put on in a former mental institution. The play – based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and the real-life relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell – sparked insight for me about childhood, parenting, and how both are more complex than they seem.

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7 Tips for Bringing Kids to Ethnic Restaurants and Others Without Children’s Menus

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

7 Tips for Bringing Kids to Ethnic and Other Restaurants without Kids Menus. Want to bring your kids to more restaurants but uncertain if they'll eat anything or be able to sit still? Check out these tips! (Photo: Ethiopian food in background)

“Where do you want to eat?” Anyone who has ever gone to a restaurant with their family has faced this question, probably followed by a drawn-out conversation about likes, dislikes, convenience, and whatever dish you got there last time. If you have young children, you may automatically exclude whole categories from consideration. You may never even consider bringing kids to ethnic restaurants and others without children’s menus.

But if you’ve always longed to check out that new Indian place but don’t want to spend money on a babysitter, there may be hope. It’s actually easier to bring kids to restaurants that don’t specifically cater to families than you think.

While it may seem intimidating, I’ve successfully brought my toddler to restaurants that specialize in a variety of cuisines, including fancy Italian, Ethiopian, Peruvian, and Japanese food.

Here are a few tips that can help:

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How I’m Teaching My Sons to Be Feminists

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Want to teach your boys to be feminists? Here are seven ways our family is raising feminist sons.

How I'm Teaching My Sons to Be Feminists (Photo: T-shirt saying "Kind Like Daddy")

When I was pregnant, I imagined what life might be like if I had a little girl. I envisioned teaching her to stand up for herself, buying her dresses with science symbols, letting her get dirty, and being an example of a strong woman for her. I wasn’t going to stereotype her or allow anyone else to, thank you very much. In short, I considered how to teach her to be a feminist.

But as it turned out, I have two sons. Or at least assigned male at birth.

At first, I thought I had to reconsider my whole approach. Most of the things I imagined sharing with my theoretical daughter – my love of the outdoors, science, and geeky things – are typically coded male.

But I realized that the same principles applied to raising a feminist, no matter what gender my children are. While the world may try to reinforce my sons’ male privilege, it’s my husband’s and my responsibility as their parents to do better. The girls and women in their future lives need them to be feminists. Plus, boys need feminism too – the patriarchy hurts everyone.

Here are a few of the ways we’re trying to raise feminist sons:

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