How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Thinking about starting seeds for your family vegetable garden? Here’s step-by-step instructions on starting seeds and getting your kids involved.

How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids (Two photos, both of small white children leaning over bowls of dirt with their hands in it)

Watching my kids plunge their hands into a mix of seed starting mix and water on our back deck, I know there’s something simply right about what we’re doing. And messy. Very messy.

But after planning a garden with kids, seed starting is the next logical step. While I could fill my backyard garden with seedlings from the farmers’ market, starting everything from seed is both cheaper and more rewarding. It helps the kids see the full life-cycle of plants, from seed to fruit and back to seed again. It’s also a great way to get them involved before spring shows up.

So every year, I flip through the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, order too much, and start the process of bringing up seedlings. (If you’re not in the Southeast U.S., Home for the Harvest has a great list of sustainable vegetable seed companies.) While my older son (nicknamed Sprout, appropriately) has helped start seeds the last few years, my younger son started helping this year too.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

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This is Me at 35

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

The Beauty and Challenge of Turning 35 Years Old (Photo: Cookie cake with a birthday cake candle)

“What’s that?” my almost two-year-old asks, his constant question. He points at a circle of water on the pavement, rippling as droplets of water plunk down from the sky. It’s my 35th birthday and I’m out on a walk with him in the rain. I should be back in the house, cleaning before a party tomorrow. But I’m not. I’m just here with him, gazing at puddles.

“It’s a puddle,” I say. “You can splash in it.”

He tip-toes into the water. Then he stomps into the middle of the puddle, water splashing up onto his petite jeans.

A silver-haired lady walks by, a neighbor I don’t recognize. She says something I have difficulty understanding in an Eastern European accent. I finally catch that she’s asking my son’s age. I answer and she remarks, “She’s a good mom, letting you play in the puddle like that,” to my son.

This is me at 35.

35 is choosing the joy in the rain even if you “should” be doing something else. 35 is wondering what exactly strangers mean by their weird comments and choosing to take them in a positive way. 35 is following where your child and your heart leads.

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How to Plan a Vegetable Garden with Your Kids

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Planting vegetables in your and your kids’ garden is a great way to build a connection with their food source. But to get the most out of it, planning is key! Here’s how to effectively plan a family vegetable garden. 

How to Plan Growing Vegetables in Your Kids Garden (Photo: White woman and white boy reading a book labeled Week By Week Vegetable Garden)

The bright illustrations of the seed catalog beckoned us, reminding us of spring among the dreary February slush. The cover featured gnomes frolicking among eggplants and tomatoes. With my older son sitting next to me, I opened it up, my eyes scanning the options.

“What do you want to plant?” I ask him. His mouth twists in thought. “Tomatoes. I want to plant tomatoes.”

“We’ll definitely plant tomatoes,” I say, nodding.

It was garden-planning time once again. Each year, as we find ourselves sick of Washington D.C.’s endless freezing rain, this season comes along to greet us with hope.

Perhaps it’s my background in understanding the connections between things in nature, perhaps it’s my focus on sustainability and minimizing interference after the fact, or maybe it’s just my love of to-do lists, but planning is the most important step of gardening for me. Even though the garden itself often ends up a bit of a mess, I always start with a solid plan.

Planning has become even more important with kids. Thankfully, getting kids involved in planning from the beginning is a great way to introduce them to gardening.

Here’s how we plan our kids garden:

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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?

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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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When the Reality of Parenting Doesn’t Match Your Expectations

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

When the Reality of Parenting Doesn't Match Your Expectations. (Photo: Upholstered chair with a quilt with jungle animals on it)

This story was supposed to have a sweet and happy ending.

At midnight a few nights ago, just as I was about to go to bed, I heard my younger son (who is almost two) wailing. I rushed from the kitchen to his room. He was standing up in his crib, nothing visibly wrong. “Up up,” he demanded, hands raised.

So I picked him up. I walked over to his rocking chair, nestling him in my lap. I cradled him like a baby, one arm under his head, the other across his chest. My arm anchored him to me. His body sunk into mine.

“This might be the last time I do this,” I thought. “Take it in.” “Enjoy the moment.” “It passes so fast, you know.”

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How to Handle the 5 Stages of Annoying Child Behavior

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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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Wrestling with My Son’s Inconvenient Imagination

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Wrestling with My Son's Inconvenient Imagination. (Photo: Young white boy leaning against a statue of a dinosaur hatching from an egg)

When I hear parents say, “I don’t like playing pretend with my kids,” I think, “Oh, I love it!” But then I stop right there. I’ve realized that like all things in parenting, there’s an exception. A big exception.

That’s because I love playing pretend with my older son (nicknamed Sprout) when it’s time to actually play. Just not all of the time. He frequently doesn’t distinguish – or refuses to distinguish – when it’s time to play versus time to get stuff done. If he’s supposed to be getting ready for bed, he’d rather pretend to play drums or zoom around a roller coaster. Taking toys away is no use – the really good stuff is in his head. He can sit on the stuffed chair in his room and weave elaborate worlds out of whole cloth.

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