Out-Of-The-Box Encouragement
Andrea Ramsay Speers
We’ve talked before about how important encouragement is for kids. It contributes to healthy self esteem, it fosters courage and a willingness to make a mistake but try again, [...]
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7 Habits Of Highly Effective Communicators
Andrea Ramsay Speers
Many of us take our communication style for granted. We just say what we’re thinking. We might assume that what we’re thinking is “common sense.” Maybe we don’t give much [...]
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Hands-On Parenting: Too Much Of A Good Thing
Andrea Ramsay Speers
I first became aware of the term “helicopter parent” many years ago. It was in an article by Amanda Robb in the July 2008 issue of O Magazine. The term was coined by former [...]
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Listening To Our Kids
Andrea Ramsay Speers
How well do you listen to your kids? Many parents would pat themselves on the back when it comes to keeping communication flowing between themselves and their children. But [...]
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Making The Most Of Summer Birthdays (Even If It’s An Un-Birthday)
Andrea Ramsay Speers
As a winter baby, I never had to experience the disappointment of inviting friends to a party but having them all at the cottage on the appointed day. Or of not knowing how [...]
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Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say
Andrea Ramsay Speers
Following through as a parent is hard. Who among us has not threatened to cancel Christmas or a vacation, knowing full well that we’d never do it? Who hasn’t said to [...]
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Terrible Teens
Andrea Ramsay Speers
Many of my parenting clients with young children are already worrying about the teen years. They’ve heard horror stories – or remember being a horror story to their own [...]
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Whose Work Is Housework?
Andrea Ramsay Speers
Not many of us relish doing housework. Most of us hardly get a kick out of cleaning the mini-blinds and baseboards. Kids? They tend to enjoy it even less. But if we all [...]
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Time To Think
Andrea Ramsay Speers
In the daily grind of making lunches, arriving on time, homework, and all of the other activities that fill our days, it can be easy to lose sight of our big-picture parenting [...]
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Fears And Phobias
Andrea Ramsay Speers
Kids develop fears. It could be separation anxiety as a toddler, a fear of clowns as a preschooler, or a dread of public speaking as a school-ager. About one in 30 children [...]
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