Child of the Redwoods: Podcast

It’s a magical time of year. You’re putting up a Christmas tree, stringing lights, and dancing to Jingle Bells. Your little one is looking up at you with a bit of a twinkle in his eye and also some trepidation. Who is this Santa guy anyway, and is he a friend of the family or creepy foe? Spoiler alert just in case you have little ears listening with you - I am a huge proponent about telling childr...

Have you heard of the lifechanging magic of gratitude? It’s been “trending” online for a while now, so I’m assuming you have. But…are you sure you’re doing it right? When reflecting on my family’s tradition of being “thankful” at our Thanksgiving meal, I realized why answering this question round-robin wasn’t bringing me a true sense of gratitude. Ditch the whining and join me in an exploration of...

Here’s some for you, bunny. Now hedgehog wants some more! Some for me, too. And you, too, Mommy! Because pretend play, imaginative play, and fantasy play is SO hotly debated in the Montessori community, I get TONS of questions about it. Parents want to know — if a Montessori education emphasizes the real world, is there room for playing pretend? Or is that a waste of my child’s time? Today I am an...

  There will be times when everything you do makes your child happy. Where laughter and loving snuggles seem to go on forever. And there will be times when the opposite is true. When every moment you thought was destined for joy ends in tears, whining, tantrums, and anger. Just like the wildfire that burns acres and acres in nature, there are wildfires of the heart that spark without warning...

I know some independent, confident women who need, in fact even crave a lot of space away from their partners. I’m not one of them. An intensely private introvert with few close IRL girlfriends, I picked a soulmate and can’t ever get enough time with him. So when he started traveling for work, often out of the country for a week or more at a time while I stayed at home alone with two young childre...

I loved being a Stay-At-Home mom so much I didn’t want it to end! Eventually, I realized that it didn’t have to. I was fully capable of giving my children what they needed outside of a school system. These days, I teach other parents how to educate their little ones at home with the Montessori method. Every semester I start a new session of Homeschool of the Redwoods I am asked by so many, “What w...

Two is company; three’s a crowd. Not so with homeschooling! Even one extra child in your home can make things feel overwhelming and uncertain when you are taking on the responsibility of providing an education at home. They grab each other’s toys. They vie for your attention. They refuse to share and hit each other and say mean things. How can you possibly help them get any work done?! In this epi...

Sometimes we Montessorians get so excited about paving the way for the child's independence that we forget that one of the MAJOR paths toward this end already exists in the child's natural initial dependence on us. Any time we encounter tools for baby care, including jumpers, walkers, and exersaucers, we look upon them with skepticism - for anything we put a child "into" must be an aid to developm...

So you want to homeschool. And you need to bring in an income. And you have BIG DREAMS for your career. Is it possible to do it all? Can you actually successfully homeschool your child and work at the same time? The days of the self-sacrificing housewife-slash-homeschooler with only a vested interest in the future of her offspring are gone, my friend. Today’s homeschooling parents are often highly...

It is a universally accepted fact that children learn through play. In Montessori, we know that the type of play also makes a big difference. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for modern parennts to be a little particular about which toys serve to help nurture the whole child, and which don’t measure up. But this episode isn’t about what toys are best for children! Nope….we’re troubleshooting what...

The development of perseverance as a life-long skill starts when children are very, very little. By offering opportunities for independence and assistance only when necessary, we guide our children along this path. Child development, however, is never a linear process. Sometimes our children go through phases where they are begging for our assistance when we know that they are perfectly capable of...

We expect our babies to cry, but when our toddlers or older children learn how to talk, we assume those days are over. Not so, dear parent. In fact, while it feels completely unreasonable and frustrating to you, your child might be crying for a variety of reasons that are completely valid for someone so young. In this episode, I read a letter from a mama whose 3 year old seems to cry all the time!...

Montessori "lessons" look shockingly different for toddlers than they do for preschool-aged children. There is no need to make things complicated. In fact, the more complicated and rigid your lesson, the more likely your toddler is to run away, shout "No!", make a huge mess, or to just outright do the opposite of what you had intended for her to do!  When working with little toddlers, it pays...

When your child asks for a hug after behaving badly, you may feel like you are rewarding his negative attention-seeking behavior! No one wants that! But is it truly a reward? Or should you give in to the request for a cuddle? This situation can cause many parents to feel conflicting emotions, just like this mama did in her letter to me.  We're going to take a little deep dive into the negativ...

Nurturing your relationship is essential for a happy, healthy life together, but when parenting a baby or toddler, sometimes it just feels too hard to send your partner or spouse a lot of extra love and attention. You end up bickering over things that really don’t matter. It might even be hard to remember the days when you fell in love and hoped for a baby. Maybe you feel sick at heart and nostalg...

Is homeschooling an ideal option? As a former public and Montessori private school teacher, I didn't think so. Neither did my husband David. Both of us came from teacher-centric families in support of the  public school system.  But then we had children, debated about whether to send them to preschool, and finally just jumped into homeschooling and haven't looked back.  Now, with tw...

Some children seem to just be born with a bigger personality. You know the type. Often, they’ve got older, more reserved siblings. This is the child who can tantrum the loudest, needs to be first in line, always wants to win every game, lies unapologetically, and walks into the middle of the room with such contagious enthusiasm you just can’t help but be captivated by her. You just gotta love this...

But whyyyyyy do they whine?! And what do we dooooooo?! When children whine, it can make any reasonable parent feel irritated, and I promise you I have been there, done that, and learned lots. As we dive in to this topic, I want to share a letter with you from a loving, empathetic mama who could use a wee bit of help in this parenting department. There really is a key to stopping the whining long t...