by Lynea Gillen | Sep 16, 2018 | Families, Parenting
One day while sharing a lesson on work-play balance, I asked the group of sixth graders I was working with, “What happens if you were to play all the time?” They said that you’d live with your parents for the rest of your life. “So, what happens if you work too much?”...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | Jul 8, 2018 | Families, Mindfulness
For many of us, summertime is travel time. Yet whether it’s a day at the beach, a weekend of camping, a week of sightseeing, or a longer journey abroad, it can be easy to get so wrapped up in the busy-ness of making trips happen or documenting every moment for...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | Jun 10, 2017 | Families
Could there possibly be any benefit in overscheduling a child’s life? Here’s how one mother defended it in a recent essay for the Washington Post: Of course, there is value in sitting in a corner reading, playing board games, climbing a tree or just daydreaming. But...
by Lynea Gillen | May 13, 2017 | Families, Mindfulness
By Lynea Gillen “But you do it, too, Mommy!” There’s nothing more frustrating as a parent than to realize that a child’s troubling behavior pattern is something they learned from you! How many of us have had that hollow feeling when we expect them to “do as I say, not...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | Apr 8, 2017 | Families, Mindfulness
“When I had my son, I knew how I didn’t want to raise him,” a mother we know recently told us. She didn’t want to parent as she had been parented. She didn’t want to repeat the patterns of her own past. “At the same time, I didn’t know how I did want to raise him,”...
by Lynea Gillen | Mar 26, 2017 | Families, Mindfulness
When a child acts out reactively, it’s the easiest thing in the world to respond just as reactively – with anger and impatience. And that response says far more than just “your behavior is upsetting, so please stop it.” It says that a big, fast, from-the-gut reaction...
