This spring semester has been one for the books. None of us will ever forget the year that our classrooms were empty, and your homes we’re overflowing! Hopefully, by this point, you’ve gotten into a groove with your children’s school, but by now they may be bouncing off the walls a bit as they’re missing their friends and their routine. There’s only so much video gaming that can substitute for actual activity. It may be time to implement P.E. 

This is a scary time for all of us, and our children are feeling it more than we might realize. Whether or not they understand the things being said in hushed tones around them by the adults in their lives, they can feel the energy we’re all exuding, and in many cases, it’s not positive. Although your preschool children lack the language skills to really comprehend the detail of what’s happening around us, they’re experiencing everything you are. 

We are all spending a lot of time at home these days, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay inside. Your kindergarten child is likely already showing serious signs of cabin fever, as are the rest of us. So the types of activities you engage in during the day can relieve the stresses of the whole family spending your days and nights in such tight quarters. There’s one childhood activity that has the potential to be fun, active, and outdoors. 

How’s everyone doing out there? These are strange times we find ourselves in, and we are all learning to cope with a temporary new normal. Many parents in our community are feeling the brunt of this shift in our culture as they learn how to balance working from home, parenting, and teaching school all at once. We want you to know that we see you. We see how hard you’re working and we’re grateful for the way you’re stepping to help us teach your kids when we can’t be with them. 

The worldwide outbreak of Covid-19 is unprecedented in modern history and has forced people out of their normal daily routines and into their homes. Restaurants, municipal offices, and even schools shut their doors in a fashion similar to what we see during hurricane season. Across the state, schools closed on a mandatory basis in order to limit the number of people gathered in one place and this left lots of people scrambling to find child care solutions and nontraditional ways to educate their children.

For most parents, there is a moment of reckoning when you retrieve your sick child from school for the first time. It’s amazing how quickly they get sick and then, in turn, get your whole family sick. This occurs first in kindergarten when your children come into very close contact with a wide variety of other children and none of them have the same immunity to illness as adults. So how do you cope with the risk of sending your kids away to school and getting them back sick? 

When the world around you seems to be going absolutely bonkers it can be difficult to avoid that same chaos in our homes. So we do what we think is best and look for parenting tips that help us make the next best choice for our kids. But for any piece of parenting advice, you can find other experts giving the exact opposite advice. It’s enough to drive any parent mad, but what in the world is there to do about it?

As the saying goes, "the days are long, but the weeks are short.” That sentiment rings truer as the parent of a young child than it has in any previous time of your life. Before you know it, that brand new cuddly baby is running around with friends on the playground and itching to grow up, whether you like it or not. Eventually, you’ll need to decide what kind of school to send your child to, and there’s no better time than the present to begin having those conversations. 

We all want to have well-adjusted responsible children who are assets to their community. However, not all children are wired with the drive or motivation to help. This isn’t an assault on their character, rather an observation. All children are different, they all have their special strengths, and for some, being a helper falls low on the list.