Love-Based Parenting is about respecting the needs of your child and responding with love
to your child.  This is incredibly easy to do when your child is expressing loving feelings
and behaviors, but what happens when your child is not?                       Read the Article

I was having “one of those days.”  Or maybe, it seemed, it was one of those weeks or one of those months… you know where nothing really goes the way you’d hoped and you long for the time when you had any extra space in your window of tolerance.                                                                                                                 Continue Reading

There’s something about the first part of spring that always makes me think of cleaning.  And sometimes this feeling takes over and I find myself down on my hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen floor tiles and grout with a fervor I usually associate with devouring a new book.  Fortunately, it doesn’t happen often and it usually passes quickly.                                                                                                               Continue Reading

Last month, we talked about the problems associated with commercial chemical cleaners, along with some healthier alternatives.  This month, we’ll take a look at the process of changing what we’re doing and how our blueprints affect our choices.  We’ll also look at some more alternatives and some homemade recipes for cleaners that you may want to try instead of Mr. Clean.                                                                   Continue Reading

Q: There is so much conflicting information out there concerning child care and what children really need.  One expert says to use time out, while another says to use time in.  What really matters if I want healthy, well-adjusted children and, later, adults?  Help!
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There are going to be times when we need to say no to something our children want.  We can use the times we say no as an opportunity for family growth and a time of learning for our children, rather than a time of disconnection.                                Continue Reading

Pesticides and Produce: Does 'Organic' Really Matter?
By Rebecca Thompson, M.S.

“Pay how much for a pound of organic bananas?  Are you crazy?”  The sentiment was one I had echoed myself only 8 years before when I took my first trip into a health food store, which happened to be a Whole Foods Market, and saw the prices.      Continue Reading

I vividly remember the first time I got really mad at my son. He was about two years old, and I had just asked him not to turn on the computer. At that moment, keeping the computer off seemed very important to me. My son gazed at me with an unfamiliar look in his eyes. I imagined he was thinking to himself that he really wanted to stop, as I had asked, yet he seemed compelled to move forward anyway. While still looking at me, his little body catapulted itself toward the computer, his fingers reaching out to turn it on. To my utter astonishment, my body, too, lunged forward, my arms circled my son’s body as I pulled him away from the now buzzing computer, and I heard myself yelling, “NO!”       
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When our baby was a week old, his grandfather expressed concern that my partner and I were holding him too much. Since then, Grandpa has worried about cosleeping and extended nursing, and we have continued to talk together about the differences in our parenting philosophies. At one point Grandpa tried to harmonize our obviously different approaches: "Surely we all want the same thing," he said. "We want our children to grow up to become independent."                                                             Continue Reading

An NPN member recently wrote to ask me what alternatives there are to rewards and punishments. “I have found myself ‘bargaining’ with my 2-year-old to get him to do things, mostly eat,” she wrote. While she found consequences and rewards “effective,” she wondered if there are other ways to handle these situations.                Continue Reading

From a spiritual perspective, all the constant input we experience nowadays (telephones; MP3 players and headphones; the bang-and-clatter of lockers, bells, and shouting in the halls at school; honking horns and loud music when driving, etc.) tends to numb kids out, disconnecting them from their hearts, minds, and intuitive wisdom.       Continue

Can you imagine threatening your partner or good friend by counting "One... two... three..." if he or she did not do what you wanted?  One of the big issues in schools today is "bullying." Parents and teachers struggle daily with how to stop this behavior.     Continue

From the moment we decide to have a child or find out that we are having a child we begin making important choices about how we will care for our children. Parenting our children will likely be the most important and challenging job any of us will ever have.      Continue

This article explains the research behind Love-Based Parenting.  Although it is written
about RAD, which is diagnosed usually in adopted children with severe behaviors, all
parents can gain an understanding of normal development from this comprehensive review
of the literature.                                                                                  Read the Article

Monosodium Glutamate, or commonly known as MSG, is a food additive that has been shown to cause a range of problems in animals, including obesity.      Continue Reading