I had planned to have a bright, shiny entry for the Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama but got distracted and missed the deadline. I’ll be participating next month, but thought I would write about this month’s theme anyway.
Parenting resolutions. What do you want to do differently this year as a parent? Or what do you want to be the same? What went exceptionally well in 2009, and in what could you use a do-over?

The interesting thing about resolutions is it seems like one …

It’s a controversial parenting style that Alfie Kohn advocates in his book, Unconditional Parenting. Yes, I finally finished the book, thanks primarily to spending a few hours at the hairdresser.
In a lot of ways, it goes against almost every form of parenting advice I’ve ever read previously. And I’ll admit that it takes alot to open your mind enough to be able to absorb the information. The first half of the book is all about the theory behind it, and I’ll admit during that time, I was constantly thinking, but …

One of the comments from Amber on the Success of Smacking to me to thinking about being soft spoken.
My mother was always soft-spoken, and I have always been that way as well. She never really raised her voice to us when we were little. She’s told me a couple of times that she almost wondered at the wisdom of it, given that she thought we were hyper-sensitive to arguments as a result.
Riley seems to be heading that way, even her ‘No! No! No!’ protests are soft. And I don’t think …

I saw this article yesterday about a study done in the UK where they had found that children who were smacked up until the age of 6 were more successful in later life than children who weren’t smacked. I was reading some of the comments on the post at Her Bad Mother and I started to notice a bit of a common thread.
I’m not a smacker. I’ve chosen not to be a smacker because I don’t believe in the efficacy of physical discipline, I don’t agree with the message it …

I read Best Blog Posts of 2009 at Scary Mommy and thought it was a pretty cool idea – if I have only got 6 months to choose from. I started this blog in July, thinking that it would be fun to do every now and then, but it quickly became more addictive than I’d imagined it could be.
July: Things I Learnt In My First Year (Part 1)
Breastfeeding: not as natural as you’d think
August: Things I Learnt In My First Year (Part II)
Sleep: apparently it’s optional
September: Crying It Out to …

I’ve been getting slapped a lot lately.

Yes. That innocent looking munchkin is the culprit. Sometimes it’s just some enthusiastic back ‘patting’ and sometimes it’s like it was this afternoon – a surprisingly strong double-handed face slap.
I don’t really know what to do. I know that it is mostly from frustration, particularly during teething. But I’m a bit torn – I know that mostly she needs comfort – but want to encourage her to express herself in a less aggressive (less painful) way. And I’ve only just got her to stop …

I’m currently reading Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting. And although I haven’t gotten too far beyond the first chapter it’s definitely an eye opener. He says in the introduction that it is subversive and it is definitely that. All concepts of time-outs, consequences and reward charts are thrown out the window in favour of providing choices, discussion and understanding. As the parent of an energetic toddler, I struggle to see how I could ‘reason’ with her on a regular basis because half of the time when she’s having a tantrum she …

Riley is nearly 18 months old and I’m yet to come across a situation that would require even an early form of discipline. Some of the mothers’ in our play group are already using time outs or a slap on the hand. I don’t believe in any form of slapping/smacking/threat of either as a way of discipline myself and have heard that it is ineffective anyway. Although I’m so against it I doubt I would use it even if it did work. I agree with MomHouston that most of the …