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Why My Post Is a Little Late
Tips For Starting Kindness Young
I recently had a post published on Today Parenting regarding teaching our kids to be kind. In a world where bullying is a major issue, finding methods to teach kindness to our kids starting at a very young age is essential. In this article, I talk about what we do in our household to teach our 2.5 year old how to be kind. The hardest part, yet the most essential, is being an example of kindness yourself. Sometimes behind closed doors, we forget ourselves and we forget that even though we are not in public, our little people are always watching. We start to vent and criticize and our children learn from how we speak about people. Treating our children and family members kindly is important. But it is also important to speak kindly of others and value kindness in others.
To see how we are teaching kindness to T, check out my article below.
Happy Monday!!
Emily
Toddlers and Trips: How to Combine the Two
As a toddler mom with several road trips under her belt, there are a few useful tips that I’ve learned that I though I’d share. Especially, with all the pumpkin/apple picking trips coming up, I thought this might be pertinent.
The first tip is about departure time. We have found it best to choose a departure time shortly before lunch. We pack a lunch, pack up the car and head out. As soon as the toddler starts to get cranky, we whip out our packed lunch and eat. This keeps him content a while longer. After lunch is his usual nap time, so we get additional quiet travel time as the short man naps. This process gives you a good several hours of travel time without having to entertain your toddler.
When going on longer trips, we like to plan our route and note interesting locations along the way. We plan breaks in our trip by finding places that only take 1-2 hours to check out, but are perfect for toddlers to get their wiggles out.
While driving, we make up games based on what our toddler is into at the moment. So when he was all about colors, we would point out the colors of the things we passed by. When he's into singing, we have sing-a-longs of his favorite songs. When he's into counting, we count the cars we pass. We also have special toys reserved for when we are out of the house. This makes them more exciting to play with since we don't get to play with them all the time.
While we are not cool enough to have a built in DVD player in our car, we will load a few movies and TV shows onto our iPad as a last resort. The best thing is to be prepared and have several options for your toddler. Toddlers are fickle creatures and can be unpredictable, but coming in prepared is your best bet.
Good luck!!
Cheers,
Emily
Related Posts
Due to my crazy schedule/life, I generally write my blog posts the day before they are published. I have long wanted to have a collection of blog posts at the ready for when life happens, but of course life keeps happening, so it hasn't happened. So when a snow day occurred on my usual writing day, my whole schedule got shot in the foot. In a good way. Like I got to spend quality time with the family.