Spring cleaning. Mention it to your spouse or kids, and you may just get groans in response. While enjoying the warmer weather, sunnier days, and growing gardens, few people look forward to buckling down and sprucing up the house.

It’s all just tiresome chores, right?

Actually, spring cleaning is more than just freshening up a home from winter. It helps detoxify the family environment, reduces clutter, and provides a brighter, cleaner atmosphere to enjoy the spring and summer months.

So how do you get the whole family behind the spring cleaning effort? After all, you’ll get more done faster with more hands involved. Continue Reading

Here are a few upcoming kid-friendly events happening in San Diego in the coming month. As always, if you know of an event you think the families we work with should know about, please let us know so we can pass it along. Continue Reading

Balance.

It’s a word that gets used a lot these days, especially where family and work are concerned. That precious “Work/Life” balance seems increasingly elusive in a culture where bills must be paid, dinner must be made, soccer games must be attended, social events must be run, and both parents (or single parents) must work 9-5 or more in order to make ends meet.

Often enough, in the midst of life’s increasing chaos, things like personal health and alone time go by the wayside in order to handle all the external pressure. While that sort of self-sacrificing approach can be noble on the surface, it can actually be damaging to a family as a whole in the long run. Parents can suffer physical, mental, and emotional breakdowns if they devote all their resources to others without finding some way to balance their own needs in the mix.

So how does it happen? What can you do to carve out some healthy margin for yourself and your family and resist being pulled in all directions at once?
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Each month, in an effort to provide San Diego families with child-friendly resources, we’ll be posting information about San Diego events we’ve found that we think parents may enjoy with their kids.

Here are some great events we found this month.

Seussical the Musical
Classic Dr. Seuss stories come to life in a mix of musical styles, with all your favorite characters.

Times:
Friday, Mar 1st – 7:00pm
Saturday, Mar 2nd – 7:00pm
Sunday, Mar 3rd – 3:00pm
Friday, Mar 8th – 7:00pm
Saturday, Mar 9th – 2:00pm , 7:00pm
Sunday, Mar 10th – 3:00pm Continue Reading

Funny, isn’t it, how just a few choice words can entirely change a family dynamic…either for good or for ill? Whether you’re trying to enjoy a meal together at the dinner table, on an outing, dealing with a split family situation, or otherwise, both what you say and how you say it can have an enormous impact on the results.

And the entire time you’re talking?

Your kids are listening. They’re learning the same communication patterns and habits you’re expressing, internalizing them, and will start responding in kind.

When you keep that fact in mind, the importance of establishing positive communication within your family becomes critical—and you recognize that, as a parent, you hold a primary responsibility in achieving this.

So, how do you lay the foundation for a future of strong and nurturing communication? Continue Reading

It’s a sad affair to see the near-constant news about the violence and loss that impacts families these days—both from within and without. It seems we can’t refresh a news website or turn on the television without updates on the latest school or public shooting, hearing about child kidnappings, or other tragedies. It all hits far too close to home.

It’s enough to make any worried parent want to padlock the doors and bunker down with the kids until something drastically changes in the world.

But the reality is, the world isn’t going to shape up just for our sakes. It’s up to you, the parent, to help your child stay safe without locking them away from reality.

Here a 5 ways you can help your children remain as safe as possible, despite these troubled times: Continue Reading

“New Year’s Resolutions…with my kids? Did I hear you right?”

Yes.

“But New Year’s Resolutions are grown-up things. Times when we look back on things we regret and change our behavior so we can, hopefully, feel better about ourselves in the next year. I don’t want to get my kids thinking negatively or hurting their self-esteem.”

Exactly. Too many adults approach resolutions as a painful chore. Something they do because they regret things from the previous year—weight gain, poor spending habits, bad relationships, etc.—and want to try and have a different experience in the next year.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. In fact, when you make resolutions a family affair, something shared between parent and child, it can become an incredibly positive and relationship-building tradition! Continue Reading