• family - Health - Parenting

    Hands Off My Child’s Weight – For The Last Time

    September 15, 2011 - By 

    A lot of people followed my story of scales in schools. Last Friday I posted about my daughter, 10, in grade five and an insensitive assignment in which a scale was in her class and kids were weighed. My daughter went first. She was picked to go first and comments were made by others about her size and weight. She came home very upset. Anyways part of my weekend was then spent trying to fix that problem and get to the root of what happened. The issue was resolved yesterday morning when the teacher, whom I believe to be a…

  • special needs

    The Oopseat: Interview and Review with Mompreneur and Autism Advocate Lisa Goodman

    April 7, 2011 - By 

    Moms are some of the savviest and most creative people I know. If necessity is the mother of all invention as the saying goes, then mothers are also the greatest inventors. Take Lisa Goodman for instance and her protective chair covers. Goodman, the single mother of a young child with autism, was looking for an item on the market that would protect furniture from those little spills children so often make when eating, drinking, crafting. When she couldn’t find what she wanted, she designed the perfect chair covers herself and so began the Oopseat. Lisa sent me a square Oopseat and…

  • parenting

    Giving Your Child The Gift of a Second Language: Guest Post

    February 3, 2011 - By 

    In the evolving and sometimes depressed current economy it’s hard for parents not to worry about their child’s future. What will jobs look like 10, 20, even 30 years from now? What are the best ways to nurture creativity and resilience? How do you give your child a competitive edge? One of the greatest tools for children is language. Acquiring a second language early on makes a lot of sense. It is unlikely that the economy will stay terrible forever – but if current trends continue, children are likely to enter a cut-throat workforce. A good education is crucial in…

  • FASD - Giveaways - special needs

    My 411 Mabel’s Labels Review and Giveaway Open to Canada and US.

    November 8, 2010 - By 

    My 411 wristbands from Mabel’s Labels: Good for All, Excellent for Kids With Special Needs It is a moment, hardly longer than the blink of an eye, and your child disappears from your line of sight. Your stomach sinks, breath catches in your throat, heart freezes and your mind races. Where is she? Did someone take her? Is she hiding? You tell yourself it will be okay, but newspaper headlines are all you can see or think and you fly into panic mode, or maybe survival mode. Every parent on the planet, if they have a child who is old enough…

  • advocacy
    family - Parenting

    Advocacy – WIN THEN BUILD Philosophy

    September 13, 2010 - By 

    This is something I share when I do workshops throughout North America on advocacy. But because I know so many friends with children who can use this information I thought I would post a tipsheet on the topic. I call it the WIN then Build philosophy of advocacy. I run a non profit (Canadian Coalition of Adoptive Families http://www.canadiancoalitionofadoptivefamilies.ca/) in which I often use these tactics and I am a Mom and I have a child with special needs. This is what works my experience. Of course there’s more than one way to make things happen but this worked well…

  • school_lunches
    family

    SIX Questions and Answers about School Lunches

    September 8, 2010 - By 

    So your baby is about to start school and she or he is staying for lunch. That opens up a whole new world of school lunches. I have a bit of experience with thousands of school lunches over the years and I wanted to pull together some questions and tips that I often get asked by friends whose kids are just starting kindergarten. A friend of mine prompted this post as she found it helpful last week when I emailed her in response to a question she had about school lunches and leftovers.   Six Questions about School Lunches Q1: What lunch…

  • family - parenting

    Activity Tax Credits, Mommies and What About Seniors too?

    September 8, 2010 - By 

    I am all for activity tax credits and fitness tax credits and anything that keeps kids active and fit and healthy. I can back that any day and, in fact, I would. I spend well over the $500 a year allowed by the federal fitness tax credit each year – $1,000 for a disabled child. I have some extremely active children and they need a lot of martial arts/ basketball/ swimming/ skating/ music/ drama etc. I claim every year the maximum I can and I tell every new parent I know to take advantage of the federal credit. It makes…

  • grief_in_adoption
    Parenting

    The End of School Blues: Triggers for Grief in Adoption

    June 7, 2010 - By 

    Let’s take a minute to talk about triggers. We all have them, triggers that sometimes seize us by the heart and drag us back to a memory – good, bad or otherwise. Triggers can be like strange little portals to the past. Sometimes brought on by a smell, a time of year, a feeling, a picture. Triggers for Grief in Adoption are many and they sometimes arrive out of the blue for parents. But for kids in care and adoptees they can be hard to cope with and even harder to communicate clearly to adults. They are visceral and emotional.…

  • family - Health - parenting - Parenting

    When Love is Not Enough – Adoption Disruption in the News

    October 5, 2009 - By 

    It’s been a week since my last post, but I have been busily mulling over much in the world of adoption. Many of you probably read headlines about the blogger Mommy Anita Tedaldi who adopted a child and then when she felt the baby boy wasn’t bonding gave him up. It was all over the U.S. media and the Internet late last week. Tedaldi was interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show. She was condemned and praised as people all over responded viscerally to her story. Last week I was called by a Montreal radio show to give comment…

  • Travel

    14 Things You Must Have on a Family Road Trip

    August 10, 2009 - By 

    Heading out on another family road trip which means I have some packing to do. Since we started this great foray into family travel my husband and I – well mostly I – have learned a few things about the tricky business of travelling with tots in tow. My first tip for travelling with children is planning, planning and then planning some more. When we flew to Disney last year it was my daughter, Ainsley’s first flight. She was four and, for those of you who don’t know, she has sensory processing disorder, which means life is often too loud,…