The school year’s end brings on some sort of sigh of relief for most parents, even if the next breath is a bracing for the round of camps, swimming pools, family trips, homework packets and child care arrangements. Take a few moments, while the kids are gleefully kicking back, to read some parenting inspiration and advice for the summer.
We all work to keep a lid on our “corrective communication,” but it’s especially hard for parents of children with any special needs, and KJ Dell’Antonia gives an extra dose of encouragement to these parents in her article for The New York Times Motherlode blog. Also, to help us all redirect our impulses to correct and remind, PEP leader Paige Trevor has 7 Easy Steps to Break the Cycle of nagging, in this month’s Washington Parent magazine.
Most parents believe that instilling kindness in their children is a top priority, but the majority of kids aren’t getting that message, according to a Harvard study. The researchers, who surveyed 10,000 kids from a range of U.S. middle and high schools for the “Making Caring Common” project, give parenting tips for teaching kindness.
“[T]here are times, I suspect, when a mind is a terrible thing not to waste,” says Jennifer Finney Boylan in her Op-Ed article for The New York Times. In this era of career-directed summer employment for high school and college students, she explores the unsuspected benefits of jobs such as selling hot dogs, mowing lawns and being a bank teller. “One time, I accidentally left $10,000 by the coffee maker in the lounge. I had no choice except to tell my boss the truth: I’d been on my way to the safe with the cash when I remembered we were out of creamer.” Give this article to your teen to read.
Once your child gets into a really good book, you can take a break from worrying about screen time. PEP leader and award-winning journalist Katherine Reynolds Lewis has compiled a list of “funny, suspenseful, thought-provoking reads” for various ages at the reader-friendly site Brightly.
For those of us still planning vacations, Parent has compiled six family road trips, including the routes, where to stay, where to eat and what’s fun, from as close as Pennsylvania to as far away as southern California.
These tips, by Rebecca Eanes at Creative Child, will definitely make your summer easier—especially No. 5: “Lean on your village. . . . Without support, parenthood can be too overwhelming.” You can find support at PEP this summer; check out our parenting workshops (and remember to choose your age group at the top of the schedule).
Finally, here’s a gentle call to perspective from Jessica Lahey, author of the forthcoming book The Gift of Failure.
Compiled by the PEP Blog editor.
Parent Encouragement Program
10100 Connecticut Ave.
Kensington, MD 20895
301-929-8824
office@PEPparent.org
Apart from the free survey software, we also have access to QuestionPro's free survey templates . We've found many of them useful and powerful to collect insights from various stakeholders of our organization.
