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8Mar

The top ten reasons to travel with young children

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Positive Parenting
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For the longest time, I never knew that people actually traveled with young children.  In fact, for most of my life, I thought that it was something that everyone avoided.

But then I started traveling as a young adult and I saw all of these people traveling with their young children and I started asking questions.  I started thinking that someday, I might have children and someday, I might want to travel with them.

Which is exactly what we did.  So after traveling with our little ones for a year and a half, I have compiled my top ten list of why you should also travel with your young’uns

1) To show yourself that you can.

I’m not going to lie and say that it is easy, but it is something that you can and should do.  Before we traveled with our young children, I would lie in bed at night and think of all the reasons that we shouldn’t.  What if the boys fuss?  What if they don’t sleep?  What if we don’t sleep?  What if our car breaks down?  Things can and do happen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t travel.  You survived sleeping on the airport floor.  You children got through three days of not-so-appetizing food.  You realize that you can do just about anything.  

2) To get out of your routine

In pretty much every other post I write, I talk about routine and how important it is.  That is still true.  But traveling gets you out of your routine and in a good way.  If you are stuck eating sugary snacks every day, traveling can get you out of that routine.  If you are in a routine of late bedtimes, it’s possible that traveling will get you out of that routine.  Either way, you are changing stuff up.

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3) Mindfulness

It is so tempting to bring along technology and screens to entertain the young ones, but traveling with young children is a great way to instill and teach mindfulness.  Once you are out and about in the world and you see young children sitting on buses for hours on end, you realize that this is possible and yes, your child can do it.  It requires more work up front talking to your child about all the things around them (“Oh wow, those trees look different than all the rest.” “Whoa! I just saw another white bird!”) but the payoff is huge once they are doing it themselves.

4) To get along with less stuff

When you travel, you can’t bring it all with you so you really have to pare down.  That means not as many toys, not as many gadgets and not as much stuff.  After a short bit, you realize that you didn’t need it in the first place.  And when you children start playing with dirt, sticks, string and rocks, you realize that the best toys are the ones you don’t need to buy.

5) To try new things

If you are like me, you don’t always jump into things head first.  So trying new things doesn’t always come easily.  But when you have no choice; you just do it.  It builds character and it builds your child’s character as well.

6) No school issue

Once kids are in school, planning gets a little bit more difficult.  Some schools don’t mind if you miss a lot of school to travel and some schools won’t allow it at all.  To avoid the headache completely, travel while they are young.

7) To build brain pathways

I remember my uncle asking me why we were traveling when the boys were 3 and 4 years old. “They won’t remember any of it”, he said.  He’s right in a way, but the travel will make an imprint.  The new languages, the new people, the new experiences.  They will affect how they grow and how they experience life even if they don’t remember it.

8) To deal with the “I-want-this-this-way” in a real way

Young children will throw tantrums for the smallest things.  “I want the red cup!  No! I want the blue cup!”  Well, guess what, when we are traveling, we have whatever cup is available and no other options.   We don’t have the specific bread that they like and nope, we can’t do that one thing that they want to do because it is on the other side of the world.  Children are more resilient than we think and traveling puts that into perspective. 

9) To see how other families live

Perspective is really everything (in raising children and in life).  When you travel and see how simply some people live, you begin to appreciate the small things more.  When you see how other children eat, play and communicate, you get more insight into your own children and parenting.  

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10) To enjoy your family

Kids grow up so fast.  We hear that everyday and it seems like it is taking forever, but it is really gone in a second.  When you travel while your kids are young, you are really spending time with them.  Once they are older, they will be off doing their own thing.  We only have one go at this, so book your ticket and create some great family memories. 

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9Feb

Picky Eaters Club- Quinoa Pancakes

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Healthy Eating
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This is one of my new favorite recipes for my favorite meal of the day.  I like to make different kinds of pancakes and my old favorites are Red Beet Pancakes and Pumpkin Pancakes and just recently I’ve been making a lot of quinoa pancakes. 

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I researched a lot of different recipes and couldn’t find one that was just what I was looking for so I ended up making my own recipe.  I didn’t want to use quinoa flour and I didn’t want whole quinoa so I created a recipe that blends cooked quinoa in with the rest of the ingredients and here’s how the final product came out:

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Delicious!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 to 2 cups of cooked quinoa

2 eggs

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup flour

3 tablespoons melted butter

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

Blend the first three ingredients in a blender and then add the remaining ingredients and mix.  Spoon onto a hot griddle or pan and flip when you see lots of bubbles.  Enjoy with maple syrup or molasses!

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13Jan

How to deal with a 2 year old (or three or four year old..)

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior info-graphic Positive Parenting
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Here is an info-graphic that you can refer to, or print up which gives a summary of how to work with your child’s behavior.  

It includes minor transgressions, common behavior issues as well as more major safety issues. 

Many parents ask, “how can you be a positive parent, while also setting limits?”  and this info- graphic shows you a three- step approach where you can connect with you child while also holding your boundary.

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2May

It’s not that you lost your s#%t, it is about how you can calm down

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Positive Parenting
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lost

Perhaps some people will disagree with me since learning to live a more mindful life is to not lose your stuff all the time (which is partially true), but if you have young children, I don’t know how you can get through a day without either you or them losing their s*$t.

So in my life, it isn’t about whether you lose you s#%t, it is about how you can calm down afterwards.

Part of our job as parents is to teach children how to control their emotions.  Toddlers can lose their stuff over just about anything.  We often think that we have failed when our children lose their s#*$&, but we haven’t; it is totally normal.  Our job isn’t to keep them from going off the deep end, it is teaching them how to come back.

As parents. we too, are often pushed to the emotional edge with our toddlers and we need to practice working on our own emotions.   Lots of parents practice “not-yelling” at their children and although I succeed at not-yelling the majority of the time, there are times when I lose it and I yell.  Loud.

That’s OK.  Just like it is OK for your little one to go off.

This is a great teaching moment for everyone.  Once you lose it, how do you calm down?

Do you:

  • Leave the room?
  • Take some deep breaths?
  • Ask for a hug?
  • Go outside for a minute?
  • Go for a walk?

These are all acceptable ways to deal with losing your s#$t and it is perfectly acceptable to talk about it with your children.  In fact, it is encouraged that you process what happened to you with your children so that they can learn how to deal with their s%$t.

This is how children learn to calm down, by watching their parents lose their s#$t and then calming down themselves and talking about it afterwards.

“I was pretty upset this morning wasn’t I?” (This is you talking to your toddler not the other way around, although wouldn’t that be pretty awesome?!?)

“I felt overwhelmed by all the things that needed to happen in a pretty short amount of time and I got upset and I yelled.”

“But then, once we were all in the car, I took some deep breaths and I was able to calm down.”

This is part of the problem solving process, identifying the problem (I lost it) and then finding solutions (taking some time, breathing deeply, getting a hug).  This is also part of the process of self-care.  Acknowledging that it is OK to lose it and then taking steps to bring your emotions back into balance.

We can’t expect our children to not get upset and we can’t expect ourselves to never get upset.  So when it does happen, it is really important that we have the tools to be able to calm down and that we can pass those tools on to our children.

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24Apr

Let them see you work!

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Positive Parenting
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work

After years and years of parents not spending enough time with their children, we are seeing a backlash (only in certain cases) of parents not “working” in front of their children.   For many, many parents, this is not a problem as their children see them working all the time, but for some parents, they have let the pendulum swing too far in one direction and that can be damaging for the child. It manifests itself as:

  • I will wait until the children go to bed to clean the house, or I won’t clean the house at all.
  • I won’t make a phone call or use my phone in front of my children (there’s a lot of guilt surrounding this one especially after the viral post about moms on the phone came out)
  • I won’t go back to school because I don’t want to take that time away from my children
  • I will hire cleaners, personal chefs, lawn-mowers, etc to do the work

Parents have a lot of guilt around how much time they spend with their children.  We’ve all heard that saying about the one regret we had before dying was working too much and not spending enough time with our kids.   This rings true for any parent who is working 60 hours per week and then taking home work as well.  I’m not talking to those parents because I know how hard that is.  I tried it and it didn’t work for me, for my husband, for my kids or for my work.

I’m talking to parents who work part-time, work from home or are stay at home parents.  

I’m talking to parents who have guilt around doing work while their kids entertain themselves, or sit in a bouncy chair or do whatever while the parent gets things done. 

There are sweet sentiments out there about spending more time with you child and less time working on things around the house. If you aren’t spending anytime with your child, then it is a good reminder.  But if it is keeping you from getting things done and it is keeping your kids from seeing you work, then throw it away and find some balance.

This means that the kids are watching you do the laundry after breakfast, instead of everyone going and playing together in the backyard.

This means that the kids are sitting on the counter while you prepare dinner.

This means that you are relaxing with your husband after the children have gone to bed rather than doing all the housework.

This means taking an important phone call and reminding the kids that they need to wait a minute while you do a bit of work.

This means talking about how mom and dad work hard to take care of the family and that’s how we earn money to buy our food and our house.

This means talking about how we take care of each other and that means sweeping the floor after eating cereal, taking out the garbage all together, putting the dirty laundry in the washer, emptying the dishes, cutting the vegetables, etc.

This means that you find balance in a crazy world of parenting, and don’t spend all your days and nights working, but don’t leave all your work for when the children are sleeping.

This means children will understand that people have purpose in a family, that clothes need to be washed and how to wash them, that food doesn’t come from a box and that money doesn’t grow on trees.  Obviously, having them work with you and eventually on their own is the logical path that they will follow.   But this is the first step, it’s an important step- let them see you work!

 

 

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14Apr

Creating a mindful childhood in a busy world

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Positive Parenting Unplugging
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mindful 1

If you are like me and have visited Pinterest for great parenting ideas, you have probably had the same impression I did, that children should be busy or entertained with activities pretty much all the time.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love to have fun activities with my kids but I also think it is super important for children to have absolutely nothing.

In other countries around the world, children don’t have many toys, they don’t have scheduled sports or art workshops, they don’t even have activities planned by their parents.  And when I watch little kids sitting on a bus, or waiting somewhere, they don’t need to be entertained, they just sit.

We spend a huge amount of our adult lives trying to slow down our minds.  We do yoga, we meditate, we go on vacation and amazingly, children already have that ability to do nothing and often well-meaning parents erase that important skill.

And yet, every time I go onto Pinterest, I see at least 10 pins for “How to keep your toddler busy during road trips” (or  waiting in line, or on an airplane, during quiet time, or sitting at a restaurant, etc).

Here’s the thing, I understand.

I have twin toddlers and it’s not like they want to sit still for all of these activities.  But if you don’t offer any kind of toy or screen or distraction, you eventually teach them how to “be” in a world without distractions.  They can already calm their minds.  They can already be aware of their surroundings and soon (SOON!) they will just be able to sit and watch the world around them or entertain themselves.

Just like what we are striving for as adults.  The ability to just sit and quiet our mind.  We have so many opportunities for that all day long.  Waiting at a red light.  Standing in line at the bank.   Sitting at a restaurant waiting for a friend to arrive.  These are times when we can just sit and quiet our minds and yet these are the times that we feel we need to “entertain” ourselves and pull out our phones.

So if one of your goals is to quiet your own mind and find awareness in the daily moment, then allow your child to do that as well.  Let them sit in the car on the way up to the mountains with nothing but conversation.  Allow them to watch the people in the restaurant without a distraction.  Bring an emergency toy on the airplane but have it be a goal to use only the environment and surroundings as your toys and see if you don’t even need it.  Let them play for an entire snow day without one planned activity.

In my head, I am thinking:

All of this sounds good and all, but the reason that we distract children is to keep them from fussing and tantruming.  If I don’t distract them when they are losing it, then I will lose it too.

Yep, so the shift here isn’t to not distract them, it is to distract them with their surroundings, rather than with objects.  This is how to build a mindful childhood.

So what does that look like?

When you are at the doctor’s office, walk around and look at the art that they have on the wall.

When you are on the airplane, play with the buttons on the seat, walk up and down the aisle if they let you, look out the window if you have a window seat and talk about the clouds.

When you are in the car, look for different things out the window.

All of this can be exhausting, super exhausting if you are doing it for hours.  But here’s the thing (and every teacher knows this) if you put in more work now (exhausting work when you are already exhausted) then you (and especially your children) will reap the benefits later.

Your child already has the skills to be aware of their surrounding, and we as adults are constantly working towards that type of mindfulness and being in the moment, so resist the urge to distract your child with a thing and give them the gift of a lifetime!

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14Jul

All children are picky eaters at some point in their life!

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Healthy Eating Positive Parenting
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picky-eater

The thing I love most about working with parents, families and children is discipline, but nutrition comes in a very close second.

I was a super picky eater.  Super picky.  I ate potatoes, pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cereal growing up. 

I have two boys.  They shared the same food in my uterus (at least that is how I imagine it) and they shared the same flavors and substances while breast feeding.  So I was surprised when at 6 months, one of them ate everything in sight and then other one bunched his face up in disgust and spit most food out.  

But here’s the thing- they are older now they have both gone through phases of not eating anything and phases of trying tons of new food,  I have to add that they aren’t very open to much when we are out and about because they really don’t know what they are getting in to, but at home, they will take at least one bite of everything and they both love a huge variety of foods including kale, elk steak, salmon, red peppers, spinach, quinoa, spicy foods, etc etc.

So if your child is picky right now, that does not mean that they will always be a picky eater.  ALL children are picky eaters at some point in their life!

Here are three things that you can do today to help your child stop being picky:

1) Don’t refer to them as picky eaters.  

They are not.  

They are either going through a phase where either they aren’t that hungry (It happens. Kids can go days without eating much.  Just check with your pediatrician if you are worried.  I do.  All the time.)  

Or they are going through a phase of being distrustful of food.  This is a biological reaction to keep us from putting things in our mouths that can kill us.  Children are wired to be distrustful of food once they are more mobile and independent.  This is to keep our species alive so that little one doesn’t put a poisonous plant (á la Into the Wild) in their mouths while mama is starting a fire to cook the meat that papa brought home from the hunt.  So don’t think that you are a bad parent when your child refuses food.  That is actually their job.  So just keep offering and eventually they will eat it!



2) Be relaxed about food and eating.  

They don’t have to eat if they don’t want to.  We try and force our kids to eat because we remember the days when they were infants and they needed a certain amount of food in order to sleep.  

Toddlers are not like that.  If your pediatrician says that there isn’t any reason to force food, then don’t.   Offer three meals per day and one or two healthy snacks in between meals and then forget about it.   Don’t offer food while they are distracted.  Don’t have them carry around food hoping that they will eat.  Don’t keep offering different things hoping that one of them will stick.  Don’t give them something right before they go to bed if they don’t eat dinner. Don’t worry about how much they eat.  Children will regulate their nutrition without any adult interaction, if we just offer three healthy meals and one or two snacks per day and that is it.  

3) Keep trying the same thing over and over and over…

Your kids are not going to like something new the first time you serve it.  And maybe not the second or third time either.  But if they keep seeing the same food over and over, then eventually it will grow on them.  Don’t give up because they don’t like something the first time.  It takes kids up to 20 times of being exposed to foods before they will begin to accept it.  

You are not alone- all kids go through picky stages and so stay positive and relaxed about food and your child will get through it as well.



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1Jan

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives”

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Parental Support Positive Parenting Unplugging
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days-of-lives

This is a quote from Annie Dillard and it really speaks to me on the first day of the new year.


Are our days rushed, stressed and unfulfilled?

Or are we able to breathe and enjoy our days?

The negative moments in our lives are just a moment, but strung together, they are our lives.

There are many days that I still can’t believe that I’m a parent.  I keep thinking that one day I will actually feel like a parent and will know and understand what that feeling is, but it may end up that I’ll be lying on my death bed and finally realize that I was a parent this whole time.  

So what does that mean?

  • It means making conscious decisions about parenting.  
  • It means deciding that we will all eat together at least once per week.  
  • It means that there will be no devices at the table.  
  • It means that I will take a deep breath in front of my children as they are losing it and I’m about to lose it as well.
  • It means that the majority of my interactions with my children will be positive.  So if I find that I have three snippety utterances, then the next nine things I say will have to be positive!
  • It means that I will be clear about my expectations with my children rather than assuming that they know what I am asking of them. 

Because the way that I parent today is the parent that I am.   

Seriously, I still don’t feel like a parent.  What does that truly feel like?

If you want your 2014 to be calmer, your children to listen better, your family to be more connected, contact me today and we will get you started on a parenting plan.  The initial consultation is free

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3Oct

There are no perfect parents

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Parental Support
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perfect

If you are a parent, chances are that you have looked something up on the internet to see if it is “normal” or if there is anything you can do about what ever is happening, or just to commiserate.  

During your journey on the internet, you probably came across something that made you feel guilty.  For some reason, there is a ton of “mompetition” on the internet and I don’t believe it should be that way.

Just today, I was reading some article about parenting and the comments afterwards to each other were very biting and angry.  

There are no perfect kids, and there are no perfect parents and that’s OK.

I wanted to be the perfect parent.  I read all the books, I have a background working with young children and families and I figured, if anyone can do it, I can do it.

One of the philosophies I wanted to follow was attachment parenting because of all the research supporting it, and because it matched my beliefs.

Then I had twins and realized that carrying both of my children into toddlerhood wasn’t going to happen.  And the guilt that I suffered from this was not fun.  I tried carrying one child and putting the other one in the stroller or bouncy chair.  I tried carrying both of them some of the time.  

Then I would give it up for a while due to the exhaustion of trying to carry two babies.  But lo and behold, after a week of not holding them all day, I would read another article online about how children who aren’t carried through infancy will have more emotional problems and the guilt would come down like a ton of baby books on my head.

I struggled with this for my first year of being a mother and one day I realized that it didn’t matter.  My boys were going to be fine.  I’m not the perfect mother and I’m ok with that.  We need to accept where we are as parents and not buy into the guilt that we aren’t good enough.

Parent coaching isn’t out there to make you a perfect parent, because what you are doing is already good enough.  We are just here to support you as you are and keep your head above water. 

Parenting is rough and we need to support each other as much as we can.

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1Oct

Allowing our children to take risks (as scary as that may seem)

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Positive Parenting
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hiking snow

Once our babies are born, we don’t dare to think of all the things that could happen to them.  We have dreams and nightmares at night of these fears of them getting hurt.  We try to protect them any way we can.

But that in itself, harms the child.

Humans need to push themselves, we need to take risks.

For a couple of years, I worked at a school in rural Costa Rica where 90% of the children were local Ticos and the other 10% were from other parts of the world.   In those two years, there were five accidents (broken bones, nothing too serious) and four of those accidents were from foreign children.

Why is it that 10% of the population had 80% of the accidents?  The answer is that the local children had been taking risks since they were very young.  The children there are allowed to play in the forest, climb trees, dig huge holes, play with big sticks, etc, while children here are gently reminded that they can’t do that because it isn’t safe.

But as children grow, the risks get bigger, and they often don’t know how to manage them, because they have never been given the chance.

Another important aspect to risk taking is allowing the child to find their limit.  This means that the child is more than welcome to climb something if they can do it all by themselves.  That also means that they can get out of the situation by themselves as well.  My boys will climb up on a rock and then ask me to help them down and my response is usually, “If you can get up, you can get down.”  It takes them a little bit to figure out how to extract themselves from the pickle they got themselves into, but they do it, and feel great afterwards.

Since they are young, I am there spotting them, but since there are two of them, I’m not always able to be within inches of them.  Because of this, they have learned that I won’t always be able to catch them.  They have actually learned to fall somewhat gracefully.

Studies have shown that children who take physical risks are more likely to take cognitive (academic) risks as well.  So this little change of allowing your children to take risks will have long term positive outcomes. 

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