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Should I be regularly screening my child for Developmental concerns?

When you go to the pediatrician for your child’s 9, 18 and 36 month appointments, you’ll likely be asked to complete the Ages and Stages Developmental Questionnaire (ASQ). This questionnaire is used to gauge where your child is at developmentally and if any concerns should arise, your pediatrician can make referrals for services. However there […]

Screen Time Savvy: Managing Your Child’s Digital Diet with Dr. Jenny Radesky

Our Friends over at the Sparkler app sat down with Dr. Jenny Radesky the director of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics at the University of Michigan, and she authored the American Academy of Pediatrics’ screen time guidelines. Her research focuses on the intersection of mobile technology, parenting, parent-child interaction, and child development. Dr. Radesky chatted with Sparkler about screen […]

Understanding Attachment Styles: Nurturing Secure Connections in Parenting

Since we’ve been talking about Parenting we should also talk about Attachment styles. Our attachment starts in the womb, what our parent goes through, their emotional state, and stress all are connected to us. Attachment is the way our caregivers interact with us and how their interactions with us impacts our own relationships and how […]

Parenting Styles: Sub Types

Since we we talked about the main Parenting types last week, we can talk about the 6 Parenting subtypes and how they impact families.   Free-Range Parenting Helicopter Parenting Snowplow Parenting Lighthouse Parenting Attachment Parenting Tiger Parenting   Free-Range Parenting Free-Range Parenting used to get a lot of flack, parents who use this style were […]

Parenting Styles

No one parenting style is “right” and realistically parents don’t just parent with one style 100% of the time.  What we know about parenting styles is that each style can affect children’s behaviors, self-esteem, relationships and academic success.   So, what are the styles? There are 4 parenting styles that have been identified: Authoritarian Authoritative […]

How To Ask Your Child About Their Day

As parents we want to know about our kids day, but often times when we ask how their day went their response is something like: “I don’t know”, “It was fine/okay/good”, or my favorite “I don’t remember”. So, how do we get them to open up to us to talk about what they learned or […]

Bullying 101: Who, Why and How

At some point in everyone’s life we’ve all been bullied and/or have been a bully, it tends to be unavoidable. So, lets learn what bullying is, who is bullied, why bullies do what they do and how we can arm our children with the knowledge of how to deal with bullies.   Who Tends to […]

Parent-Teacher Relationships: The Key to Back-to-School Success

This Blog was provided by Sparkler: Play for Parenting; Sparkler Blog. By Donna Housman, Ed.D Dr. Donna Housman, Ed.D is the founder and CEO of Housman Institute, which conducts research on emotional intelligence in young children and develops high-quality programs to train early childhood educators. Dr. Housman has over thirty-five years of experience as a […]

When You Feel Like Giving Up on Parenting

  At some point we’ve all been there, right? We’re overstimulated, over being call upon, over being touched and having to repeat ourselves or having to pick up the same messes day after day with out an ounce of recognition. Many people may criticize parents who feel this way; many people may say that parents […]