Mom Time
(Photo Courtesy of Ralph Palumbo) Mompreneur Cristina Gamarnik saw a need in the community for a safe space for new moms, and The Mommy Center...
Nurturing Young Minds
Ensure your child thrives in a safe and stimulating learning environment with the best childcare and pre-k services in Orange County.
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A Lesson in Boundaries
(Photo Courtesy of Canva) This Father’s Day, we’re reflecting on the life lessons that fathers can pass on to their children — particularly boundaries. Father’s...
Creature Comforts
(Ethan with Anneliese Schools miniature horse/ Photo Courtesy of Anneliese Schools) Anneliese Schools Animal Care Coordinator Janet O’Faolain talks about the important role animals...
Recent Articles
Open House Dialogue
(Photo courtesy of Laguna Beach Unified School District) Orange County educators offer their insights about the best questions for parents to ask at open house. Open house can be stressful for teachers and parents. Coming into your child’s classroom, you may not know what to expect or know much about who your child’s teacher will be. You want to make sure your child is getting the best education, but what’s the best way to get the most out of open house night? We spoke to some staff members from Orange County schools to get the scoop on what the best...
Mom Time
(Photo Courtesy of Ralph Palumbo) Mompreneur Cristina Gamarnik saw a need in the community for a safe space for new moms, and The Mommy Center was born. Cristina Gamarnik had a tough time after the birth of her first son three years ago. “I struggled making mom friends and getting support during the difficult first year as a new mom,” says Gamarnik. “My son was very spirited and my experience was far from what I had expected. I felt overwhelmed and sad that it was so much harder than I thought it would be. My friends without kids or family...
Tricks and Treats of Mindfulness
(Photo Courtesy of iStock) How mindful parenting can help develop a healthier parent-child relationship. It can be very challenging to raise a young family. If you have found yourself losing your patience and overreacting when your child says or does something unacceptable, you are not alone. Fortunately, there are ways to modify your parenting style and create a loving, secure bond with your child. Mindful parenting is a parenting technique that helps to prevent you from overreacting while maintaining a secure bond with your child. Following is some helpful information on what mindful parenting is, as well as the benefits...
All About Mindful Parenting
(Photo Courtesy of Raychan/Unsplash) Why you should consider parenting mindfully. If you have ever found yourself reacting more harshly than necessary when dealing with your child only to feel remorseful later on, you are not alone. Mindful parenting is a parenting strategy that focuses on stopping a negative interaction in its tracks before it occurs and reframing the interaction in a more balanced manner. Mindful parenting helps us model healthier emotional reactions and shows our children a more positive and helpful way of managing their emotions, as well. Here are some tips you can use to incorporate mindful parenting into...
Creating Self-Worth Through Friendships
(Photo Courtesy of Canva) Learn some useful strategies to help your child cultivate strong friendships while developing social-emotional learning. So far in this series of articles about social and emotional learning, there have been three main takeaways about how healthy self-worth develops in children: through consistent observation, regular communication and positive talk. The final piece of the puzzle that is social and emotional learning is completed by learning to develop friendships. Although families are a child’s first teachers, the fundamentals in promoting self-worth, friendships and relationships outside of the home are essential, too. When strong friendships in a child’s life...
Choose Your Words
(Photo Courtesy of YMCA of OC) Learn how to help develop your children’s sense of self-worth through positive talk. I once came across a comic strip that depicted a series of cartoons of a child being told what to do throughout their school day by teachers, school staff, lunch monitors and yard monitors during recess. When they arrived home from school, the child’s parent continued: “Sit down at dinner!” “Clean up this mess!” “Go to bed!” The comic strip was silly, but it demonstrated how much instruction our kids take throughout the day. When they get home, they have a...
Strategies for Self-Worth
(Photo Courtesy of YMCA of OC) Creating self-worth in children in a complicated world. A mass school shooting in Texas. An ongoing war in Ukraine. An obsession with social media endlessly capturing our attention. These are just a few of the issues rising to the top of parents’ concerns about raising kids in the 21st century. But if we take a step back and a few deep breaths, we as adults can realize that perhaps we cannot change the world’s problems, but we can create change in our own households. We can offset difficulties that our kids may encounter later...
Dads & Kids
(Photo Courtesy of Canva) OC dads who work and volunteer with kids tell us why they do it and how they’re inspired. Thomas Barsoe City: San Juan Capistrano Family: Wife, Anna; kids, Noah, 8, Jude, 6 How do you work with kids? “I’m the owner of OC Hit, a record label, recording studio and artist development facility in Tustin. “We work with incredibly talented, young singers and songwriters and develop and train them for a career in the music industry. You can compare OC Hit to a varsity soccer team or the Olympic gymnastic team, etc. We have become THE...
A Lesson in Boundaries
(Photo Courtesy of Canva) This Father’s Day, we’re reflecting on the life lessons that fathers can pass on to their children — particularly boundaries. Father’s Day is just around the corner. There are so many essential life lessons that dads pass on to their children. Father’s Day is a reminder of how much dads impact their kids’ lives. One of the most important things that we think dads can teach their kids is how to set boundaries. Why Are Boundaries So Important for Kids? It’s easy to picture boundaries as being imaginary lines that we draw that we don’t...
Creature Comforts
(Ethan with Anneliese Schools miniature horse/ Photo Courtesy of Anneliese Schools) Anneliese Schools Animal Care Coordinator Janet O’Faolain talks about the important role animals can play in child development. Stefanie Speed A New York native, Janet O’Faolain found it therapeutic being around the horses in Central Park. She learned about therapeutic horsemanship and began volunteering in the Bronx. When she moved to California, she volunteered at The Shea Center in San Juan Capistrano. “I was studying yoga and yoga therapy while volunteering,” she said. “I wanted to do both. In 2008, I became a therapeutic riding instructor through...
Passion Project
(Photo Courtesy of Paige Cody/Unsplash) Learn ways to support your children in building upon their passions. Have your children been stuck with their heads in their computers, tablets and phones for the last 18 months? Children have had limited opportunities to build upon and explore their passions outside of the classroom or virtual walls. I like to use the word passion interchangeably with words like determination, pride and love. Passion is a strong desire that can enable children to do amazing things. Passion is an emotion that needs to be acted upon. Without action, passion yields no worthwhile results. In...
5 Tips for Preventing the Summer and Pandemic Slide
(Photo Courtesy of YMCA of OC) This summer is key to continue children’s learning. Summertime in Southern California means beach trips, road trips, swimming pools and shaved ice. And after more than a year of enduring the challenges of a pandemic, many students and teachers are counting down the days until a summer break with no schedule — and no Zoom. This year, schools have struggled to teach students remotely or in classrooms as children wear masks and sit behind plastic shields. One national testing organization reported that the average student in grades 3-8 who took a math assessment this...
Early Learners Overcoming the Pandemic
How preschoolers and kindergartners are dealing with the unique challenges of COVID-19. Theo Stasch is 4 years old and, like a lot of kids his age, a little shy. He attended preschool last year and his mother, Lauren Stasch, said the experience was helping to bring him out of his shell. “Because he is quiet and shy in public, it was definitely a little culture shock for him to go from always being with his sister to being in a roomful of children his own age, many of whom he didn’t know,” she said. “He did have a few grumpy...
Choosing the Right Preschool/Kindergarten
Choosing the right preschool or kindergarten can be both exhilarating and intimidating. Helpful tips from school insiders. Priming for Pre-K Starting preschool is an exciting time for parents and their toddlers. Despite television shows and films that show rigid expectations for children to learn and know before attending a preschool or kindergarten, nurturing and spending time with your child is actually the best way to prepare them for this transition. You may not have even realized it, but all of the silly little songs and chats you both have had together on a daily basis — from singing lullabies, to...
Preschool Prep
Getting set for school isn’t all about pencils and backpacks, especially for our youngest learners. In fact, the best way to prepare for preschool is through play. Patti Clark participates in the most incredible adventures with her three-year-old niece. Together, they build and tour zoos, camp out, and perform ballets. It’s all imaginary, of course, but that doesn’t make the experiences any less valuable in the eyes of Clark. “Imaginative play is one of the best ways to develop so many skills,” says Clark, vice president of product development at Lakeshore Learning. “It builds social skills, social emotional development, language...
Toddler Misbehavior
Naughty or Normal Ah… toddlers. They amaze us with their energy and new abilities such as walking and starting to talk while also frustrating us with their energy and new abilities such as making messes and saying, “No!” to our sweet requests. How we respond to the frustrating behaviors our toddlers uniquely exhibit greatly impacts how they feel and behave as they grow into adolescents, and thus, can make our parenting job either much easier or much harder. How is dealing with toddler misbehavior connected to a child’s future well-being? The answer lies in research showing us that close parent-child...