While preparing for preschool seems optional for the summer or the school year, it is vitally important. Don't waste the preschool years by limiting your little one to entertainment options. Maximize the season of learning that those early years bring. Preschool years are ripe learning years. Secondly, if you don't have a plan to keep the little ones busy, they will be underfoot when you are working with your older children or doing some needy domestic work. Teach them key memory work. Engage them in tactical skills. Guide them to delight in the world around you. Let's explore a number of ways to optimize and nurture some of your little one's best years!

More on CHILDREN:

Literature Rich Classical Education

Loving on Moms With New Babies

Whose Job is it Anyway? Spiritual Formation of a Child

Expect and Inspect: Teaching Your Child to Clean

A Silent Tragedy: How We are Raising Our Children

Inspiration on HOME and FAMILY @ www.nurturingmynest.com

Speaking as a parent of a strong-willed child (SWC), I can communicate as one has been in the trenches. The wonderful part of this is that I can confirm that this child is likely intelligent and full of potential. While parenting this personality can be altogether demanding, frustrating and intensely maddening. It also gives you a front row seat to a highly driven, strong individual. Consider your words and actions carefully. This podcast offers hope and encouragement and some practical tools.

More on this topic at www.nurturingmynest.com

More on CHILDREN:

Ep. 60 A Silent Tragedy: How We Are Raising Our Children

Ep. 94 Teaching Your Child to Serve: Spiritual Formation @ Home

Only 18 Summers

Eo, 80 Birth Order

Ep. 144 The Heart of ANGER: Practical Help for the Prevention and Cure of Anger in Children

My hope is that you have a wonderful relationship with your parents. My hope is that you are visiting them as frequently as you hope your own children will visit you when they are grown. We can agree that relationships take work. Our interaction with our parents or our children is no exception. Open, honest conversations lead to better relationships. When you do go to your parent's home for a visit, remember these easy things that you can do to be a really wonderful guest.

More on FAMILY:

The Heart of ANGER: Practical Helps for the Prevention and Cure of Anger in Children

Talking to Your Children About Dating

Dehumanizing Our Daughters - Choose Beauty

More inspiration at @www.nurturingmynest.com

Today's thoughts center around what to do with the stuff that represents life that has been lived, but is no longer used daily or on a regular basis. Life is a series of transitions. One of the inevitable changes is moving out of the home where you lived with your parents. Consider how many parents continue to live with their children's things long after the children are gone. The trap is created when space is held hostage when their home is storing things instead of children.

More of this conversation @www.nurturingmynest.com

Inspiration on HOME and FAMILY:

How to Make Friends and Keep Them

Private Worship

The Value of a Good Father

The Value of a Mom

Teaching Your Child to Serve: Spiritual Formation @ Home

Books available on Amazon:

Hum of the Home: Routines and Rhythms of Homemaking

Nurturing My Nest: Intentional Home Building and Custom Built Education

Since I was a young woman, I have worked with children. As I dearly love these young hearts, I am particularly attuned to the anger evident in so many of them. Sometimes the anger comes from a wounded place or a response to bullying. Other times it is the response to neglect or even an head injury. This podcast explores practical helps for the prevention and cure of anger in children. Yes, there is prevention. Yes, there are cures. Yes, more than identifying the problem, there is help.

More on this conversation in the companion blog @www.nurturingmynest.com

More on CHILDREN:

25 Ways that Parents Provoke Their Children to Anger

Talking to Your Children About Dating

The Value of a Good Father

Teaching Your Child to Serve: Spiritual Formation @ Home

Loving on Moms with New Babies

Books on HOME and FAMILY:

Hum of the Home: Routines and Rhythms of Homemaking

Nurturing My Nest: Intentional Homebuilding and Custom Built Education

Anger in a child is a real response. While God holds each of us, even a child, responsible for his or her sin, God does hold parents 100% responsible for their actions which provoke a child to anger. Check out these 25 ways that a parent might provoke their child to anger. Loving my children well means that communication on this topic must remain open to self examination on this topic as well as others. Authenticity and humility as a parent are key to success.

More on CHILDREN:

Talking to Your Children About Dating

Nurturing My Nest - The Book

The Value of a Good Father

Whose Job is it Anyway? The Spiritual Formation of a Child

The Heart of ANGER - Practical Help for the Prevention and Cure of Anger in Children

Inspiration on HOME and FAMILY @ www.nurturingmynest.com

How is loneliness as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day? For the last few years the topic of a loneliness epidemic has dominated much of the chatter in interpersonal news. This conversation has focused on healthy friendships. In life we often have to walk through the exploration of meeting a number of aquaintances in order to find true friends. This growth mindset might even lead us to look inward and develop the qualities of a quality friend within ourselves. Check out these 10 ideas on how to avoid a friendship recession in your own life.

This conversation continues on a companion blog @nurturingmynest.com

More on FRIENDSHIP:

What NOT TO DO When Making Friends

Fall is for Friendship: 10 Ideas for Enjoying Friends

Friendship in 7 Easy Steps

10 Ways to be Kind

Inspiration on HOME and FAMILY:

Hum of the Home: Routines and Rhythms of Homemaking

Nurturing My Nest: Intentional Homebuilding and Custom Built Education

Emotional health is vital to our physical and spiritual health. If shame is a reoccuring theme in my thoughts, it might be identified as a bully. Sometimes shame is a response to guilt, but recycling this toxic emotion once the situation has been dealt with is like an insistent bully. The four steps to respond to guilt allow forgiveness and new thinking. Explore shame in contrast to guilt along with a healthy pathway to eradicate toxic thinking.

More on HEALTHY THINKING on these podcasts:

Lies Women Believe

Identity Amnesia

Soul Keeping

Investing in the Long Game

Hope and Forgiveness

A Passionate Advocate for Women's Health: Donna Robart

More on HOME and FAMILY @ www.nurturingmynest.com