Conscious Family Journal

Back to School Tips for Conscious Families

     

How to prepare your kids – and adjust yourself – for back to school season.

   

Conscious Parenting with Meg Brown for BodyEcology.com

   

   

Did you have a wonderful family vacation this summer?  Do you even remember your family vacation this summer??  
   
For many of us, the transition from summer fun to school, clubs and organized sports can be stressful, to say the least. In the blink of an eye, the rhythms of lazy days and backyard fun give way to “early to bed, early to rise”... with every minute in between scheduled to the max. Welcome to the school year!
   
  

Take a Deep Breath
   
Early fall is a time of transitions. Here in the northern hemisphere, long, hot, sunny days have given way to something a little cooler and shorter. For our children, unstructured, carefree days spent outdoors have been replaced by the scheduled, date-driven obligations of school – spent largely indoors, sitting still.  

How to Get Your Kids Excited About Vegetables (Really!)

Conscious Parenting with Meg Brown for BodyEcology.com

Vegetables are an important part of the Body Ecology lifestyle and every healthy family’s diet. Here are four easy ways to get your kids to eat more veggies!

Do you know any children who actually enjoy eating vegetables? I am acquainted with a few. I have a niece who appears to love them – she eats almost any green leafy vegetable with a smile on her face.
 
One of my son’s best friends consumes baby carrots like they’re candy. And a brother-sister team from across the street routinely polish off their dinner salads before even looking at the cheeseburgers on their plates.
 
Perhaps they are just being polite.
 
Perhaps my own children, when dining at other people’s homes, also impress the resident adults by eating all the vegetables in sight. I will have to check on that.
 
In the meantime, vegetable consumption is sadly still a bit of an issue at our house. I have to be creative, persistent and sometimes downright sneaky to get a reasonable amount of veggies into the boys’ daily diet.
 

Are You and Your Family Getting Enough Vitamin D?

  

Dear Friends, I originally wrote this post for www.BodyEcology.com in February. Still, whether it is the bitter winds of winter or spring's April showers that are keeping you indoors, it pays to make sure that you and your family are getting enough of the sunshine vitamin. Enjoy!

 

Who knew that a week at Disney World could be good for your family’s health?
 
We are happily spending two weeks in Florida right now. While the kids were equally excited about the prospect of spending time with Grandma, Grandpa and Mickey Mouse, I was looking forward to something else: Sunshine.  
 
I love my parents dearly, but I was craving the sunshine... and I knew that my children and I all needed a healthy shot of the “sunshine vitamin,” vitamin D.

Who Needs Vitamin D?

We all need adequate amounts of vitamin D. It is an essential ingredient when it comes to absorbing calcium and building healthy bones in children and adults. It also plays an important role in creating a strong immune system by helping your body defend against chronic low grade inflammation.

5 Ways to Boost Your Child's Self-Esteem with Mindful Eating

Conscious Parenting by Meg Brown for BodyEcology.com 

Anyone parenting today has heard a lot about self-esteem.

Put simply, self-esteem means holding yourself in high regard. It’s self-esteem that helps children handle conflicts, resist negative influences and quite possibly, have happier, healthier lives.¹

So as conscious parents, how can we positively influence our children’s self-esteem?

Cultivating A Healthy Self-Esteem

Building and maintaining healthy self-esteem is a lifelong journey.

You can help your child along that path by consistently offering experiences of belonging, learning and contributing, such as:

• Find ways to help your child feel like she belongs within the family.
• Help him develop a sense of competence – a deep-seated belief that he can learn to be successful.
• Teach them that they can contribute to the family’s welfare in a worthwhile way.²

Seven Things Worth Teaching Our Children – and Remembering Ourselves – in 2009

Conscious Parenting with Meg Brown for www.BodyEcology.com

   

There is something about a brand new year that just feels good.

  

New inspiration. New hope. A chance to forgive and forget all those things that didn’t happen as planned in the previous year.

  

People have been making New Year’s resolutions for thousands of years. Today’s most popular resolutions range from losing weight to saving more money to taking that trip to Paris that you’ve been putting off for years.

  

This year, I invite you to put conscious parenting front and center on your New Year’s resolution list.

  

What will you teach your children in 2009?

The Perfect Gift

Conscious Parenting with Meg Brown for www.BodyEcology.com

  

Happy Holidays!

    

Since it is the season of giving, I am going to share with you one of my best conscious parenting tips of all: Love yourself first.

    

This may sound a little self-centered, or even narcissistic. Most of us – especially women – were raised believing that to be “good” human beings, we needed to take care of ourselves last.

    

Let’s put those beliefs aside for a moment, and observe reality. Have you ever noticed that your good moods and your children’s good behavior always seem to coincide?

    

Or that, just when you are feeling most tired, cranky and hopeless, your children can’t seem to do anything but fight, argue and drive you crazy? Hmm.

   

As parents, we provide the foundation for wellness for our family. As conscious parents, we can learn to be more loving and supportive of that foundation: It is called self-care.

"Will you still love me if I fail this test?"

Conscious Parenting with Meg Brown for BodyEcology.com

 

“Unconditional love is really just love without expectations.”  - Louise Hay

 

As parents, we believe that the regard we hold for our children is the purest, most unconditional kind of love.

    

Looking into the face of a baby, we know that these tiny, beautiful souls are the surest proof that there is goodness in the world. We promise ourselves that this precious child will never know a moment of pain, sorrow, self-doubt or loneliness.

   

Our love is pure, all-encompassing and constant.

  

Next Stop: Seventh Grade 

    

Loving without expectations becomes exponentially harder when our children enter their school years. All of a sudden, our children are being graded on their performance... and for many of us, it feels like we are being graded at the same time.

   

Our own feelings of self-worth become too easily entwined with our perceptions of our children’s accomplishments.

What Is Your Parenting Style?

Conscious Parenting with Meg Brown for BodyEcology.com

When I was approached by Body Ecology to do a column on conscious parenting, I was thrilled and just a little nervous.

Was I qualified?

I’ve spent almost twenty-five years in corporate America, building organizations, managing multi-million dollar budgets, developing products and selling services. I’ve traveled extensively and bought my own home. I am the older sister, aunt and faithful daughter in a huge extended family. Oh, wait, I almost forgot: I am a mother. Check.

To be more specific, I am a single mother.

I adopted my two amazing sons when I was forty and they were two and three years of age. Eight years later, we are still learning how to grow as a family and respect each other as individuals. Some days, I am afraid my heart will burst from the pounding, all-consuming love I feel for these two souls. On other days... well, not so much.

Which, of course, is what parenting is all about. It is about being there through the good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow, the victories and the vomit.