Mindful Moments Blog

Are you feeling overwhelmed by parenting lately? Perhaps a bit lost? It’s no secret that this parenting gig is tricky. Here are some reasons why you may benefit from a parenting coach.

Use Time-Ins and a calming space to help kids playfully learn how to name and regulate their emotions. What's The Time-In ToolKit? Children can be taught social and emotional skills in much the same way we teach them to read and write. The Time-In ToolKit® is a guided resource that nurtures social and emotional skills by engaging adults and children in mindful, affirming conversation about the many feelings we all experience. While time-outs are traditionally punitive experiences that isolate the child for a set amount of time as determined by the adult, Time-Ins are a way to help children learn to calm their bodies and process emotions in a safe space (aka Calming Corner™) so that they can problem-solve, learn and grow.  Time-Ins empower children to check in with their bodies when they are feeling strong emotions so that they can respond to situations rather than react. When children feel safe, and connected, they have a much easier time learning new skills. Who is The Time-In ToolKit for? Our world-famous Time-In ToolKit can be used by parents, caregivers, therapists, teachers, daycare providers, and grandparents; anyone committed to teaching and guiding children by example using connection, redirection, and loving discipline.  What's Included in The Time-In ToolKit? The Time-In ToolKit includes six posters, (3) 8"x10",  (1) 12" x 16" and (2) 20" x 30," (1) deck of PeaceMakers Affirmation Cards, (1) Time-In Activity Mat, and (2) sets of My Feelings Faces & Calming Strategy cards. If you choose to frame your posters, we recommend IKEA frames for quality and price. Want to save 20% on your ToolKit purchase? Check out our new Calming Corner Bundle!  Set Up Your Calming Corner It's time to assemble your Calming Corner space! Walk around with your child/children to see where they feel most comfortable and allow them to help choose the space. You can even make this a fun game!  Pretend to be explorers looking for the perfect space for your Calming Corner. Ideally, this is an area (possibly a corner) of your home, classroom, or office where you can devote 3-5 ft. of wall space to hang or store your posters and Time-In activities.  Emotional Intelligence In Action The ToolKit will equip you with practical tools to teach emotional intelligence and foster listening, cooperation, connection, and self-control. We say "Name it to tame it...Feel it to heal it!" Check out the videos below to see how other families are transforming challenging behaviors and making learning about emotions FUN for tots to tweens!  Name It Start Early Emotional intelligence begins in infancy when babies bond with caregivers and learn that people will respond to them when they cry or smile. As your baby grows, he or she will become more aware of emotions, gaining the ability to name them, respond to them, and eventually regulate them. The first step in developing emotional intelligence at any age is the practice of recognizing our emotions. It’s not until a child can identify emotions and respond to the feelings of others that she can also begin to control her own feelings. This may seem like a tall order for a 2-year-old, but studies show that even babies as young as 18 months can recognize and respond to emotions.  Name Feelings “Grumpy is her new word. Just wanted to share that the Time-In ToolKit works for 2 yr olds!” - Regina, Mom of 2 yo using Time-in ToolKit When our kids are small and trying to manage emotions - they can't express what they are feeling. They throw tantrums, they throw things, they have meltdowns, they scream, and they whine. This is their way of communicating with us. They need help to organize, process, and express their feelings in healthy ways. We can teach them these skills instead of punishing them, putting them in time-out, etc. Understand Feelings Our thoughts and actions are shaped by our many feelings and experiences. Making time to explore and understand our feelings through our many senses including movement, listening, and meaningful dialogue connects us. We are creating a world that gives all human beings (especially young children) permission to feel. How much less violence and mental health challenges would we see if every child was raised to feel seen, heard, and a sense of belonging? That's the world we are creating using Time-In's.  Keep reading to learn how.  Feel It Create Connections Instead of hitting her mom, or hitting her dog, this sweet 4 yo girl (who has been struggling with impulse control issues and managing her feelings since her parents separated) was able to notice that she was feeling nervous AND to name and share her feelings with her mama using her SnuggleBuddies plush, Yellow Lion. Snugglebuddies Emotions Plush toys make great additions to your Calming Corner! She named all four moods, happy (yellow), sad (blue), calm (green), and mad (red) using the toy's mood emojis ... instead of lashing out. This is what self-awareness, self-control, and compassion look like in the making.  When we model self-love and forgiveness, children learn self-love and forgiveness.  Prevent Sibling Rivalry Sharing and naming emotions fosters healthy relationships, reducing family tension. Simply listening and validating each family member’s experience is the first step to teaching children the important life skill of conflict resolution. Time-Ins for Tots to Tweens When your child is feeling overwhelmed, what do they do? 10-year-old Meghan has some ideas on this. Children as old as 9, 10, and 11 are benefiting from the Time-In ToolKit®.  Emotional intelligence starts with naming our emotions, but it doesn’t end there. We can also learn to pause before we act on our thoughts and feelings. Heal It Make Amends As parents, we can nurture kindness in our children. “It’s kind of like weight training,” says Dr. Ritchie Davidson from the University of Wisconsin. “We found that people can build up their compassion ‘muscle’ and respond to others’ suffering with care and a desire to help.”  When children are given the choice to share, apologize, or offer kind gestures instead of being forced to, they are roughly twice as likely to be generous later. And when kids are praised and recognized for their kindness, they are more likely to help again. The Time-In ToolKit does both. Use What You Learn Being able to name feelings and the cause behind big emotions is the first step towards building resilience and healthy ways to cope with situations. The video below shows children putting the skills they've learned with their ToolKit into action. Create Healthy Habits “I am safe and secure.” That’s the Red Bear 🐻 PeaceMakers card this three years old pulled to talk about with her mom before bedtime. Watch as she tells her mom what it feels like when she feels safe... versus when she feels scared. This sweet girl has been using the Time-In Toolkit® (Family Bundle) for just 2 months to help with her bedtime routine! Her mama tells us she LOVES it and has gone from, at one point, having 33 tantrums in a day (that's a lot...) to just one in a week.  The Ultimate Guide To Building A Calming Corner & Using Time-ins At Home & School The Ultimate Guide To Building A Calming Corner And Using Time-Ins At Home How do you say goodbye to time-outs and introduce time-ins? This is the ultimate guide on the do's and don'ts for building and using a Calming Corner.

Our identity is not the way we feel. The way we feel is a state of being. Here's why that's important (spoiler alert - it affects your child's brain development), and strategies for adults and children to balance their emotions.

When we attempt to fix our children’s emotions and problems, we move out of connection and into control. The focus shifts from them to us. Instead, we can sit with them in the hard stuff, offering support, not solutions. Here's how. 

With the use of the Time-In-Toolkit and SnuggleBuddies Plush Toys, one child learned how to manage his emotions by modeling his older sister.  

To my girlfriends, I know it’s been a while since we had a girls’ night … girls’ dinner … well, girls’ anything.

Why do we feel triggered when our kids do that thing they do, and what tools do we have to keep us from meeting their immaturity with our own? Here are 3 preventive tips and 4 tools for in the heat of the moment. 

5 tools to help your inner child overcome the fear of failure so that you and your kids can embrace a growth mindset! I can’t remember when it first started, but it has followed me like my own shadow throughout most of my life. And all too often, it steps forward into the light, smacking me in the face to remind me it’s there.  Perfectionism.  Am I doing enough for my kids?  Am I dropping the ball at work? How do I date my husband and spend time with myself and keep the house afloat?  Will my friends forgive me? I haven’t responded to their texts in three days, or maybe longer.  The questions all lead to one response. I am falling short of perfect, messing up, not enough.  Nothing will cause us to look in the mirror at all parts of ourselves more than becoming a parent. And that’s exactly what my two sons have done - reflected back to me this limiting belief that says I have to be exemplary or I am failing.  The trickle-down effect was palpable as I watched my three-year-old son throw his red crayon across the room after coloring out of the lines in his Paw Patrol coloring book. Tears brimming, he wailed, “It is ruined. It’s not the way I wanted to do it. I never want to color again.”  After comforting my son and stumbling across my words, because clearly, I was lacking the skills I wanted to teach, I settled in to relate to his pain. I got it. I really did. Because I have spent most of my life there.  I realized that if I didn’t learn tools to help my son embrace his mistakes, then tears over a scribbled picture would turn into tears about striking out at baseball, getting a B on a paper … and an overwhelming urgency to have all things go his way.  I began reading all the tips and tricks that experts suggested in helping my child overcome his fixed mindset, and with all of my short-hand sticky notes framing my computer, it felt more like putting a band-aid over a deeper wound. The pulse was coming from me. Because while my son was early in his brain development, I was also emotionally immature. It was time to stop shaming myself for my mistakes and learn to befriend them … to acknowledge them as the teachers they are.  Here are five things I did to help blast through my perfectionism.  1. Get to the root Carol Dweck, psychologist and the author of Mindset who coined the term growth mindset, says, “Parents think they can hand children permanent confidence—like a gift—by praising their brains and talent. It doesn’t work, and in fact, has the opposite effect. It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong.” I felt like she wrote this specifically for my child-self. Reflecting back to my youth, my parents, with the best of intentions and full of heart, assured me that I was the best - When I colored a picture, I was the best artist … When I won the track race, I was the best athlete that day … When I got an A on my test, I was the best student. In being told I was “perfect”, I began to fear being “not perfect”. Would they still love me if I fell short of the best? This single question followed me through all future relationships, including motherhood.  And there it was, the root of my perfectionism stemmed from fear of losing my attachments. At least now I knew what I was really dealing with.  2. Learn to release “True self-confidence is the courage to be open - to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. It is not reflected in a title, an expensive suit, a fancy car, or a series of acquisitions. It is reflected in your mindset: your readiness to grow,” says Dweck.  So the new question became, how do I become courageously me?  I wrote down everything that I felt like I was failing. And then I tore the page in half. And then, tore it again. I threw the shredded papers in the recycle bin where they could be transmuted to something useful because my guilt sure wasn’t helping anyone.  3. Adopt a new perspective Brené Brown, professor, lecturer, and author says that healthy striving is self-focused, asking ourselves, “How can I improve?” whereas perfectionism is other-focused, causing us to ask, “What will they think?”  I realized that being the best was a narrow concept. Instead, I could focus on being my best, and that was fluid minute to minute. Sometimes my best is locking myself in the bathroom for five deep breaths before re-entering the chaos of raising small children, and sometimes the bar is much higher. When I put the power back into myself, to ask what I want and need, I can overcome life’s disruptions with much more resilience.  4. Create a mantra I knew I needed some sort of mantra to repeat to myself as I was likely to fall back into old habits, at least initially. So I created this practice: Place one hand on your heart, and one hand on your belly. Breathe in: I am love. Breathe out: I am enough. Rinse and repeat all day long.  5. Practiced acceptance For my children to embrace their mistakes, they had to become safe for me, too. When I did mess up, I noticed my self-talk and focused on shifting from I can’t believe I did this to My mistakes help me learn and grow. With practice, mistakes became allowed, and even welcomed, in our household.  I also circled back to the beginning, my child-self who was a slave to praise. I gave her permission to be loved, flaws and all. Shifting into motherhood, I began to notice and celebrate my boys’ efforts over their outcomes so that they have the freedom to meet challenges head-on without the trepidation of a what if I fail mentality?  My boys and I are learning to do the lionhearted work of being ourselves together. So, you ask, how did I help my sons develop a growth mindset? I started with me.

We parents have long searched for a solution when it comes to behavior modification, asking ourselves, which is more effective, positive or negative reinforcement? We have the scoop here.

Research has shown that children who feel unsafe and disconnected cannot learn. Why is this and what can we do as parents and educators? 

If we want to be seen as more than the stereotypical gender prototypes of caring for the kids and tending to the household duties, then we need to afford our husbands the same grace as we speak of their being. 

Join Generation Mindful founder, Suzanne Tucker, for a fun, interactive reading of Heart's Treasure Hunt, our best-selling children's book where Heart goes on an adventure to discover "what is love and where does love live?..."  The answer might just surprise you!  Download this FREE PRINTABLE to color with the children in your home or classroom after storytime. Have Your Own Storytime & Make Learning About Emotions FUN! Heart SnuggleBuddies Emotions Plush & Book Bundle 0 Reviews $52.00 Buy today and receive a FREE Feelings Journal (see below)! The perfect addition to any Calming Corner, Heart is our newest SnuggleBuddies Emotions Plush... View Product model to learn Play to Learn inner child emotions emotional intelligence yoga kids Children's books Impulse Control Raising Toddlers social emotional skills

Wisdom. Emotional intelligence. Maturity. These words typically conjure up the image of someone older than you. Perhaps it’s someone you know and revere for their persistent nature and kind soul. That person for me is Elizabeth: an 8-year-old I’ve only just met. Older than me? Not by a long shot. A person from whom I could learn from? Absolutely. Elizabeth and her mom reside in St. Louis, and I was lucky enough to speak with them very recently about their enjoyment of their products from Generation Mindful. Not only was it encouraging to hear they were well-loved already, but there was a tone in this young girl’s voice that stopped me dead in my tracks: she was fully embracing the mindfulness mindset, and was already self-aware enough to speak with me about her own growth and life today. Elizabeth answered the phone when I called and did so with so much gusto that I thought I was speaking to her mom, Tracy, instead! We chatted Harry Potter, and our shared love of his adventures and magical stories bonded us immediately. She, without a doubt, is a Gryffindor: she was happy to share this fact with me, and even pointed me in the direction of the sorting hat if I wanted to do so myself. I assured her I’m a longtime Hufflepuff and noted that we work well together. She reminded me we all can. The mother-daughter duo then proceeded to tell me more about the magical Calming Corner they’ve set up in their basement, in a little room below the stairs: just like a certain big-feeling boy Elizabeth and I both know quite well. It was previously used for storage, but once they received their posters and toolkit from Generation Mindful, their collective lightbulb went off and they just knew that space would be better used as Elizabeth’s very own Calming Corner. In it, she’s incorporated her toolbox of helpful things: some stuffed poodles, some coloring utensils, a small pad for her drawings and doodlings. She tells me that it makes her happy and to feel calm, and her mom also chuckles and notes that she’s spoken with the poodles a time or two when she needed to vent as well; and that it really, truly helps them to have that space. Making an area an inviting haven for comfort, peace, and love means it will be used. It will be loved, and much reflection and growth can happen there as well. Sometimes we need a place that is all our own, with tools made with those big feelings in mind. Dumbledore famously said to his protege Mr. Potter, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?” We can’t help but agree. _____________ Generation Mindful creates tools, toys, and programs that nurture emotional intelligence through play and positive discipline. Join us and receive joy in your inbox each week.

Self-care looks different for everyone. And it’s certainly not just one big thing you do because someone else tells you it will be therapeutic. Instead, we can put small systems in place that make nurturing our own well-being too small and too easy to fail, and here's how. 

What love language does your child speak and how can you speak it so they feel deeply valued and loved?

A mama warrior overcomes frustration to make a teachable moment through art for her son. Three tips to incorporate art into positive parenting.

Safe, powerful, connected. Supported, nurtured, and seen. These are just some of the ways we want our children to feel.

You know those challenging behaviors from your children that drive you nuts and leave you scratching your head? Turns out they actually grow the brain. Here's how.

Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33, Dulci navigated treatment, working full time, and parenting her son. This is what she says others need to know, and it could save a life.