My 13 year old took the creative approach to let me know I bought the wrong milk. We usually drink the vanilla flavoured milk, which is apparently far superior. I admire his creative spark, but I’m still not driving to multiple grocery stores to get everything everyone likes every week :)

I vaguely told the kids they’d have to read and “updated your website or something” over the summer break, but they have this week totally off so I didn’t say much more than that. I came home from the grocery store today to find they had the first three episodes of their webseries “If Superheroes Were Real” in the can. Haden is all the superheros and Julian is The Bad Guy. They are hilariously wonderfully crazy kids. Check out Episode 1:

Every Mom has a few tricks up their sleeve, and here is one my favourite and most simple ones.

My kids love arts and crafts of every kind, and we have a lot of supplies in our downstairs playroom. But upstairs in the kitchen – not coincidentally where I am the most busy – I keep a special supply of things for my two year old. It’s just the bag from a set of sheets (those things are great for storing anything and everything) and in it I keep one set of crayons, some construction paper, a couple of activity books and lots of stickers. When I’m cooking or cleaning the kitchen, I’ll get down Penelope’s bag of colouring things and she’ll happily draw, “write” and put stickers on paper for the better part of the morning. It’s all things she can use independently and without making a mess; I save the markers, glue, etc. for times I can sit down with her. She loves making sticker scenes and making up her own stories, and writing “words” and asking me to read them.

It’s so much a part of our routine now, that after her brothers leave for school and I start cleaning up the breakfast mess she usually asks “Can I colour now?” and smiles when I get her bag of supplies down from the top cupboard.

Such a simple thing, but it keeps her independently amused and yet still in the same room as me so we can carry on our interesting conversations while we both do our “work”.  I love our busy mornings together.

Halloween is just around the corner, and it’s time for our clan to start putting together their costumes. I have four kids going trick or treating this year for the first time, it’s so exciting! I hate to just buy a costume off the rack; to me that doesn’t feel really in the spirit of dressing up and takes some of the fun and imagination away from the holiday. It’s also very expensive, and the costumes available at department stores, etc. are usually not well made. I remember my mom sewing all my halloween costumes when I was a kid; not only were they totally original (my fave memory is going out as a crayon), they were warm too. Very important in Ontario! I’m kind of crafty but I don’t sew, and with the price of fabric these days that’s not really an affordable option either. We choose instead to piece together costumes from the props and make-up section of the store, and combine with items we already have. We have also borrowed and traded costumes in the past, and although I can’t say I’ve never bought an off-the-rack costume for the kids, most of them have had at least a touch of originality to them. (more…)

I’m writing in response to a post by Diane Duff on Best Tools For Schools today on the increased diagnosis of children with ADHD, the apparent increase (anecdotally by teachers such as herself) in children presenting symptoms of ADHD and the new guidelines from the American Pediatric Association recommending screening for ADHD now begin at age four. I think she has some good, thought provoking points but I think she also has some misinformed ideas that perpetuate myths about ADHD.

Diane asks the following, which I think is a great dialogue-starter:

Do you think the increasing number of children being diagnosed with ADHD is merely the result of our being more knowledgeable and having better diagnostic tools?

Or, do you think there are other factors at play? (more…)