Blogs: Healthy Families

To use the old adage “Spring has Sprung”…well almost….it still feels a tad wintery around here in the Hutt Valley, but the Tui are out and the Kowhai tree is throwing its yellow flowers all over my lawn! This month I thought I would talk about getting your children involved with family gardening. The beauty of having a garden is that ANYONE can have one. Even those of you who live in small (or large) inner city apartments. All you need is a decent sized container for what you want to grow and somewhere with some light (preferably sunshine).  Continue reading »

The last few weeks I have been working and playing a lot with families who have young children (under the age of five). Often the parent’s ask me questions along the lines of “How can I make my child listen” or “What can I do to stop the tantrums”. They often make comments about their children such as “he/she is naughty” or “I’m worried that they will grow up bad”. I never maintain that I have all the answers, in fact I spend a lot of my time helping the parents realise that they already have the solutions, deep down inside them. I am merely the avenue for helping the parents find the solutions. So this month’s topic “Growing Great families” struck me as being about how important it is to start this “growing” in the early years. Continue reading »

“Ding ding ding” School’s in. Sigh. Back to grind for many of us. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday with loads of fun, laughter, food and whatever else that floats your boats. For some of us, this time of year is a blessing, having just had 6-8 weeks of entertaining kids day in and day out- school (in whatever form that takes) provides much needed rest for weary parental brains. Continue reading »