Parenting resources

Things that could keep kids age 3-5 engaged at home, say, during a pandemic:

• 3-minute workouts, like this spiderman one

• Playball, an interactive sporty/music-based activity created by one of Theo’s old teachers

• Cosmic Kids Yoga

• Kahn Academy (Theo loves this – he can choose what he wants and it includes books read outloud)

• Wendy MacNaughton’s Draw Together art “class” that’s gone through a few incarnations in the pandemic, including a podcast, but here’s her original YouTube videos

• Virtual zoo safari’s

• Recipes for making playdough and slime and oobleck
  

The @biglittlefeelings Instagram account and online course has solid parenting advice for little ones.

Other parenting resources on Instagram:

• @Parenting_works

• TheConsciousKid, HereWeRead, Britt Hawthorn share tools for ensuring kids’ bookshelves and education are diverse.

• @DrBeckyatGoodInside, @ParentsTogether, @responsive_parenting, @biglifejournal, @curious.parenting

• ADHD/neurodiversity resources: @parentinreallife, @understoodorg

Parenting books - we started with No Drama Discipline in week 9 of the pandemic. This neuroscience-based approach aligns with all the leadership training I've engaged with.

Kid books ordered from Bookshop.org, which supports local independent bookstores that might not otherwise have the ability to put their inventory online:

• The Rabbit Listened: I’ve now bought this book for several friends with kids going through tough stuff. It describes all the different animals who think they have the right strategy for processing upset emotions. The rabbit, on the other hand, sidles up, sits, and waits. And then listens as the child goes through stages of everything the other animals suggested, but in in their own time and way. It aligns with a palliative approach

• The Invisible String for loss and separation anxiety

• The Goodbye Book about loss and change and feelings

• "Bedtime for Batman"

• "Moana"

• What do you do with an idea? (also relevant to adult academic work)

Colors of the World crayon collection

Kid podcasts

How kids learn to read

Better life lab experiments, which include data on how couples and parents share the mental load of running households

Also, some articles about childcare

• The history of the child care movement

• Article predicting the collapse of the child care industry because it’s not publicly financed

• How childcare became the most broken business in America

• The mental health crisis that is pandemic parenting amid all these other crises

• COVID parenting reaching a breaking point