When you see a dandelion do you see a wish or a weed? When you hear a child cry do you hear a need or a demand? When you wash a sticky face do you feel blessed or burdened? As parents, our perspective determines our response, and our response determines our children's reality. So let's wish wishes, meet needs, and count blessings to make childhood a magical, peaceful, joy-filled reality for both our children and ourselves.

Join them in their world when they're little so you'll be welcome in their world when they get big.

Parenting our children peacefully is a gift of peace to the world. Children learn what they live and live what they learn.

Not coincidentally, the best way to parent a child is the same as the best way to treat other humans... with kindness, respect, compassion, honesty, acceptance, and peace.

Instant obedience and mindless compliance are poor goals, indeed, when raising children. A thoughtfully questioning, passionately curious, and humorously resourceful child who delights in inventing ‘compromises’ and who endlessly pushes the boundaries tends to become a thoughtful, passionate, resourceful adult who will change the world rather than being changed by the world.

Night waking isn't the sign of a bad baby. It's the sign of a normal baby. Nighttime needs are as valid as daytime needs and nighttime parenting as necessary as daytime parenting. Crying is communication, not manipulation. Respond to your baby's cries, even if all they need is to know you're there. You're not being manipulated. You're being a parent.

When we encourage new parents to 'treasure these moments because they don't last forever' we need to remember to also reassure them that they will survive these moments because they don't last forever.Parenting is hard, and the struggles can sometimes feel like they overshadow the joys. Knowing that struggling is normal and will pass helps us get through the hard times so we can truly treasure the good ones.

Our lives are our stories, each day a fresh new page, each season a whole new chapter. Our parenting chapters become the beginning of our children's stories in glorious, dog-eared, mud-stained, daisy-chain pages of sunshine-filled days and wish-on-a-star nights and shared struggles and triumphs and tears and laughter. Where their stories go from there is up to them, but where they begin is up to us.

Taking care of myself doesn't mean 'me first.' It means 'me, too.