Did you catch this article in the Examiner?  ”Connected Parenting Offers Support for Your Challenging Child,” by Connected Parenting friend Sondra Santos LaBrie, discusses what makes Connected Parenting different and gives the 411 on San Diego Connected Parenting Coaches Rebecca Lindsay and Kelly Parisa.

A couple of weeks ago, the Connected Parenting Blog was the proud recipient of the Beautiful Blogger Award from Single Soccer Mom! In tapping Connected Parenting for this fab honor, Single Soccer Mom writes:

“I’ve decided to pass the award on to a blog that I feel every parent should visit at least once… I am giving Connected Parenting – The Blog the honor of Beautiful Blogger for the beautiful things it can do to your family.

I recently came across the blog and was intrigued by the subject matter.  During a two-hour lunch break, I found myself wandering through a local bookstore in search of the book of the same name, Connected Parenting, by Jennifer Kolari. After reading just a few chapters and applying the techniques described within those pages, I have seen the bond between my little man and I blossom even more.”

Thanks so much Single Soccer Mom!

As far as we can tell, the rules of the Beautiful Blogger Award are as follows:

1.  Display the Beautiful Blogger Badge in the post.
2.  Write 7 things about yourself that people don’t know.
3.  Give the Beautiful Blogger Award to 7 other blogs.

So here we go:

And here are 7 things you may not know about Connected Parenting:

1.  Between us, the Connected Parenting Team has 19 children, ranging in age from not born yet to 29.

2.  The Connected Parenting Team has a total of 2 cats and 4 dogs – not much to brag about but we have the 4 best dogs and 2 best cats on the planet – we think : )

3.  Connected Parenting has therapists in both Canada and the U.S. and we’re expanding.

4.  The Connected Parenting book is coming out in soft cover this Spring.

5.  A Connected Parenting book for teenagers is in the works.

6.  Connected Parenting founder Jennifer Kolari starred as Annie in Annie Get Your Gun when she was in High School and was awesome!

7.  All of us at Connected Parenting are LOVING meeting all of you on our blog, Facebook page and Twitter! Thanks to all of you for joining our conversation!!!

Best of all, here are 7 Beautiful Bloggers!

1.  Sondra Santos LaBrie at Happy Healthy Hip Parenting who just got nominated as San Diego’s Blogger of the Year! Go check out her blog and please vote for her. Sondra’s focus is on co-parenting and single parenting.

2.  Jacqueline Green of Great Parenting Practices, who interviews parenting experts on every subject imaginable and who is currently hard at work organizing the fantastic Parenting Summit – Middle School Edition taking place from March 19-26. Click here to find out more and to register for free for this amazing teleconference. (FYI, Connected Parenting founder, Jennifer Kolari will do an interview on Parenting Super-Sensitive and Anxious Children at 12 p.m. EST on March 26.)

3.  Annie Fox, whose blog focusses on parenting those miraculous creatures known as tweens and teens. Annie tackles tricky issues from friendship problems, to dating, to bullies.

4.  Marsha Jacobson, who blogs at My Child Feels as well as on her personal blog. Marsha writes about parenting, emotional intelligence, and her own journey.

5.  Alyson Schafer, my fellow Torontonian, and an Adlerian parenting expert extraordinaire, who has a great blog that covers just about every parenting question you could come up with.

6.  Deborah Mersino of the Ingeniosus Blog. Deborah writes about giftedness and she is also the tireless force behind the Friday #gtchats on Twitter. Deborah is an incredible treasure to the gifted community!

7.  Jean Winegardner at Stimeyland, who blogs about her life as a mom of three boys, one of whom is on the autistic spectrum. Jean also writes a column called Autism Unexpected for the Washington Times and is the creator of AutMont, providing autism information, events and community in Montgomery County, Md.  Thanks for sharing your story with us Stimey!

Jacqueline Green at Great Parenting Practices has created an amazing Parenting Summit that starts this Friday (March 19) and runs through March 26. The Summit is a free teleconference with a fantastic line-up of parenting experts. Jennifer Kolari, founder of Connected Parenting, will be discussing Parenting Super-Sensitive and Anxious Children at 12 p.m. EST on March 26. For more details and to register at no charge, click here and follow the instructions.

Kelly Parisa and Rebecca Lindsay will be presenting a workshop on Connected Teaching this Monday, March 8 at the Southern Regional Meeting of CAIS. The workshop will focus on using techniques adapted from Connected Parenting to help teachers build deep bonds with their students, de-escalate behavior, and build their students’ self-esteem. This event is open to participants from CAIS member schools.

Live in the Ottawa area? Here’s your chance to see Jennifer Kolari live at the Ottawa Camp Fair. Jennifer will speak from 2-3:30 on March 7, 2010 at the Travelodge Hotel & Conference Centre. This event is open to the public. Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Citing remarks by Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, The Herald News reports that parental involvement is critical to the development of the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for decision-making. Many of us take this for granted, but it’s not always easy to stay connected with our children, especially during adolescence. Without a strong connection to their parents, children may have “weaker brain development which raises the risk of impulsive behavior such as drug use.” Yet another reason to connect with your kids!

Today’s Globe & Mail reports on a new study published in the journal Child Development that shows that children who are highly reactive to stress do worse than their peers at school if they come from a home where there’s lots of stress but do better than their peers at school, both academically and socially, when they have a stable and nurturing home.

This finding supports the Orchid Hypothesis (described at length by David Dobbs in The Atlantic late last year) which speculates that certain genes that have been tied to vulnerability to anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and behavioral problems may in fact simply make their carriers more sensitive to both positive and negative environmental influences. Under this hypothesis, people who are hyper-sensitive to their environment often respond so well to positive interventions that they surpass their less sensitive peers.

Click here to read the Child Development paper discussed in the Globe and check out our other posts about Orchid and Dandelion Children:

New Theory Suggests that Overly Sensitive Children Have Over-sized Potential,
More on Orchid and Dandelion Children,
Following the Orchid and Dandelion Discussion

If you missed it last night, be sure to check out the CBC documentary, Hyper Parents and Coddled Kids. It’s on again tonight at 10pm EST or you can watch it online.

Keep an eye on the Connected Parenting blog for Jennifer Kolari’s upcoming post on this very issue (hint: kids need to experience some bumps along the way in order to develop the neurological hardware to deal with adversity).

Great Teachers. A great teacher can make all the difference in your child’s life. I know. My kids have had the incredibly good fortune of having some really terrific teachers. According to an article in The Atlantic, Teach for America has been gathering data for more than 10 years and has started to pinpoint some of the key attributes of a great teacher and to use that information to improve the selection and training of its teachers.

Expertise and Perseverance. Penelope Trunk has a post up this week discussing the idea that expertise results from almost daily hard work over a period of at least ten years and not as a result of innate talent. These are the same ideas behind Malcom Gladwell’s theory of Outliers. To me, this discussion raises all kinds of questions about what might motivate someone to spend so much focussed time on a pursuit — and to persevere when they encounter failure. At least part of the answer was offered by Jennifer Kolari last week in her post about helping children succeed.

It Made My Day. I also spent way too much time this week reading this website, which collects little snapshots of things that made someone’s day (h/t to Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project). Love this one:

My 3 year old was playing with her LeapPad and in a cheerful voice it instructed, “Push the green GO circle and have fun.” She replied quite seriously, “Don’t tell me what to do.” IMMD

What have you been reading?

Tune in to CBC Radio 1 tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. to hear Jennifer Kolari on Fresh Air. For anyone whose progeny allow them to sleep in on the occasional Saturday morning, the interview will be available here if you miss it the first time around. Enjoy!

You may recall that back in October I recommended that anyone looking for a great nursery/kindergarten check out the e.p.i.c. School open house. As I said at the time, we’ve had an amazing experience at the school. This Thursday, January 28, from 1-3:30 p.m., prospective parents can see the school in action.

After you’ve tucked the kiddies into bed, head back to e.p.i.c. at 7:00 p.m. to see Jennifer Kolari speak at e.p.i.c.’s Parent Education Night, which is open to the public. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $10. Don’t miss out!

e.p.i.c. is at 111 Manor Rd. E. at the corner of Manor and Redpath. Contact the school at info@epicschool.com or call 416-489-0132.

Jennifer Kolari will be discussing the Connected Parenting book on the Parent’s Plate with Brenda Nixon on January 26, 2009 at 10am.

Check out Thefuntheory.com, a site that aims to prove that “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.” Here’s my favorite one:

Obviously, this works well with kids too. According to a New York Times article about the Tools of the Mind program, which is meant to promote self-regulation:

“[C]hildren acting out a dramatic scene can control their impulses much better than they can in nonplay situations. In one experiment, 4-year-old children were first asked to stand still for as long as they could. They typically did not make it past a minute. But when the kids played a make-believe game in which they were guards at a factory, they were able to stand at attention for more than four minutes.”

Remember how much more willing you were to eat your veggies when they were laid out in the shape of a funny face? Dropping your sister off at school is so much more exciting when you pretend you are going on a road trip. And, of course, clean-up time always goes more smoothly when you turn it into a race to see who can do their assigned task fastest.

Got any suggestions to make routine or unpleasant tasks go more smoothly by adding a bit of fun?

Get a chance to work with Connected Parenting founder Jennifer Kolari this February with a 4-week Parenting Workshop in Toronto.  The workshop will build your skills with material from the Connected Parenting workshop, the Connected Parenting Advanced Strategies workshop, and the Parenting with Brains workshop.

Here are the deets:

Dates: Wednesday evenings, February 3, 10, 17 and March 3, 2010
Times: 7:30-9:00 p.m.
Where: Armour Heights Community Centre, 2140 Avenue Rd., Toronto
Cost: $250 for an individual or $300 for a couple

To register, contact Rebecca Lindsay at info@connectedparenting.ca or 416-781-4700.

Check out a more detailed description of the workshop: after the jump

Join Jennifer Kolari for a 70-minute teleseminar at Great Parenting Practices with Jacqueline Green tomorrow, January 14, 2009 at 2pm EST. Visit Great Parenting Practices to submit your questions or sign up to listen. See you there

Jennifer Kolari was quoted in the Toronto Star today in an article about how the economic climate has changed parenting. According to the article:

“Today’s moms and dads want to instill money smarts, teaching kids the virtues of saving a chunk of birthday money or part-time job earnings.”

Check out the full article to hear what Jennifer and other experts have to say.

Jennifer Kolari will do a 70-minute teleseminar at Great Parenting Practices with Jacqueline Green on January 14, 2009 at 2pm. Visit Great Parenting Practices to submit your questions or sign up to listen.

David Dobbs’ article in the Atlantic about orchid children and dandelion children has sparked a huge amount of interest. We summarized the article and later followed up with a link to an interview with Dobbs on WNYC radio. We also mentioned that the story was picked up by Lisa Belkin at Motherlode.

But there’s been lots more coverage (see, for example, this or this) and lots of discussion of the Orchid Hypothesis. You can read a terrific debate between Dobbs and David Shenk (also of the Atlantic) about the suitability of the orchid/dandelion analogy. The debate focusses on the dichotomy created by the orchid/dandelion imagery, which Dobbs explains is really more of a continuum, as are most such descriptors. In fact, it’s more like there are orchid genes and dandelion genes and each person will generally have some amount of orchid in them but also some amount of dandelion:

“Every metaphor has its limits, and one of the limits of the orchid versus dandelions metaphor is that it implies a binary, A or B. division of personality types determined by behavioral gene variants: you’re either orchid or dandelion. That’s not quite accurate, for there are several genes in question here, and because we each get a mix of variants among them, it would be a rare person that was all orchid, so to speak, or all dandelion…

For argument’s sake, let’s say there are 10. In all ten, the ‘dandelion’ form is the most common, with the orchid forms accounting for about 20 to 35 percent. So for any given one of these genes, you’re more likely to have the dandelion variant than the orchid. However, odds being what they are, you are also likely to have the orchid form in at least some of these genes. And since the overall effects on temperamental plasticity are presumed to be multigenic, more orchid genes you have, the more temperamentally malleable and mercurial you will be. In addition, the particular combination of genes in which you have the orchid form will color the nature of your malleability…

So it’s not that a person is either plastic or not. The malleability runs along a spectrum, and is a matter of hue as well as intensity. And the consequences of that malleability, of course, depend heavily on experience, context, etc. But the more malleable folks are shaped more dramatically by their experience and react more dramatically, in temperament and behavior, than the less malleable.”

Dobbs also has a post on his blog (Neuron Culture) about whether orchid children are the same as gifted children. He explains that the theory makes no comment on intellect but instead focusses on temperament. The More Child’s @switchedonmom (who first drew my attention to the orchid article), posted a comment asking how the orchid hypothesis relates to Dabrowski’s Theory of Overexcitabilities. According to @switchedonmom, Dobbs wrote her back,  saying:

“[T]hanks for drawing this to my attn. I want to return to the temperament/intelligence/giftedness issue, and this will help. I hope to get to it in the next week or two and post on it.”

So stay tuned for more on how orchid characteristics correlate with giftedness.

Finally, if you find this as interesting as I do, you might be happy to learn that Dobbs has a deal to write a book on the subject.

* You may also be interested in this post: New Research Supports Orchid Hypothesis.

As we noted earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that parents who haven’t been able to get special education services through their public school may be able to get reimbursement from the school district for private school tuition. This was a landmark decision because in the past, parents could only get reimbursement for private special education if they first tried public services and found them to be inadequate.

Here comes the lawyer-y part: even though the Supreme Court’s decision said that they were eligible to apply for reimbursement, the parents who brought the Supreme Court case still had to return to the trial court to argue that their particular circumstances warranted reimbursement. Recently, the trial court ruled that the school district was not required to reimburse the costs of the student’s private education because it found that he had been put into the private institution to address drug and behavioural issues, and not because of learning problems caused by his disability (ADHD). If you’re even more lawyer-y than that, read the court’s full opinion here.

The Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) chose to commemorate Human Rights Day 2009 last Thursday (Dec. 10) by celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

To mark the occasion, CASW and the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children urged the Canadian government to:

1. establish a national Children’s Commissioner to provide a voice for children in the Canadian government,
2. repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code (which allows parents and teachers to use force to correct a child as long as the force is “reasonable under the circumstances,” the “spanking law”), and
3. implement a National Poverty Reduction strategy with specific annual targets to reduce child poverty.

A couple of weeks ago, we noted an article in The Atlantic that reported on a new theory of behavioral genetics. According to the theory, some children are like dandelions, able to thrive anywhere. Others are like orchids, hypersensitive to the environments in which they are raised – both good and bad.

I found a great interview with David Dobbs, the author of the Atlantic article, thanks to a comment on Motherlode (where Lisa Belkin wrote about the dandelion/orchid theory earlier this week).  Listen to the whole interview to hear about the up side of sensitive kids straight from the horse’s mouth.

Other posts about the Orchid Hypothesis:

Following the Orchid and Dandelion Discussion,
New Theory Suggests that Overly Sensitive Children Have Over-sized Potential
New Research Supports Orchid Hypothesis

Jennifer Kolari will be on CTV News tonight talking about how to handle holiday stress and excitement. Catch her again tomorrow if you miss tonight’s show.

An article in the December issue of the Atlantic reports on a new theory that genes that predispose people to anxiety, depression, and behavioural problems, also seem to endow people with enormous potential. According to this “orchid hypothesis”:

“[B]ad genes can create dysfunction in unfavorable contexts—but they can also enhance function in favorable contexts. The genetic sensitivities to negative experience … are just the downside of a bigger phenomenon: a heightened genetic sensitivity to all experience.”

According to the theory, most children are “dandelions” who will thrive just about anywhere; but some children are “orchids” who will ”wilt if ignored or maltreated but bloom spectacularly with greenhouse care.”

A growing body of research supports this proposition, showing that “orchid” children actually surpass their “dandelion” counterparts when exposed to positive interventions.  For example, one study showed that children with a genetic predisposition to ADHD improved their behaviour significantly more in response to positive intervention than did their peers without the predisposition.

The orchid hypothesis provides a powerful explanation for an evolutionary puzzle:

“If variants of certain genes create mainly dysfunction and trouble, how have they survived natural selection? … [A]bout a quarter of all human beings carry the best-documented gene variant for depression, while more than a fifth carry the variant that … is associated with externalizing, antisocial, and violent behaviors, as well as ADHD, anxiety, and depression.”

According to the orchid hypothesis, “orchid” children perform an invaluable evolutionary function:

“The many dandelions in a population provide an underlying stability. The less-numerous orchids, meanwhile, may falter in some environments but can excel in those that suit them. … Together, the steady dandelions and the mercurial orchids offer an adaptive flexibility that neither can provide alone. Together, they open a path to otherwise unreachable individual and collective achievements.”

Orchids raised in the right environment accelerate evolutionary progress and adaptation.

The takeaway? Parenting is crucial.

“With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail — but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.”

H/T to @switchedonmom.

Other posts about the Orchid Hypothesis:

Following the Orchid and Dandelion Discussion,
More on Orchid and Dandelion Children,
New Research Supports Orchid Hypothesis

Check out Marc Kielburger, co-founder of Free the Children, discussing child labor on the Colbert Report a couple of days ago. Scroll forward to 5:20 to see his segment.

H/T to @ourkidsnet.

For related posts, check out We Day Toronto is Coming! and Programs Empower Kids to Help.

A new iPhone app, designed by Harvard grad student Matt Killingsworth, is designed to help you find out what makes you happy. Track Your Happiness uses e-mail or text message notifications to ask you how you are feeling and what you are doing several times a day. You decide how often you want to be cued (between 3 and 5 times a day).

After enough data is collected (50 surveys), you receive a Happiness Report that tells you “how your happiness varies depending on what you are doing, who you are with, where you are, what time of day it is, and a variety of other factors.” Killingsworth, who works with Daniel Gilbert of the Hedonic Psychology Lab, designed the app as part of a doctoral research project to collect real-time data on what factors makes people happy.

Want to try it out? Click here. Could also be used by your favourite teenager . . .

Connected Parenting founder Jennifer Kolari is set to join the board and camp standards committee of Camp to Belong. CTB is an organization that reunites siblings who have been placed in separate foster, adoptive or kinship homes. Summer camp and year-round programs are specifically designed to nurture sibling bonds. Host camps across the United States and in Australia work with CTB to give siblings a “safe, neutral, week-long camp environment to create childhood memories together.”

When Jennifer heard about Camp to Belong and spoke with founder Lynn Price, she immediately saw a way to contribute. Jennifer’s Connected Parenting philosophy and her CALM method were born out of her experience in group homes early in her career. Jennifer can’t wait to work with CTB to implement the Connected Parenting model and to enhance their existing programming!

With the crowded open house season upon us, I wanted to suggest that you take the opportunity to visit the e.p.i.c. School if you have a child going into Pre-K, JK or SK next year. My son has attended e.p.i.c. for the past two years and I can’t say enough great things about the school. The teachers and principal are warm and nurturing, as well as incredibly knowledgeable professionals. The academics are superb but the kids have so much fun. We’ll be sorry to say goodbye when my son graduates from SK in June.

Here are the deets:

Where:     e.p.i.c. School, 111 Manor Road East
When:      Thursday, October 15, 2009 from 7:00-9:00 pm
RSVP:     info@epicschool.com or call 416-489-0132

Last week, we blogged about We Day, a Free the Children initiative that is meant to kick off a year-long plan of action. Two other programs, Project Give Back and Ryan’s Well, also empower children to have an impact. Each of these programs starts with inspirational stories of children who have made a difference and then provides specific training to enable participants to be effective in their own social action projects.

Project Give Back was started by Ellen Schwartz, founder of Jacob’s Ladder, an organization that promotes awareness and supports research for neurodegenerative disease. With Ellen’s experience as a fundraiser and an educator, Project Give Back is a “curriculum based program,” designed to complement a Grade 4/5 language arts curriculum. The program aims “to enhance responsibility and develop a deep seated feeling in one’s self to make a difference in the lives of others.” Students begin their project with Kidspiration, a presentation by a child who has made a difference in the world. Project Give Back participants then research a charity of their choice, plan and implement a fundraiser, and report their activities and results to the charity.

Ryan’s Well Foundation highlights the inspirational story of Ryan Hreljac, who was able to raise enough money to build a well in Uganda by the age of seven. The Foundation’s Youth In Action initiative is based on the belief that:

“Young people can and do make a significant difference in our world. . . . [and through the] program, students will see that they can become active and responsible citizens in their own communities and/or abroad by working cooperatively with their global brothers and sisters.”

Students participating in the program raise money to provide clean water to communities in need.

With the support and training of these programs, kids’ successes provide their own powerful message of empowerment and competence.  Check them out and see how you can get your kids and your schools involved.

The November issue of Today’s Parent includes a fabulous article about the Connected Parenting book by Dafna Izenberg. In her Q&A with Jennifer Kolari, Izenberg explores key Connected Parenting concepts such as mirroring, keeping the right amount of tension in the rope connecting you and your child, and baby play. It’s a great overview with lots of anecdotes from Jennifer. Have a look.

After a very successful event in Vancouver, Toronto is getting ready for its own Free the Children We Day this Monday, Oct. 5.

Featuring “a series of inspirational and motivational speeches by top leadership and social issues activists, speakers and entertainers,” We Day draws thousands of students. Participants makes “a commitment to change,” supported by in-service programs that provide leadership training to help students with their action plan.

We Day Toronto will take place at the Air Canada Centre on Monday, Oct. 5 from 9am – 2pm. The event will be streamed live on CTV.ca.

P.S. If you live in Hamilton, you can attend your own local We Day at Hamilton Place on Nov. 5 from 9am – 2pm.

UPDATE:  We Day Toronto was (literally) a roaring success, with 16,000 students in attendance to hear Elie Wiesel, Paul Martin and a surprise performance by the Jonas Brothers.