"T'ain't Easy Bein' a Beginner"

I see the bent woman from my car window as day fades into the gray of night. She stumbles on the uneven sidewalk, willing one foot in front of the other. She looks so alone. Oh God, I pray, help that weary soul get wherever she needs to go tonight.

I turn my attention to the storefronts till I find the Laundromat. Maybe it’s been a decade since I last needed one. Laundromats are way outside my comfort zone, and I’m overwhelmed. Crazy-lettered directions hang from the ceiling; they make no sense. “2 loads here, 4 loads in this one,” the faded sign says. “6 quarters regular, 8 quarters double spinning,” says the next. “Bleach dispenser half-full,” reads another. “No attendant on duty,” the last sign forewarns.

I see two women folding their finished loads, but with “Don’t ask me” shrugs, they look away. Then sensing someone next to me, I turn. And there she is. My stranger. She has no laundry with her. “Need help?” she asks.

“Oh, I saw you on the sidewalk minutes ago,” I answer in disbelief. “You looked so tired, I asked God to help you.” I watch a smile cross her soul-worry face. “But,” I say, “Guess I do need help. I’m a hopeless beginner.”

“Okay bein’ a beginner,” the woman nods. “Show me what ya’ got.” Then shuffling her tired feet, she leads me through the maze. “I’ll stay a piece, case you need me,” she says. “T’ain’t easy, this bein’ a beginner.”

Later, driving home, I wonder if someone told her “t’ain’t easy” when she was a child. Little ones are perpetual beginners. They face a relentless progression of skills – sit up, stand, talk, walk, make friends, obey, be independent, read, write, think, ride a bike. “T’ain’t easy, this bein’ a beginner.” Children need approval for their very trying. And they need to share the elation when they get it right, like the laughing toddler in red. “Look at me! Me did it!” she exclaims. Oh, the joy!

A Colorful Thought: The gift of encouragement, like my stranger gave me, waits only for the moment you connect with someone who needs you.

"I Love You I Do!"

The hotel lobby was a warm, welcoming place. It looked more spacious than it really was because of elegant pillars that stretched from floor to high ceiling. Each pillar, encased in glass panels, reflected the images of a small girl twirling in a saucy red skirt. The child danced happily from pillar to pillar, ponytail flying. Each time she saw her reflection, she was delighted anew. From time to time, the child stopped moving long enough to kiss her face in the mirror and declare, "I love you, I do!"

The child's mother rested nearby on a padded bench. With each kiss, mom echoed her little girl's words. "I love you, too. I do!" she said. In that moment, I found myself loving both of them, and I didn't even know them. I loved the child's innocent joy in who she was. I loved the mother for not restraining the joy of her child.

Watching them reminded me of a favorite children's story, Koala Lou by the extraordinary author, Mem Fox. Listen to Mem read her story about a mother koala who tells her little one a hundred times a day, "Koala Lou, I do love you." Until, that is, brothers and sisters are born. Mother is too busy to say the words. Koala Lou is sure if she wins the gum tree climbing event in the Bush Olympics, her mother will love her again. Alas, Koala Lou comes in second. She hides her sorrow in the dark of night where mother finds her and declares, "Oh, Koala Lou, I do love you! I always have and I always will!"

Koala Lou, like the child dancing among the glass pillars, is your child. She is every child everywhere, waiting to hear the words, "Oh, I love you. I do!"

A Colorful Thought: A child does not earn your love by being good. She has it by being born.

Locked Into Childhood

Oh, how I anticipated the evening out to see old friends. I was eager to reconnect, and enjoy a rare gourmet dinner. But the man seated next to me was so needy of attention he drained the joy right out of the evening. He wore me out.

In Garden Graces, Janice Elsheimer warns us about unattended garden soil that produces nothing but pitiful blooms. Alas, the "dried-out soil that needs constant watering" was sitting next to me. Hopelessly insecure, the man sought from anyone around him the approval denied him as a child. Unaware of his need, and hardly to blame, I doubt the young man ever shakes off the barren soil of his childhood.

How do parents enrich the soil of childhood to "grow" a child into the person God intends him to be? And when? Don't wait to bungee-jump into his life when he's old enough for Little League or Scouts. You miss teaching your child the self-esteem and character traits you want locked into his childhood, and ultimately, his adulthood.

Jump in now! If all you have are quick minutes of attention, use them. Minutes of on-the-floor play, playing whatever he want to play, delight a child. Blend him into the scattered chunks of time that consume your days, "helping" you put away groceries, cook, clean, do laundry, even exercise. Talk all the while. Remember to punctuate your together time with warm hugs that remind your child you love being with him.

Like a tender new garden plant, your child is fragile, demanding, and totally dependent on you. But the watering "up front" in his early years allows him to thrive in every new stage of development. When tended well, the outcome is a masterpiece. Yours.

A Colorful Thought: Your minutes together, listening and caring, cultivate the rich soil of an extraordinary childhood.

I Come to the Garden Alone

As a young mother, I loved mornings. Each one was a new beginning, blotting out the "if only" of yesterday. Perhaps mornings will always mean reaching for the elusive perfect day.

In Garden Graces: The Wisdom in Growing Things, Janice Elsheimer writes about the first flowers to awaken in the morning. They call her to the garden, alone. "As often as not," she reflects, "the music of that old hymn, 'I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses,' comes to mind. And I pray."

The words strike a chord with me. The hymn was the first duet my sister and I sang as children. Oh well, maybe "duet" is fudging a bit. My musically gifted sister sang. I twisted my skirt in my fist, swayed from side to side, and stared at my shiny new patent leather shoes. But to this day, the words, "And He tells me I am His own" go right to my heart where they linger and comfort.

Is that not the message you give your little ones, no matter how imperfect the days? There are no perfect parents anywhere, nor does your child expect you to be one. Young children are forgiving. They also are constant motion, filling the space around them with restless energy that spills over in tears and upsets. But they are yours! No one anywhere in the world can lead and love them like you. The little one who acted out from dawn to dusk today is the child who most needs your attention. Her errant behavior is begging, "No matter how hard I push or how headstrong I am, will you still love me?" And your answer?

Every kissed boo-boo, every tantrum that ends in an understanding embrace, and every good night prayer rewrite the same message: "You are my own. And the joy we share, none other has ever known."

A Colorful Thought: Color your child with gentle words of unconditional love that last a lifetime.

The Emotions of Childhood

"I get it! I finally get it! You taught me in your classes how important the early years are, but today, I really get it!" Carlson, my dentist and long-time friend, was talking to me in his office. "I read in my medical journal about a woman caught in the tangles of Alzheimer's," Carlson explained. "Yet, she wrote a book while it pummeled her back to the painful emotions of her childhood. The emotions were buried, but never resolved. For 80 years! Now they bedevil her mind again." Carlson shook his head and confided, "I finally understand the hurt of my childhood."

Before It's Too Late: Alzheimer's: Return of Childhood Emotions by Jane A. McAllister is Jane's story. A woman of great intelligence despite the disease, Jane writes, "The end of my life story is a painful shadow of the beginning, stored in the haunted halls of memory." The resentment, desperate isolation, and uncontrollable anger and guilt "are the same emotions that colored the earlier years of my life. Vivid and unsettling, they return as raging emotions."

That is why I write Colored with a Positive Crayon. It's a myth that children have no memories of their early years. What you do with your child today echoes for a lifetime. I am passionate that you know developmental stages so you understand acceptable behavior. I'm passionate that you respect your child's feelings. If ignored, feelings bury themselves. But they're alive, and someday explode. Jane tells us that.

A child is the last to know what she needs. That's why your child must have boundaries, and discipline that teaches. She needs endearing bedtimes to help her separate from you, and cheery mornings when you wrap your love around her again. The experiences of your child's early years will be stored forever in her hallowed halls of memory.

A Colored Thought: You color your child early with a positive crayon when you honor and respect her feelings.

A Daddy Marine

We hadn’t seen our cousin and her husband for what seemed like ages. But some friends step right back into your life as steady as the metronome that guided my piano practice as a child. We didn’t miss a beat. Reconnecting with family is like that. Perhaps it’s the pendulum of memories.

Or perhaps reconnecting means sharing a “heart concern” with someone who cares. The highlight of our togetherness was a phone call of hope from their daughter, Kathy. Six months pregnant and remembering her three miscarriages, Kathy was elated with the all-is-well-ultra-sound-images of the tiny infant in her womb. It’s odd how happiness shared, doubles the joy. And on the flip side, how misfortune experienced alone, doubles the sadness. Kathy, caught in the separation of war, will give birth alone. Her marine husband, deployed to the Near East for the fifth time, is due home three months after the birth of their firstborn.

Like most military daddies, Kathy’s man is eager to stay connected. He already knows a father is critical to a daughter’s sense of self. He understands it is a father who holds up the first lens through which a little girl assesses her femininity.

But for now, this marine daddy wants somehow to bridge the miles. I suggested he wear a tee shirt (what’s closer to his heart?) and without laundering, send it to Kathy. And follow that with a Skype video call of him reading aloud a happy, rhythmic bedtime book (already on its way to him). Soon after birth, I picture the infant’s head resting on a crumpled tee shirt on Kathy’s shoulder, rocked to sleep by the rhythm of daddy reading to her from half-way across the world. The little girl will know the sounds and smells and love of her daddy Marine before the first moment he holds her. Sweet.

A Colorful Thought: An infant's sensory learning begins with the sounds, scents, smiles, and touch of those who love her.

Gently into Sleep: A Bedtime Ritual

"Listen up, everyone!" the excited mom cried out as she rushed into our evening workshop. "For the first time in two and a half years, Thomas went to sleep without sobbing!" She was exultant! Just the week before, the class of young parents cried out, in unison, for help.

"Bedtime should be the sweetest part of the day," they lamented. "But it dissolves into tears and tantrums and angry words. It's exhausting!" So we stapled together the pages of a simple, step-by-step bedtime book. That night, Thomas went to sleep without sobbing. Eventually, all gussied up professionally with pocket pages and charming, collage-cut illustrations, the little book became Gently into Sleep: A Bedtime Ritual.

Bedtime begins in the morning. If a child has your focused attention only at bedtime, he will do all he can to prolong your closeness. But a child who is comforted and cuddled during the day is more likely to sleep well at night.

Then, because you are the authority in your home, your child needs you to set the beginning and the ending of bedtime. But all the choices in between are his. Going to sleep becomes his responsibility. Wait! A contradiction? No. Good parenting! When you give a child ownership of a decision, you open the door to his cooperation. I've rarely known a child to say "No!" to a choice he has made. A little guy who sequences the steps of his own bedtime ritual will follow it. Happily. Right into bed. And gently into sleep.

Thomas and his missionary mom took his bedtime book with them to Germany. No matter how strange the sounds of the new language around him, Thomas knew the sounds of these words by heart: "Sleep well. Sweet dreams." And he did.

A Colorful Thought:
A bedtime ritual warmly colored with love is the security blanket of childhood.

Moments of Learning

Many years ago, my artsy friend Val taught me an extraordinary lesson about childhood.

I was leading young moms in a discussion in Val's charming (and child-proofed) family room. Our topic was how a child's confidence, or lack of it, develops between the ages of one and two years. Surprising as it sounds, that is the major developmental task of a one-year-old. A little one's confidence is either built up by loving approval of her impulsive moments of learning, or torn down by endless no-nos and corrections. It is confidence to explore with all her senses that brings explosive new learning into a child's brain.

Val nodded. She stood and reached for a lovely "objet d'art" looking down on us from a shelf above her head. Val placed the ballerina, dressed in gorgeous hues of gold, on her coffee table. Then she called her two toddlers to come and touch! The children's fingers wandered like shy sand crabs over the delicate dancer while Val explained the words "smooth" and "glassy" and "fragile." Satisfied, the girls watched Val return the treasure to a waiting shelf.

"One day, when my children's hands and feet are steadier, I'll put the dancer on the coffee table to stay," Val explained. "The girls will know a friend is joining their play and they'll watch over her. But for now, I'm teaching them to notice and respect beautiful things, like my artist mother taught me. I'm confident (she smiled at her use of the word) that, like me, the children's love of beauty will bring joy to their lives."

In that moment, I was the learner. Val taught me, just as you will teach your children. Don't wait for elusive hours of time that never come. It is in moments – in clumsy, curious moments of discovery – that children gain confidence to be a learner. A vital part of that learning is to "notice and respect beautiful things." Perhaps that is what God intended when He colored His majestic world.

A Colorful Thought: Color your child's confidence with the crayon of approval that lasts a lifetime.

Mae Mobley's Remembering

In The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a wise and loving black maid devotes herself to the seventeenth white child she is raising. Mae Mobley is her Baby Girl! Dismayed that the child's mother demeans her, Aibileen speaks in whispers to Mae Mobley's heart. Her whispers fill the child with good thoughts she can believe about herself, thoughts no one can steal away. When Aibileen is forced to walk out of the child's life, she tells it this way.

"Law, I feel like my heart's gone bleed to death. 'I got to go, baby, you my last little girl,' I say. It just ain't by my own choosing. 'Baby Girl,' I say, 'I need you to remember everything I told you ... about what you are.'

"I look deep into her rich brown eyes and ... I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. She is tall and straight. She is proud. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman.

"And then she say it, just like I need her to. 'You is kind,' she say to herself, 'you is smart. You is important.'

"Oh Law, I feel like she done just given me a gift. I cry and say, 'Thank you, Baby Girl.'"

The whispered messages, colored with an indelible crayon, will keep playing on the tape recorder of Mae Mobley's remembering.

In the same way, whatever messages you give your child – with your tone of voice, or body language, or words – record on her internal tape recorder. The erase button on a child's tape recorder is elusive and erratic. The messages of childhood keep playing the whole of a child's life, like unforgettable melodies that linger in our heads.

And your messages? Catch her doing good. Notice when she's kind. Praise her for being helpful. Empathize with her feelings. Draw attention to her very trying to get something right. Smother her with approval.

She believes you! Your messages become the messages in her head that guide her, like an immense magnetic pull, to become the person you tell her she is.

Oh, how I hope they leave the scene of Mae Mobley's remembering, "You is kind. You is important." in the movie adaptation. For all of us to remember.

A Colorful Thought: Color the memory tape of your child's early years with a brilliant, positive crayon that never fades.

"Hey, Mizz Nelsen!"

I trumped the given curriculum for the entire school year with the theme of curiosity. DeShawn, my least-involved kindergartner, hovered for weeks on the sidelines of learning. I don't know what triggered the moment he announced in morning news, "Hey, Mizz Nelsen! I'm curious 'bout what we're gonna be curious 'bout today." Then DeShawn cracked up with pride over his own play on words. And I cracked up with him, delighted that we jumpstarted a child's mind with curiosity.

Crawling babies, toddlers, and preschoolers are the epitome of curious learners. You, too, catapult a little one's mind into learning when you 1) childproof your home and 2) never slap her hands.

Maria Montessori, a front runner in early childhood education, believed a child's hands are her tools for exploring. Maria was adamant that slapping or restraining a child's hands smothers the very curiosity that fuels her fire for learning. Imagine what would happen to the ecstatic face of the little one in the above picture if you slapped her hands for touching the diapers, the very things her hands insist she touch.

Oh, yes, you may have to remove your little one from tempting electronic controls, which draw her like a magnet. But repeated removals and redirection are far better than repeated slaps. Tell her, "You may not play with the television, but you may play with these toys." Redirection, substitution, and diversion are the effective tools of discipline for a small child driven to explore.

One well-meaning father told me, "I'll teach my child to mind on the spot. When I say 'don't touch,' I mean don't even think about it!" It is far easier to put away the lovely pottery you bought in Maine than to exhaust yourself protecting the very things your child's hands want to touch.

Some morning announce, "Hey, little one. I'm curious 'bout what we're gonna be curious 'bout today." Maybe you'll crack up together! (Look for my next blog on mere minutes of learning.)

A Colorful Thought: Color your child's curiosity with the warm reds and yellows of encouragement.

The Curiosity Collection

"The wind blew it up," my 4-year-old wailed, pointing to his nose. "And I can't get it out!" Tipping the child's smudgy face upwards, I could see nothing. He'll go to college with a stone up his nose, I thought, rushing him to the car.

The kindly pediatrician brought out the truth. "I just wanted to see if it would fit," the child confessed, eyes wide-open, begging.

The shiny instrument bore an unnerving resemblance to my husband's needle-nose pliers. But I exhaled when the doctor retrieved the small stone. "Aha, one for my curiosity collection," he exclaimed, reaching for a round, red-satin-lined container. The doctor dropped the pebble amongst the popcorn kernels, beans, broken twigs, cheerios, pencil eraser, button battery (scary) and baby tooth!

"It's good you brought him in right away. If soft tissue swells around an object, that means surgery," the pediatrician explained. And to my son, whose apprehension had disappeared into the strange collection, he said, "Time to go home."

What? Off-the hook for deliberate misbehavior? Or what is curiosity? Every child is programmed to learn with his five senses from birth. His developmental clock insists that he touch and drop, push and pull, build and knock over, and find out what fits into tiny spaces!

Curiosity drives sensory learning. Not television. Not computers or flashy tech stuff. Not "learning" toys or expensive reading programs. A child's developmental growth is fueled nonstop by play. Play is the birthplace of hands-on learning.

Your child can create his own curiosity collection. Help him search for colors and smells; patterns (feathers, moth wings); textures (tree bark, pine cones, mud); and the mysteries of water. Will it fit? Spill over? Research scientists at play.

A Colorful Thought: "Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of satisfaction." Linus Pauling, Ph.D., recipient of two Nobel Prizes.

The Road Well Traveled

It was seven in the morning. I shifted into fire-drill mode. I loved the early morning calls in my brief stint as a substitute teacher. They meant income. But I also dreaded them because of the frenzy that followed. This morning, Buchanan School needed a kindergarten teacher: my favorite grade, a nearby school, and a one-hour countdown. "I can do it," I answered cheerily.

First, the children. "Hurry, please. Mommy has to teach today!" They knew that no-nonsense voice. They dressed as they came to the table. I rushed them through the breakfast-cereal routine while I stuffed bag lunches. My three boys, loving the drama, grabbed their backpacks and took off at a clip for the bus stop. I called the dear grandma down the street to come for my youngest child, bewildered by my flurry of guilt kisses.

Next, the animals. I fed the dogs, cats, guinea pigs, parakeet, and mice in stopwatch time, promising them a treat when I got home. I left the snakes for later.

Last up, me. I had the two-minute routine down pat. I can make it! I pushed open the garage door, and stood there. Paralyzed. How could I forget? We were a one-car family. It was my husband's week to drive car pool!

The school never called again.

Why that story? We all love story; we all learn from story. However, my view of story is through the rear-view mirror, remembering what I learned from parenting a quiver of children on the road you now travel.

The rear-view mirror reminds me of what we have in common on this road well-traveled. Stress. Children. A clock-driven world. Work. Guilt kisses. Rushing little ones. Pushing ourselves. I'm eager to share my insights with you, to give you confidence on your journey. That's what I do best.

A Colorful Thought: Good parenting is like a promising sunrise on the road we travel.

The Art of Roughhousing

The topic is in the news today, but we've known it all along. Good old-fashioned roughhousing is often what fathers do best – tossing a child into the air, playful wrestling, tumbling together on the floor. Roughhousing is a welcome release of both love and stress for work-weary dads. For children, it is over-the-top, laugh-out-loud fun.

Our children are natives in a technology world, which does little to get their bodies moving. Their outside play is often limited in the name of safety. That makes the body-building physical involvement of father play all the more important.

In The Art of Roughhousing, authors DeBenedet and Cohen suggest pillows on the floor, guidelines for safety (huge!), and limits on "going too far." Horseplay quickly goes over the line. Children cannot instinctively gauge their own power, or play by the rules. My word of caution: what begins as fun, like tickling, often leads to tears. Sometimes not even dads sense when to stop. And when a child transfers tickling into his own play, he too pushes the limits. Maybe with the hilarity of tossing, tumbling, and wrestling, you don't need tickling. Remember, if a father – the ringmaster of roughhousing – winds a child up, he must be sure to wind him down!

A father's rough-and-tumble play is an ideal complement to a mother's nurturing. Know also that, intertwined in the layers of play, a child:

• Gains higher intellectual, motor, and social growth as early as his first year
• Acquires gross motor skills, which precede fine motor skills
• Learns to give and take, build self-control, and manage himself within boundaries

And you thought you were just having fun!

A Colorful Thought:

Your playful presence colors your child like the sun's radiant light over water.

Sleep Well, I Love You

Discipline, first; bedtime, second. That's the prevailing order of parents' concerns, year after year. The top two concerns marry each other when a relentless child calls from her bed, "Mommy, I want a drink!" or "Daddy come back. I need you!" What's an exhausted parent to do?

A loving bedtime ritual takes your child from the safety of your presence in the daytime to the safety of your non-presence in the dark. But television is not your ally in the transition. Television, or any form of screen time, delays bedtime. It stimulates rather than calms a child, and isolates her at the very time you need to draw close.

Your child needs you. Begin bedtime with a quiet activity together. End it quietly, as well. Save something - prayers, or a whispered good night to the stuffed animals in her room - for after your child is in bed. Then leave with a reassuring "Good night. Sweet dreams. I love you."

If your child calls out or cries for you:

• Go to your child, but do not take her out of bed.
• Tell her, "It is time to go to sleep. You can do it. Good night."
• Go back again and again, if necessary. A child left to cry hysterically in the dark will hardly let go of you the next night.
• Be reassuring.
• Be brief.
• Be consistent.
• Be together if you are a two-parent family.
• Hold the line with a loving, firm voice. On this your child has no choice.

Sleep well! I love you.

A Colorful Thought: Rituals are the comforting colors of love a child can count on to be repeated, day after day.

Bedtime Begins in the Morning

"Listen up, everyone!" the excited mom cried out as she rushed into our evening workshop. "For the first time in two and a half years, Thomas went to sleep without sobbing!" She was exultant! Just the week before, the class of young parents cried out, in unison, for help.

"Bedtime should be the sweetest part of the day," they lamented. "But it dissolves into tears and tantrums and angry words. It's exhausting!" So we stapled together the pages of a simple, step-by-step bedtime book. That night, Thomas went to sleep without sobbing. Eventually, all gussied up professionally with pocket pages and charming, collage-cut illustrations, the little book became Gently into Sleep: A Bedtime Ritual.

Bedtime begins in the morning. If a child has your focused attention only at bedtime, he will do all he can to prolong your closeness. But a child who is comforted and cuddled during the day is more likely to sleep well at night.

Then, because you are the authority in your home, your child needs you to set the beginning and the ending of bedtime. But all the choices in between are his. Going to sleep becomes his responsibility. Wait! A contradiction? No. Good parenting! When you give a child ownership of a decision, you open the door to his cooperation. I've rarely known a child to say "No!" to a choice he has made. A little guy who sequences the steps of his own bedtime ritual will follow it. Happily. Right into bed. And gently into sleep.

Thomas and his missionary mom took his bedtime book with them to Germany. No matter how strange the sounds of the new language around him, Thomas knew the sounds of these words by heart: "Sleep well. Sweet dreams." And he did.

A Colorful Thought:
A bedtime ritual warmly colored with love is the security blanket of childhood.

The Crayons of Childhood, Part 2

I can't imagine a child in a world without hugs, music, flowers, books rich with language, beautiful colors, and empathy – my favorite things. On second thought, put empathy first. It is the ultimate positive crayon, the first one out of your crayon box in the early years.

Your child needs two things. She needs to be heard, even before she has language. And she needs to be understood, even when lost in the tears and tensions and tantrums of growing into learning. Can you see yourself coloring her with a gentle stroke of empathy? Empathy listens to a child's feelings to understand them, not to change them. A worthy sense of self grows inside a little one whose feelings and thoughts are honored, center stage. Empathy does that. It opens your child's heart and allows you to handle gently what's inside.

And what about the days when you're exhausted and wonder how you can possibly color a relentless child with a positive crayon? You can. A smile and a hug are ambassadors for empathy, as full of color as a burst of spring green ivy reaching for the top of the wall.

A Colorful Thought: Your child needs to be heard and to be understood. Color her with the gorgeous hues of understanding that never fade.

P. S. What's coming up? Bedtime. I promise you won't want to sleep through it.

The Crayons of Childhood, Part 1

He was just a toddler when he dropped his crayon in the toaster. Barely two, there was no way he could foresee the smelly, smoky mish-mash waiting to happen. The little guy was heartbroken when the melted goop didn't look like the morning toast I made, the toast he could fairly taste in anticipation.

The catastrophe, however, did nothing to diminish his fascination, nor mine, with crayons. We both loved the promise of something beautiful waiting to happen (just not in the toaster!) In a small way, I looked at a new box of crayons - fresh, unused, the promise of becoming a masterpiece if tended carefully - as just like a child. Maybe that's why parenting matters. Maybe that's why childhood and crayons go together - the promise of becoming a masterpiece.

Welcome to my blog Colored with a Positive Crayon. Celebrate the early years, the most important years, as you read about parenting that colors a child with encouragement and gentle strokes of empathy. Join me and let's focus on the joy of raising an emotionally healthy child in a safe place.

A Colorful Thought: "A child needs so much to be accepted exactly as he is."