A very long time ago it seems, I gave a talk called Cultivating Caring Children. I loved that material. More recently I had the opportunity to keynote on empathy. Oh my goodness, I was taken by surprise by the rant that was in me. I decided at that time to create a course with empathy as the…
Let me introduce you to Mister Rogers and Mister Dressup. Perhaps they need no introduction, especially if you are from my generation. Or perhaps you have heard stories from your parents. In my day, these two shows were a much slower counterpart to the fast-paced Sesame Street and Electric Company. At the time, Mister Rogers…
Some of our first pets were baby chicks — twenty-day-old precious Buff Orpingtons, Australorps, and Rhode Island Reds. New to chicken farming, my husband and I learned how to care for them alongside our children. I could tell on that first day, however, that one of those chicks was not like the others. It was…
I keep waiting for someone to ask me this. Not even when writing Hold On To Your Kids, over 20 years ago now, did anyone ask me – not my editors or even my most articulate co-writer, Gabor Maté. Perhaps it is obvious and doesn’t require further explanation. On the other hand, the capitalization was a deliberate choice…
“Just make a mark,” Tammy said, as she boldly drew a messy line on her paper.I had been the kind of girl who coloured between the lines. I wasn’t comfortable with things that were uncomfortable. Things I didn’t know how to do. Things that were messy. Yet something had been shifting and I knew there…
Sometimes in our travels we come upon something that seemed initially like just one more place to visit, only in retrospect to reveal itself as absolutely key to our understanding of the world and our place in it. I remember a few such transforming experiences in my life. My travels over the theoretical landscape of…
I lost my playfulness pretty early in life. Something to do with figuring out there was a “right” way to do things, or that I was easier to manage without my big bright and often messy ideas. Either way, it became obvious to me that taking risks was too risky and I would get further…