http://embracechildspirit.org/writings Bulletin Excerpts Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:51:45 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My 25 year old daughter is taking a leave of absence this summer from her job in order to bike from Vancouver to San Francisco.  When I reported to several family and friends that she was doing this by herself many expressed immediate worry about her safety.  Until hearing these ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/planning-versus-worry When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept.  We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/loving-the-unlovable Dr. Ross Greene was the last speaker of the CSC Speaker Series held in the Boston area in 2010.  He talked about using his collaborative problem solving (CPS) approach with children with behavioral, emotional and social challenges.  I find it immensely compassionate and very effective. Dr Green says that kids will ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/collaborative-problem-solving I hear and forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. Chinese Proverb Tere Bowen-Irish spoke at the 2010 CSC Speaker Series.  She described wonderful teaching ideas for kids, kindergarten through high school.  The focus was on using Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences to help children learn.  I was ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/experiential-teaching In the past few weeks, I have had cause to think about the word alleluia in the context of a book by Kathleen Deyer Bolduc titled Autism and Alleluias and the song Alleluia by Leonard Cohen which has recently become very popular. I was asked to review in my blog ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/broken-alleluias I am writing a book titled Don't Fix Me, I'm Not Broken: Changing Our Minds about Ourselves and Our Children. It is a spiritual parenting book about healing ourselves rather than trying to fix our children.  I just finished writing a section wondering what it would be like to  see your ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/seeing-your-children-as-if-for-the-first-time I write a lot about seeing past the labels we give our children to seeing the whole child.  However it is not just children we label, we also label and categorize adults.  We think it feels easier to know how to interact with another person if we can first place him or ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/labels-limit-human-interaction I am writing a book titled Don't Fix Me, I'm Not Broken; Changing Our Minds about Ourselves and Our Children. It is a spiritual parenting book about healing ourselves rather than trying to fix our children.  I just finished writing a section wondering what it would be like to see your child ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/who-would-your-child-be-without-the-label Recently I had a conversation with my brother, the physicist, about the difference between religion and spirituality. I commented that some very religious people were not very spiritual and some very spiritual people were not very religious. He admitted that he had no idea what I meant. I was caught off guard and ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/spiritual-beings In most parenting workshops and books about children with special needs labels, time is spent on the idea that parents must mourn the loss of the child they thought they were going to get in order to appreciate the child they did get. It is a constant challenge to take what ... http://embracechildspirit.org/writings/sallypatton/mourning-our-child