Parentotheca’s Newsletter
Learn. Parent. Grow.
Issue #12
👋 Hello Friends
Two months is a long time in email years.
The short version of where I’ve been: selling a house, training for a half marathon, growing our family business, and doing some hardcore parenting while helping my oldest son navigate the leap to secondary school.
Oh, and after literally years of negotiations, we finally got pets. Three baby rats (they’re very cute!).
So yes, things have been calm.
Somewhere in all this, social media disappeared from my life, and reading and writing were reduced to whatever I could squeeze into the cracks. But I miss sharing useful things with you, so I’m slowly coming back.
And there’s one idea I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: executive skills.
Not because I’ve suddenly entered CEO mode. Quite the opposite.
Watching my son start secondary school has reminded me that growing up is essentially one long exercise in learning how to manage yourself – your time, belongings, emotions, impulses and problems.
And sometimes the best thing we can do as parents is stop managing all of it for them.
Let’s dive in.
🔍 Monthly Insight: Kids Are More Resourceful Than We Think
My oldest son started secondary school this year.
And oh boy, I was probably more anxious than he was.
Would he make friends when he barely knew anyone? Would he manage the bus without a phone? Remember his PE kit? Find his classrooms? Eat something other than cookies for lunch?
What if he missed his bus stop? Forgot something important? Panicked?
And then real life began.
He was late. He missed a homework deadline. He forgot things. He made some questionable uniform decisions and discovered that teachers have opinions about those. He missed his bus stop. He once stayed hungry until 4pm.
And one morning, after realising he’d forgotten his PE kit, he panicked, turned around and came all the way home.
His solution to the problem was, essentially: abort mission.
But every little disaster taught him something.
Sometimes he solved the problem himself and seemed to come home an inch taller. Sometimes he needed help. Sometimes I was a coach. Sometimes a sounding board. Occasionally, a human crying pillow.
But gradually, I started seeing something I hadn’t fully appreciated before:
He was much more capable than I thought.
The difficult part for us parents is tolerating the messy bit between “My child has a problem” and “My child has figured out what to do.”
We desperately want to jump into that gap.
Remind. Rescue. Fix. Deliver the forgotten PE kit.
But that gap is where so much learning happens.
Our kids don’t need us to remove every challenge. They need encouragement, coaching and the right tools to discover what they can already do.
📚 From the Library: Is Your Child Smart but Scattered?
This brings me to a book I keep returning to: Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare.
The book is about executive skills — the brain-based abilities that help us organise, plan, start tasks, manage time, control impulses, regulate emotions, adapt when things go wrong and actually finish what we started.
In other words: life skills.
I first picked it up after reading Ross Greene’s The Explosive Child, which gave me one of my favourite parenting ideas:
Children do well when they can.
Not when they want to. Not when we bribe them with ice cream. And definitely not when we threaten to confiscate the Wi-Fi.
That distinction matters.
Because the child who constantly loses their PE kit may not be careless. The child who takes 10 minutes to put their shoes on may not be deliberately difficult. The teenager who says, “I’ll do it later” seventeen times may not need another lecture about responsibility.
They may be struggling with a skill.
And once you start looking at behaviour through that lens, parenting changes from parent vs. child to parent + child vs. problem.
Dawson and Guare help you identify which executive skills your child already has and which ones need strengthening – then give practical ways to build them.
I’ve gone back to this book repeatedly over the last couple of months. Strongly recommend!
🛠️ Parentotheca’s Toolbox: The Morning Checklist
And now for one gloriously unsexy parenting tool that has saved my sanity more times than I can count.
Drum roll…
The Morning Checklist.
Seriously.
A morning checklist is simply a visual routine children can follow independently. But its magic is that instead of saying:
“Brush your teeth.”
“Have you packed your water bottle?”
“Where are your shoes?”
“PE KIT!”
…you eventually get to say one thing:
“Checklist.”
That tiny shift moves responsibility from your brain to theirs.
When I created one for my younger boys (here’s my article), I followed four rules:
- Killer items only. Include the things you constantly have to remind them about.
- Make actions specific. “Make your bed” works better than “Get ready.”
- Use pictures. Especially with younger children.
- Include things you want to become habits. We added a little movement and free play.
Then secondary school happened.
After the forgotten-PE-kit-return-home-in-panic incident, my oldest and I created his own ridiculously simple checklist of what needs to be packed and checked before leaving.
We actually made it while waiting for the bus. Not exactly a Pinterest parenting moment. But it worked.
And that’s the point: a good parenting tool doesn’t do things for our children. It helps them do those things for themselves.
🆕 What’s New on Parentotheca
Confession: I haven’t published anything for two months.
Meanwhile, the pile of books I’ve read but haven’t summarised has become mildly threatening.
So that’s October’s mission.
If you missed my latest summary, start here:
- Raising Good Humans by Hunter Clarke-Fields
I’ve also been sent What Every Girl Needs to Know About Boys, written by two dads, Danny Daniels and Corey Ross.
I read it from three perspectives: as a mum of three boys, a future mother-in-law, and a 38-year-old girl. And all three women in me agreed: there’s a lot here teenage girls need to hear.
The book challenges the whole Disney-princess-waiting-for-Prince-Charming fantasy (because, let’s face it, that’s a little delulu) and offers an honest, refreshing look at boys, attraction and relationships.
But what I liked most is that it goes beyond boys. It’s about knowing your values, building character strengths, developing self-worth and learning to navigate relationships without losing yourself along the way.
And in a world of social media, impossible beauty standards and confusing messages about what girls (and boys!) are supposed to be, these are conversations worth having.
Curious? Check out their Instagram and website for more!
🧭 Coach’s Corner: I’m Here to Help
I’m not taking on new coaching clients at the moment, but if you’d like to work with me, reply to this email and I’ll add you to my waiting list.
💡 Newsletter subscribers also get 50% off their first coaching session when spaces reopen.
Let’s make this the turning point.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
Parenting is hard. But don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.
Talk soon,
Irina
