Ocean State Behavioral

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My Kids Know (and Use) the Worst F-Word of Them All

My boys are playing together just fine over in a corner of the dining room, on the glass table we never use for eating, (because it’s glass and kids have twelve thousand sticky hands). They’re occupied with the Contraptions, these really fun wooden planks they like to make into tracks, so it looks like the perfect opportunity to sneak into the kitchen and cram down another of those dark chocolate brownies I made last night, even though I just got done telling them, when they

I Absolutely Cannot Let My Kids have a Schedule-Free Summer

Summer is upon us, and if you listen closely, you can hear the collective groan of working parents everywhere. Sure, we enjoy the longer days, warmer weather, and bare feet on the sand as much as anyone else, but the summer months also mean juggling work responsibilities on top of kids who want to eat popsicles for infinity and play at the pool until their fingers are pruney. It can be tricky, finding the balance that allows your kids to not only enjoy summer but also ensures

Beat the Bedtime Battles

"But I'm not tired!" “I don’t want to go to bed!” "Just one more show, please...." “It’s too early! "No one else in my class goes to bed this early! They don't even HAVE bedtimes!" Sound familiar? Kids put up such a fight when it comes to bedtimes, it might be tempting to simply throw in the towel and give up altogether. All right then ― just STAY up! Fighting over bedtime is exhausting and stressful and ultimately, no one ends up winning. How can this be remedied? First of a

"When the Lazy Days of Summer are Too Lazy"

Here's how you can make sure that your kids unglue themselves from screens and devices. Summer has officially started, but if you’re like most parents of teens with ADHD, you already wish that school is back in session. Although school days have their own stress and worries, at least the kids are occupied during the day instead of laying around, being lazy, making messes, fighting with each other, and eating you out of house and home. When my son with ADHD was a teen, I worke

Strategies for a Successful Summer Break

Tips for managing your kids' downtime to help make it relaxing for everyone While your average child may be thrilled by the end of the school year, anticipating lazy days and sleeping in, the prospect of summer break isn’t quite that unalloyed pleasure for parents. And if you have a child with emotional or developmental issues who is challenging in the best of times, nothing calls on whatever extra powers you might possess more than the long break that lies ahead. While all k

50 Free (or Cheap) Things for Your Summer Bucket List

Last month, when I started to look into day camps and other programs to keep my kids occupied over the summer, I pretty much had an instant heart attack. My choices were either put my kids in camp and starve to death all summer, or figure out some cheap and easy way to keep them occupied for 10 weeks. I'm going with the latter. Still, I swear, if it were up to my kids, they’d be glued to their iPads basically all day, so I realized that if we wanted to have a summer where no

We Can't Afford Family Vacation, And I've Learned to Let Go of that Guilt

The other day, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw an article about how important family vacations are for kids. It was the kind of thing I'd seen many times before, something along the lines of "instead of buying your kids a ton of stuff, save your money for valuable bonding experiences, like family vacations." The friend who shared that article captioned it with a big, fat obnoxious thumbs up, and I couldn’t help but remember that the friend who’d shared it was in a

Summer Schedule Gone Haywire: ADHD on Vacation

Children with ADHD thrive with reliable daily routines - even during summer holidays. The best vacations balance new adventures with predictable schedules. Here's how to strike that balance. Vacation, Finally! We've all been there. The vacation you so desperately hoped would give everyone a much-needed break from everyday stresses turns into a week-long string of misbehaviors and meltdowns. The culprit? The transition from a structured home environment to an extended vacation

"The Best Summer is a Strategized Summer"

To avoid too much screen time, discretionary spending, and bickering, we load up early on summer vacation ideas and leads on cheap entertainment. Steal a few of our family secrets! Memorial Day weekend is over. Which means you, like my wife and I, have just survived a warm-up for the pending purgatory otherwise known as summer vacation. Over the long weekend, Laurie and I endured three straight days of bickering, staying up waaaaay past bedtime, and countless requests to turn

Reasons I'm More Excited than my Kids that It's the Last Week of School

Sure, we're all excited for the end of the school year for obvious reasons -- less madness in our mornings, less stress over assignments/tests/homework, a little less structure. Nice. But sometimes it’s the little things I get excited about. I'm excited to not hear the phrase "five more minutes" over and over while prodding my two boys out of bed. I'm excited not to face the gauntlet after work of picking them up at different schools on the skinniest streets you've ever seen

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