For the Grown-Ups
This category is tailored for adults seeking valuable insights and resources. From parenting tips to personal growth advice, education insights, and more, discover content designed to support and empower grown-ups on their journey.
Unhook Your Holidays
What can you do to make the holidays feel special for others AND guilt-free for you?
This Is No Norman Rockwell Holiday
Holidays can be hard. We humans are just so messy. There’s got to be a way to make this easier, right? Keep reading for advice on how best to practice self-care through the sometimes rough holiday season.
How Does Screen Time Impact Kids?
Screens can offer opportunities for education and entertainment, but too much screen time can have a negative impact on our kids. It's good to check gut feelings against scientific research, so join us as we dig into these studies!
How to Reduce Screen Time for Kids
What are the impacts of screen time? Is it really all that bad? Digging into the facts sometimes results in mixed messages. To build healthy habits, parents may do well to combine what they can glean from current research (link to new blog post) with their own intuition.
Tips to Get Kids Off Screens
How do you get your family off screens? We cover the basics of what's worked in our own families, as well as practical tips, suggestions, and solutions!
Storytelling as a Parenting Tool 101
Our understanding of the world is made up of the stories we have told and continue to tell. Here are some of our best tips for using the power of storytelling to give us context and help us grow.
The Secrets to Peace at Home
In this guest blog post by Melisa Nielsen of Waldorf Essentials and Seasons of Seven, Melisa shares insights and tips to establish rhythms that create a sense of safety and consistency for kids and families.
How to Tell a Story that is More Interesting than TV or Video Games
Inspiration to tell your own stories to your children.
Everyone's So Tired (Get Some Rest!)
Are you with me? Do you count yourself among the ranks of the too busy and awfully tired? That’s why we’re devoting this week to “Getting Some Rest.”
Do You Believe in Magic?
I love to talk about magic. I am happy to discuss magic with friends and strangers alike - and I have found over the years, that virtually everyone is open to that kind of conversation. When I say “Do you believe in magic” the answer is surprisingly ALWAYS yes - even from the most mathematical of materialists.
The Gift of Your Attention
One of the biggest perks of being a storyteller is that I am schooled in my own attention. In order to write a story about a lonely squirrel, I need to pay attention not only to squirrels, but to loneliness as well. I need to focus on the sensation of loneliness and recall times when I felt lonely.
A Storyteller’s Guide to Building Worlds: Where to Pay Attention
There is a story that is often attributed to the Cherokee people in which a grandfather tells his grandchild a story about two wolves. One wolf is greedy and selfish and the other is kind and generous. The wolves fight. The child asks, “Which one will win the fight?” The child’s grandfather answers, “The one you feed.”
Vitamin N. The Importance of Time in Nature
What's better than forcing your children into nature-based activities? Learn to inspire them. Check out our recipe craft round-ups for this week for some ideas to get you started!
Conflict Is a Gift
Without conflict there is no growth, no learning, no healing, and no revelation. We need the conflict to inspire the joy of resolution. Thus, avoiding conflict is not only a bad idea, it takes you out of the best parts of life!
Story Support for Parents and Teachers
What makes Sparkle Stories ... Sparkle Stories? What makes us different than, say, children’s podcasts? or audiobooks? or Disney? or Netflix Kids?
Raising Strong Girls: Resource List
I asked the Sparkle Team to share their favorite books and resources for raising strong girls, and together they created a wonderful list! We want to share it with you.
Favorite Parenting Tool: The Nurtured Heart Approach
The Nurtured Heart Approach was built for spirited, intense kiddos. It’s all about relentlessly energizing the positive while declining to engage in the negative. And it’s very, very straightforward and satisfying to use.
Make Valentine's Day your own
What makes you feel the most lit up, abundant, and love-filled? Whatever that is, do it — because it will spill over into everyone around you.
Go Outside Whatever the Weather
I like extremes. I’ve loved winters along the Canadian border and I love summers in central Texas. I love it when the inside of my nose freezes and I love it when it’s so hot the air feels like a mattress hitting me in the face.
Grit and Stories to Inspire It
This is a question I often ask people, wondering what primary message they wish to offer the children of the world so that we can create the stories that meet the need. The answers are always inspiring and tender: nature, empathy, community, attachment, role models. The answers are all, of course, correct — and certainly worthy of a Sparkle Story.
