March 2007

Publisher's Note
Shifts in Thinking

It’s March – the tail end of winter and the slight tale of the beginning of spring. This is definitely a time of transition – from hibernation to awakening, from stark vegetation to growth.

The title, “Shifts in Thinking” both complements the articles within these pages as well as to indicate what we’re undergoing in our continual re-evaluation of our organization and mission for the local parenting community.

A shift in how we respond to our eager and energetic young children is presented in “Toddler Management: An Alternative to Conflict”. This viewpoint was submitted in response to the Editor’s Note for December 2006 in which we talked about respecting children. Shirley Luxem tells us that how we handle our child’s first movements toward autonomy will either teach him to trust us or to fear us. This is a different and thoughtful perspective on “difficult” children and the “terrible twos” and how we can handle them with communication skills and problem solving in the family.

“Strong Kids Strong Teens Motivates Overweight Kids to Lifestyle Change” tells the story of a unique program provided by a partnership among four community service organizations. This program combines nutrition, physical activity and self-empowerment to help overweight children and teens and their parents to shift their thinking and enable lifestyle changes for healthier kids and families.

Our health note, “Are Dust Bunnies Worth Worries?” not only sounds like spring holidays – it explains why we need to keep the bunnies from multiplying and motivates us to shake things up (and out) and do some spring cleaning.

I use each new season to clean out old stuff – physically and mentally – in order to make room for the new. Several years ago, while packing to move from one house to another, I read the book “Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui” by Karen Kingston. I’m a packrat and I love information so things and paper accumulate extraordinarily easily for me. Combined with any sort of sentimentality that I may have for an object and … well, let’s say that I had an “opportunity” to muck out years of treasures. What I appreciated about the book was its perspective on letting go of old things in order to keep energy flowing and to be able to welcome new things into our lives that are more relevant to the present and that will feed our future.

Since re-establishing local ownership of these magazines in October 2005, we basically continued on the old model that preceded us. It’s a good model, but we think we can do better and become even more relevant to the lives of local parents – to your families. Over the past couple of months we’ve been re-evaluating what we’re about and what is our mission. We know that the calendar is a key piece of the magazine, our articles, and that the advertising provides you with the options you seek when needing a doctor, dentist, toy store, school and more. What else do you find regularly useful - what would you like to see more of, and what might be missing from our pages? We’d like your input on what’s important to you and your family,.

This spring you’ll see the results of our shifts in thinking: additions, improvements, transplants – new growth as well as pruned growth so that these publications can bloom even more fully for your family and the communities of Puget Sound. Look for this year’s NW Summer Learning guide at the end of this month – and keep checking our websites for some big changes and additions there.

And please do write us with your thoughts, needs and responses to our magazines – we’re here to be your resource as we have been for nearly 30 years.

Linda Watson
Publisher, Northwest Parent Media

©2007
Northwest Parent Media
All rights reserved

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