How To Raise A Maverick With Parenting Educator, Emily Gaudreau

What happens when you make a five-year-old do their own laundry?

I'm a mountain girl at heart and there are a few plants that will save your life if you know how to use them. Yarrow is one of them.

We think that we are ruining our kid's life and setting them back because of hardships in our families. So often we want to soften the blow of divorce and other difficult things that have happened. But what if that hardship was where they will get their strength in the end, and trying to soften it is where the real damage comes in?

What can we learn about the effects of our media on kids from Ted Bundy? Is porn healthy sexual outlet? 2. Sex workers have the right to make money and can do what they want with their bodies. Is it just a sexual expression? 3. Does porn help marriages?

A great mindfulness practice to help kids understand basic etiquette of walking into a room.

Good Golly, I hope not! Well, all I can say is that in my house the moment you get behind the wheel of a car you had better have your "adulting" skills down pat!

Now is the time that we must stop relying on the government to keep the children safe.

Is our food getting to be too safe? With my history and being so close to the food industry, I have watched the FDA put more and more regulations on the food producers to create a cleaner and cleaner food. What could go wrong?

A couple of announcements. We now have a closed Facebook Group for all of you Mavericks. I despise Facebook and the general judgment that spews out of it. So this is a great place for us free thinkers to share and support each other.

An example of how to talk to your kids about body safety.

In honor of the woman who raised 4 kids while partnering with one of the worlds most influential civil right leaders.

We Want To Be and Raise Dreamers. Once you understand the "path"  or "journey " of a dreamer, The obstacles that will get in your way will be easy to overcome. So often our ideas and dreams get stopped by the naysayers, the "giant" and often by our own family. The best book I have ever found on the subject of how to follow your dreams is Bruce Wilkinson. His book The Dream Giver is hand down the best read for those given a dream. 

The physiology of forgiveness.

Two Simple Ways to Teach Forgiveness Learning how to forgive can take a lifetime for some of us. But what if we could teach our kids at an early age to forgive? Holding on to anger and the victim mentality has been scientifically proven to have negative effects on our lives and relationships. 

Three Ways to Protect Your Child From Human Trafficking There are now over 30 million people in the world that are slaves or live like one. In fact, there are more slaves now than ever before in human history. There are also 800,000 kids, and young adults are trafficked across international borders each year. For not just sex slavery but labor slavery as well.

I am a hot head in the worst way. I have never been able to control my anger problem and when I became a mom, that's when it became a real issue.

What is a Cult Anyway? There has been quite a bit in the news about the Church of Scientology being a cult. Since have all watched the stories of Tom Cruise and any many other celebrities come to the surface as being members, it's made me wonder... What is a cult anyway?  How do people get sucked into these things? How can we make sure that our kids' will be able to cut through any scam and not drink the cool-aid? In my lifetime I have seen first had a few smaller cults, watched the people in them and have come up with a list of things Mavericks need to be aware of. ~>Cults can come in the form of religious, corporate, self-help programs and political groups. ~>They usually all have one leader and use a "pyramid " style recruiting process. That means that the member that recruits you get the credit and discredit for what you do. ~>They are secretive about what they do. If you find that they have not been straight up about how they operate... that is a red flag. ~>Your money and time are theirs. If you are fin

Let's Not Be Jerks Abroad. There are about 3000 Americans that get arrested abroad every year. Some of those people were doing "bad" things, and others were just being stupid.

There are new studies saying that our brains have the ability to pick up on subtle smells, and lighting fast expressions that change the way we respond to others. Since empathy is one of the three pillars of How To Raise A Maverick I wanted to make sure all of you knew about this research.  Essentially we are putting ourselves at a huge disadvantage by interacting via the internet. Even if we are using video. The simple and subtle clues that all humans are transmitting are missed. It's like only hearing half the conversation.  Most people on that have Autism spectrum have little to no "interbrain". They can be taught to recognize facial expressions yet still have a hard time making a human connection.  Professor Digby Tatum of the University of Sheffield is researching how humans communicate and the human brain. He strongly believes that there are much more powerful ways to communicate than speech.  So, what that means for us is that we need to keep this in mind when talking to our kids. Follow or believe tha