1. MY JOURNEY
   

If we don’t count the time I narrated my brothers’ performance of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ at Phoenix’ Encanto Park (one was the wolf, the other a pig), I would have to list the after-school arts program I began and cross- country skied to, during my freshman and sophomore college years, as my first introduction to the world of young children. The skis (a novelty to someone who hadn’t seen real snow until the age of 18) were a side-product of attending college on car-less Mackinac Island in Michigan’s Northern peninsula.

Fast-forward a few more years: a husband and two children, in a white, $800 pick-up truck (the back swarming with ten hives of honey bees – definitely another story) rolling along Washington’s Interstate 5, to a stop in Seattle – a place that turned out to be a destination rather than a detour in our lives.

Within a month of soaking up rain in our new Northwest homeland, I stumbled across Seattle University’s about-to-be-launched Montessori training program. Thanks to grants and loans, a few weeks later, I was stacking pink tower blocks and within three years had earned both a teaching degree and Montessori credentials.

Not long after my graduation, came a real seven-league leap. With too little cash to afford even the school’s refrigerator, my husband - Vincent, friend - Laurie Wick and I, launched The Learning Tree Montessori Childcare, one of the first all-day Montessori programs in North America. (Back then, pre-Velcro shoes, we really could claim to be operating on ‘a shoestring’ budget.)

For 17 years I co- directed The Learning Tree - training teachers, teaching parent classes, and blundering my way through public speaking. Meanwhile, at home, our (now four) children provided my husband and I with a vigorous, personalized parenting education program.

My first attempt at writing followed the potty –training triumph of our oldest and (at the time) only child. By the time child number two arrived, disproving everything in my original potty manifesto, I tossed my pen aside. It took additional children, more potty-training innovations and numerous years at The Learning Tree before I tried writing again.

The first of my books, Positive Discipline for Preschoolers, co-authored with Jane Nelsen and Cheryl Erwin, came out in the nineties. Others followed, including multiple editions of the original Preschoolers book; Positive Discipline: The First Three Years; and Positive Discipline: A Teacher’s A-Z Guide (the last written with Jane, Cheryl and others).

About the same time, my parenting column, From a Parent's Perspective, began in Child Care Information Exchange magazine, a column which would result in my first solo book: The Top Ten Preschool Parenting Problems: And What to Do About Them.

Through the same magazine’s World Forum on Early Care and Education, I began to work with ECE professionals from over 80 countries, learned to design presentations that could cross cultures and penetrate language differences, and traveled to places as unexpected as Singapore, Athens, New Zealand, Acapulco and Borneo.

Shortly after my first book had come out, I quit my day job (Vinnie and Laurie continued The Learning Tree) and began  The Better Living Institute and a private counseling practice – both of which I continue to do.

We all travel different roads. My work has provided me with the gift of being able to share my path, tumbles and all. Perhaps through this website and my various writings, I can make your a road a bit easier to navigate.

Blessings,

Roslyn