How to Build Lasting Memories With Your Child in Just 5 Minutes

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Join us as we dive into the creative, joyful world of parenting with none other than Craig Parks.

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With decades of experience as a camp director, kids musician and father of two, Craig brings a unique perspective to raising children. His innovative A to E parenting method has transformed everyday parenting struggles in into memorable, uplifting experiences, helping families worldwide foster joy while reducing stress. Craig has trained hundreds on the art of working with kids, always aiming to bring out their very best.

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But it doesn't stop there. Craig also shares his Passion Project, a delightful weekly show he created with his five year old daughter. This show not only entertains, but also inspires families to craft their own happy memories together. Tune in as we explore Craig's insights on parenting, drawing from his rich background and infectious enthusiasm. Learn how to turn the mundane into magical moments with your children and embrace a parenting style that's fun, fulfilling and deeply connected. Don't miss this episode packed with practical tips, lots of laughter and inspiration to create your own positive family legacy.

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Welcome to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Nurturing Through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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I used to love singing my kids to sleep. I'm older now, though, and I manage to bumble through a song or two once in a while. But my voice just isn't what it used to be. So I was thrilled to find Craig Parks, who has the same zest that that I do for turning the mundane into the magical. When it comes to song, his parenting methods are simple ones we can all learn from, and his music is whimsical and will bring memorable moments for both you and your children.

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There's so much great talent out there and Craig is definitely one of them. Craig Parks has had many diverse roles. He's been a camp director, he's a musician, he's created a children's show, and he's an incredible dad to two children, one of which is autistic. Everything he is and has done makes him great at what he does. Now, Greg, why don't you share with us your journey with children and how it's brought you to what you're doing today.

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Thank you, Laura. It's an honor to be with you. You know, when I was 19, I had my first job as a camp counselor.

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And I could not believe I was getting paid to do this, to have these connections with these kids. And it lit me up, and I just. I couldn't believe it. And then I ended up becoming a counselor at a resident camp a couple summers later, and it just deepened and deepened. And I was working with teenagers as well, not just young kids. And then I became a very young camp director at the age of 23. And just with a couple of summers I had had previously, I was really.

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I realized, okay, there's something here magical that's really going on. So I wrote a proposal to start one, and it was accepted.

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And I was a very young camp director. But it was really quite extraordinary to be able to hire and train people how to work with kids in a way that I think all children and really all people want to be treated. And that is, I think, ultimately, we all want to be free, to be ourselves and be accepted, to be understood, to be cared for, and ultimately, really to be loved. And so to be able to create a summer camp based on those tenets was incredible. Right? We weren't a sports camp. We weren't, you know, computer camp. Like, really our specialty was, can we create a community where people are free to be themselves, to be silly, to be fun, to be caring, to be artsy, to be athletic however they are, and to be accepting, and then also to be able to teach conflict resolution because we're human beings. So there's going to be miscommunications. There's going to be. People are going to butt heads at times. And can we teach children the skills to be able to go up to another human being and say, hey, this actually doesn't work for me. Can you please stop that? Or if somebody asks us to stop doing something that is annoying them, say, oh, okay. And if not, can we talk through it and realize, well, where's the breakdown?

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So it's been a real gift to be able to create. In my career, two successful summer camps train a lot of people how to do that, and then to see that my past campers who love those environments so much end up becoming the staff and kind of spreading this joy and love and silliness and music and play, which is something that we all need, really.

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You know, when I was a child, my mom brought us to the YWCA camps as kids.

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And just like having great teachers, you never forget the counselors that connected with you. And how does this background help you with your parenting? Well, I think that certainly dealing with a diverse amount of types of personalities has been really helpful. And the thing that I also realized in having my own children is nothing quite will prepare you for having your own children too.

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Because there's something about the bond with your own children when you're living with them every day, every hour, every moment, and you're changing their diapers and you're giving them a bath and you're preparing meals and you're putting them down for. For nighttime, every night. Like that level of time and that level of commitment and the level of bonding and love that happens when you're that connected to another human being. There's nothing that quite can prepare you for that level of intensity.

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But I will say I think all those experiences of working with diverse amount of kids I know had to have helped me just continue to believe in my belief in the power of love, the power of listening, and the power of connection. What was your experience like having a son that was autistic? It's challenging. I don't want to sugarcoat it. It was really, really challenging. My son got diagnosed really early. He got diagnosed as at risk probably when he was around 15, 16 months old, because they wouldn't diagnose that that early back then. He's 20. He just turned 21. And so at that time, he didn't. He didn't have words. He wasn't talking. And we started working with speech therapists and occupational therapists and behavioral ABA and floor time and doing everything we could to help our son. And it was really there that I started getting an appreciation and learning about from a lot of the people I was working with. The whole notion of affect, which, you know, the course I just released is called Parenting A to E. And the A stands for affect and the E stands for effect. Right. The effectiveness of the kind of love and relationship we want to create.

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So much of it, the key of it is an affect. And affect is ultimately it's the physical manifestations of our emotions. So it's how we're actually using our body and how we're using our voice. And so I learned how to connect to my son, who didn't have language at the time. He wasn't able to speak to be Able to use my facial expressions, to be able to use my body, to be able to use my voice in a way that wasn't flat, but really, really going all over the place so that it would capture his attention and we could have real connection. So the difference of being able to do something with my face like whereas if you're just with a kid and you're just flat all the time, you're not necessarily going to capture their attention. And so in my work with kids in general and being a family musician and putting on kids concerts and doing music for preschools, I naturally learned also how to just be really big in my affect, both in the voice and in the body. And I realized that, wow, there's one. Anybody can do this. If you actually understand how to break it down with which I've done in my course. And when you do, connection, deep connection and joyful connection awaits for anybody who wants to take it on.

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Can you give us some examples of how to apply some of your methods?

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Yeah. You know, one that is, that has been really, really effective with all the staff that I've trained over the years and also with the parents who I've. I've worked with in this that they appreciate is, is realizing how much bigger our bodies are than the little children we. And the way I put it is imagine if you stepped out of your door each day and every human being you were encountering was 9 foot 7 inches tall. Right.

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It would be pretty intimidating if somebody was a few feet taller than you. Like everybody. And so the whole idea of getting down, actually physically getting down and getting eye contact eye level with, with a child, the level of trust and connection that, that alone and the level of cooperation you will get from a child instead of calling across the room, but getting close to them and using your body to get down and get eye level. That alone increases cooperation and connection so much. And it seems so simple. But for those people who don't work with kids or don't know these things, that little tidbit of information alone can totally transform a relationship. I can see that. Can you give us some examples of families or parents or children that you've worked with and how you're using your methods have helped them. The parents have a more and children have a more positive connection with each other.

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Yeah. You know, the, the course I developed so teaches affect. And that first module of my course is teaching all aspects of affect. The face, the body, arms, shoulders, the actual body, and then the voice, how to use the voice. The second module is applying it with music. I'm a professional musician and realizing the power of music.

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The course is about turning the mundane parts of parenting and making those memorable. Because let's face it, we can take our kids to Disneyland and they'll remember that. But most of parenting is not that. Most of parenting is sitting down, preparing a meal, giving them a bath, bedtime, all the mundane things, making sure they're washing their hands after they go to the bathroom. Like, all of these things, right? And so how do we make those memorable? And so a great example is washing hands. Right? And music is such a powerful source of making positive memories. So I wrote this song called the Hand Washing Song. So instead of just nagging your kid to wash their hands or just having it be like a chore, there's this hand washing song. And when you sing with a child one and you do it ritualistically one, something as mundane as washing your hands becomes connecting, becomes fun.

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And when your children will look back on their childhood and they'll be washing their hands, that'll be a memory that'll just be triggered.

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Positive, joyful, loving, sweet connection.

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I totally agree. Do you post any of your songs for kids on YouTube? So I have a couple of songs that are on Spotify and on YouTube. So the handwashing song is one of them. Another one in terms of the mundane is actually I wrote this song for my son when he was young just to get him to enjoy eating bananas and eating healthy food. So I wrote a song for bananas and I wrote the chorus when my son was young. And then I wrote the verses when my daughter, who's now 10, was super young. So it was. It's an interesting tune just because I wrote it in span of 10 years. There's 10 years between my two kids. But those two songs are. Are both on Spotify and available on Spotify.

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Yeah. And the one that I'm offering for and the rest of the songs in the course are exclusive to the course. So.

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But there's another one that I am offering for free. If people go to parentingharmony.com and it's called Dancing on Daddy's Shoulders, it could be, you know, also dancing on mommy's shoulders.

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And the origin of that, Laura, is that my dad worked really hard when I was a kid and I didn't get much time with him because he was often working seven days a week and he was trying to provide for his family.

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But one of the memories I do have that when my dad did have time is he'd put me up on his Shoulders and he'd pop on the Beatles or the who or some great music and we would go dancing around the living room.

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And it's one of the really distinct memories I have of my childhood is being up on my dad's shoulders, dancing around. And so I ended up writing a song called Dancing on Daddy's Shoulders. That so much fun. And I know that my kids will always remember the song. It's easy, it's catchy, and it's totally connecting. And if any of your listeners go to parentingharmony.com they can get the song.

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I also have a video and a lyric sheet and connection tips on how to maximize the use of this song. So you're using your body, you're using your affect, but you're doing it for so much fun and you're creating a mundane moment just being with your kid and you turning it into something really powerful in terms of joyful memory making. We'll definitely share that in the show notes.

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Thanks. Let's talk about parenting creativity. I know that the things that you're speaking about are things that we can all do as parents.

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Being a little sillier, getting down on our kids levels, really connecting. What can we do to encourage parents who may not think of themselves as creative to tap into that resource within themselves? That's a great question. So the first thing about any parent who does not think of themselves as creative, they need to understand that that's actually not correct. Like everybody is creative because we are actually all creating something in each moment. So really. Right. I mean, you could say, well, I'm not creative, but we all create every day. Whether we want to or not want to. Doesn't change the fact that we are creating, we're creating our relationships. We're creating so much about our lives. So first thing I would say is embrace that and embrace the fact that we all have the capability of learning. So that's why we listen to podcasts, right? And we read books because we know that we can learn. And for me, my mission is I want to be able to teach parents that connecting with their kids actually doesn't have to be difficult.

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That's why I break it down into affect. Like this is how you use your shoulders for connection. This is how you use your face, this is how you use your voice. And here are easy songs that you can do for bedtime, for bath time, for eating healthy, for playtime, for waking up time. There's all these songs for the the everyday moments of life. And then I've got activities too that are just simple. Look, I've been a camp director for over a quarter of a century, so to be able to explain things and say, hey, this is something that you can do even if you have five minutes before you have to leave the house. You don't have to waste that time.

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And we can get kids off of screens. We can get ourselves off of screens and get back into connection, joyful connection, and make life feel good. Because, look, there's been an epidemic of loneliness and disconnection and depression and anxiety. And often what the antidote for that is, is real human connection and experience. I agree. Tell us about Parks party Central, what that show is about. I can't wait to share it with my kids.

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All right, so this was an unbelievable experience. So when the pandemic started, it did not take me long to get totally, thoroughly depressed, because I love being around people.

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And so very early on, I turned to my daughter, who was five at the time, and I said, hey, neshama, would you like to do a show with me? And she says, yeah, let's do it. And so we ended up doing this weekly show.

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It was a variety show that I would do on my Facebook page. It was Facebook Live, and it included music, it included comedy, it included interactive games with whoever would show up with us live. And we ended up doing 70 episodes. And in the first year of the pandemic, we did 50 out of 52 weeks.

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When the pandemic first started, Laura, we all thought it was going to be two or three weeks and we'd all get back to it. And so I was like, cool, this will be fun. Like, doing. Doing a show for a few weeks. And then when it became apparent that, no, this is going to be going on for a while, a part of me was like, oh, my God, how am I going to write content for a show every single week? But because we were home, I realized that funny, cool, interesting things were happening with my daughter and I, like, every week. And we'd be like, oh, my God, let's put that in the show. Like, just ridiculous, silly things that we would just.

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That would just happen. And so we would end up. You must have had the camera on all the time. Well, when things would happen, we'd write down the ideas, you know, and then. And it was just. It was so much fun to be able to go and do these shows.

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And I know a lot of people were struggling at that time, so parents and kids knew that one. They could always get at least one new activity they can do together, because we always taught an activity they can do together.

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And then there were certain games that we would give shout outs to people who would win, and it was just a blast. So I ended up. And are those still on your Facebook site? They are, and I'm eventually going to be releasing them. And I have YouTube shorts of some of those moments. And on YouTube, I have three full episodes that people can watch.

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But we did 70 episodes. I have them all. And eventually I think I will release them in some shape or form I've actually thought about. I hope you do. Yeah.

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And the thing about the theme song, which is really interesting, too, is when I talked to my daughter about doing the show, and she said, yes, we were laying down snuggling one day, and I said, for the show, every show needs a theme song. And here I am, a professional musician. I'm thinking, okay, I'll write a theme song for our show.

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And she's like, yeah, dad. She's like, daddy, I've got one. And she ended up writing this theme song, and it was brilliant. It was amazing. Great. Yeah. Yeah. And we did this. And on every episode, we did this funny shtick where I would tell the audience, hey, you got to check out this theme song for parts Party Central, my daughter wrote. And it goes like this. 1, 2, 3, 4. And then she would start singing a theme song of another show or movie, and I would act all exasperated, and it became the shtick. And then after three times, she would then go into her actual theme song. But it was always funny because. And I actually took that from the Muppet Show. Do you remember the Muppet Show? Of course. So in the opening of the Muppet show, at the end of the theme song, Gonzo would always have a trumpet. And, like, something would always happen with it. Something always different. Right. It would either be confetti or a flame or it explode or, you know. And so I was like, oh, that's a funny shtick. So I did that with a theme song of, like, she'll sing a different theme song every week, and people won't know what it is. And so, I mean, there's a lot of, like, ongoing shticks like that in the show.

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And we just. We had a blast.

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It's amazing what happens when we connect with our children, I should say, when kids connect with us, because I find I'm funnier, I'm happier. I'm really experiencing real life. It just gets too serious sometimes, you know? Yeah. There's nothing quite like singing with little children also and playing with little children to Just get you back into the present moment. You know, I get to sing to preschools every week. And you know, what's great about that age is there's no limit to this, like, ridiculousness and silliness. Like, you know, I'll take my. My guitar into. Into, you know, preschool classroom, and I won't take the guitar out of the case, and I'll be like, I'll play the case. I'm like, oh, my gosh, my guitar's not working. What's going on? They're totally cracking up, right? And they're like, it's in the case. It's getting that. I'm like, what? Huh?

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What? You know, and I'll finally take it out and I'll have the guitar where the strings are against my body, and I'll strum the back of the guitar, like, oh, my gosh, my guitar's not working. You know, and they're going nuts and totally cracking up over the silliness and that. There's this level of real playfulness that little kids are willing to go with, with you. And it's like, for parents who have kids of ages like 0 to 5, 0 to 6, let's take advantage of those years and their playfulness. You know, developmentally, they. They just crave it and yearn it. And for us, such a rich opportunity for deep, deep connection, because play is their language.

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You know, it's funny because recently we've become. We've. Maybe it's just because we've all are getting more accustomed to this situation, but we're playing more games in the evening, we're doing more things together that have no.

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You know, some people would look at it as wasting time, but just the act of spending time has done so much for creating the trust that we've needed to create between the kids and ourselves. Because we all came together in this situation three years ago, really, without knowing each other that intimately. And it was a difficult move for us. It's been really hard losing friends and then raising children again and learning about neurodiversity. It's been hard.

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And my daughter said to me, I was sitting in the therapist's office and we were talking about some things, and she said, yeah, and it was like coming into an alien world for me.

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And I'd never thought about that. I never thought how we have thought about how hard it is for us, but you don't realize how hard it is for kids. And I'm talking about grandparents in particular that are raising grandchildren unexpectedly. A life they never expected but the levity and playing games, doing nothing but that has really cemented the family. Yeah. Play cannot really be underestimated. Even if you do a little research on the benefits of play with children, it's not some lofty thing. They've done a lot of research on this. And in terms of their emotional social development and their brain development and bonding and their overall well being, play is really, really critical. That's why, you know, in the course that I did, beyond the music, the third module of it is actually a list of 10 activities and games and play play. Things that, that, that I've done with campers for decades and I know and with my own children that I know are really fun and they're really simple and it gets kids off of screens too, which is wonderful too.

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Craig, why don't you tell us how the listeners can stay connected with you? They can reach me@craig parksparentingharmony.com they could find me on Instagram parentingharmony and they can also find me on TikTok at Parenting Harmony 1 as well. So I'm also on Facebook. So there's a lot of ways to get in touch with me. And if you go to parentingharmony.com that's where you can get the free song as well. And then if you're interested in the course, if you write to me at parenting@craig parksarentingharmony.com there's two ways you can get the full course or you could do it in smaller chunks as a membership, which, you know, makes it smaller monthly payments. But, and maybe you can digest the information. Some people want it all at once, but if anybody does want it all at once, if they write to me and they, they say they heard me on your podcast, Laura, I'll give them $100 off of the course as well. Fabulous.

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Thanks, Craig. Thanks for your time today.

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It's been such an honor. Thank you, Laura. You're really amazing and inspiring woman. Thank you.

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Check out Craig Park's website for the free song and video. Don't forget to like him on Instagram and TikTok at ParentingHarmony. And if you're a listener and want to take Craig's course, don't forget to mention it for a hundred dollars off the links for all this and more will be provided in the show notes as well. Thanks for joining us today for another episode of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Nurturing through Adversity. I encourage you to share both your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear.

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Submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together.

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And I can't wait for you to hear our next episode with Nella Dwyer, a globally celebrated singer, songwriter and leading expert on adhd. As the voice behind World of Warcraft and a chart topping artist, Nella's remarkable career has taken her to world stages and into collaborations with Emmy and Grammy winning composers. But her talents don't end there.

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Nella is a force in the realm of ADHD coaching and in this episode she shares her transformative journey from her beginnings as a young mother to her impact as a neurodiversity consultant and artistic trailblazer. Listen in as Nella shares powerful insights on embracing neurodivergence, achieving clarity and harnessing talent for innovation. ADHD is a condition affecting 2 to 5% of adults worldwide. Join me and our insightful guest as we unpack the signs, the misunderstandings and the genetic nuances of adhd. Don't miss this unforgettable conversation with a dynamic leader who bridges the arts, personal growth and organizational excellence.

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Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through adversity. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity.

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Peace be with you and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.