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Hi! Over the years I've found a few good activities to assist my daughter with HUGE memory problems (amongst other things) with reading.
I think the thing she loved most was Starfall. It's a website that has different rhymes and stories for different reading rules, a lot of people recommend it.

I used the book, How to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons. Which was helpful to a point, but then progress stalled with increasing word size.

On the review pages of Amazon it was suggested that the Bob books were a better way to go, as the child can read a whole book by themselves, fast - which is pretty motivating!

Good luck, hope you find what works for your step-sister! She's lucky to have such a caring sibling :)

It sounds like you really want to be an excellent parent. Props.

I recommend that you study mindfulness and equanimity.

I am currently the parent of two young children. It can be very, very stressful at times. What I have found most valuable is an ability to keep myself emotionally on an even keel. I have found a mindfulness practice to be extremely valuable in this regard.

Things are going to happen that will be very trying. You might have a kid with colic, who screams and cries for twelve or more hours of the day. You will almost certainly be sleep deprived. You may have difficulty finding time to do the things you like doing now. You need to be able to maintain a calm emotional state in the face of some events that will really test you. Ideally, you need to be able to be happy in these circumstances. In my opinion this is important for the happiness and health of your whole family.

Having an established mindfulness practice will help you keep your mind on what's important. For example, instead of wondering how you will survive the night, you may realize that you are snuggling the baby who you looked forward to meeting for so long.

I really like this book, and recommend it strongly. /r/Meditation is also a useful resource.

This is not something you can just read in a book and know. It's something you have to practice, a trained skill, like riding a bike. If you're interested in this, I suggest starting as soon as possible. It will be much easier to get started in the relative calm that you are now enjoying.

My younger daughter does the screaming thing too. In her case, it is purely for attention. The worst is while I'm making dinner, cleaning up, or helping my older daughter with homework. She will scream, hit, bite, throw things, throw herself on the ground and generally acts like a psychotic little pain in the ass. If I stop what I'm doing and pay attention to her, she immediately cheers up. But of course, when I do that, it only reinforces the behavior.

She is younger than your son, 16 months old, so mostly I'm just trying to ride out the behavior. I ignore her when she acts like that, then smile and talk to her if she starts behaving pleasantly, try to set her up with an activity before I have to do something that triggers those tantrums. I set up the pack n play in the living room and will occasionally put her in timeout if it is really out of control or do a "time-in" which is a timeout on my lap (she is facing out, I do not speak to her or engage with her. This is less effective because she is still getting some attention from me.)

That is what I'm doing. I don't know if that will work for you. But whatever you do, do NOT reward him for this behavior. So much easier said than done, I know. You will need to make a game plan and stick to it no matter what. Try to nail down anything that triggers the screaming. Make an action plan for those times. Try to find ways to prevent it from occurring. Then ask yourself, what usually stops the behavior? Whatever that is, is the reward. Save the reward for when he is not screaming. Stock pile treat rewards (stickers, toys, candy) for those times when you are really busy so if you catch him in a good behavior, you can quickly reward him (and his older sister, don't want her feeling left out. Also she will begin to encourage him to behave). But usually the best reward is positive attention. You can try just ignoring the screaming entirely or give him timeouts for them. At his age, I would suggest 2 minutes in a timeout chair or mat, in the room with you, or a time-in, on your lap.

This is much much harder than it sounds. You will need to get your husband and any other care givers on the same page. You must ALL stick to the plan.

Also, buy this book! Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood. http://www.amazon.com/Love-Logic-Magic-Early-Childhood/dp/1930429002/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348769523&sr=8-1&keywords=love+and+logic

The book is great but if you can find classes in the area that would be even better. My husband and I took these classes and we always say it was the single best parenting decision we ever made.

Good luck! And don't worry, this too shall pass!

I totally concur that treating kids with respect is key. It is modeling how to communicate, basically how to and be a decent human being. And you can start younger than you might think, even as infants. How you talk to/treat your kids teaches them how to treat others.
I found this book very helpful as a first time parent:
[Dear Parent by Magda Gerber] (http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Parent-Caring-Infants-Respect/dp/1892560062/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394243908&sr=1-4&keywords=magda+gerber)

Yes, there will be tantrums, weird stages, it's just part of growing up. You can't really reason with a young child, but if they trust you in a really deep way, sometimes they come around. The book I cited above really shaped my thinking and helped me become a better parent.

Oh, and the other thing is consistency. When you set rules, boundaries and expectations for your family, stick to them. Toddlers love, even crave routine. It helps them figure out there place in the world, and know what is happening next. Toddler emotions can be out of control, so they rely on the caring adults around them to set up structures that help them feel emotionally safer.

My son knew all his letters at age 2 as well. At 3 he was reading out street and shop signs, and now at 4 he can read simple books by himself. All we did was read books with him from a young age. He watches about an hour of TV/videos every day, stuff like Pingu or Dora or Thomas or kids' songs on youtube - none of which can be credited with teaching him to read, I think it was just reading with him.

Some of his favorite books (in chronological order):

• Classics like Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar
  
  
• I See A Monster
  
  
• Funny Face - highly recommended, gave my two-yr-old a simple way to recognize and express his emotions
  
  
• Five Little Monkeys Jump on the Bed and other similar sing-along and/or play-along books, which greatly helped him begin to sight-read words.
  
  
• Catch Me, Catch Me, the first book he learned to read by himself. Simple rhyming text combined with his favorite theme, trains.
  
  
• That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown - his latest favorite: great story, great mix of repeating words and new/challenging words without ever going completely over his head.
  
  
  
  I'm a stay-at-home mom so we probably have more time to read with kids than families where both parents work. But even so maybe you can still try: we only read about one book a day on average, so making it a bedtime routine would put two-working-parent kids on the same footing as ours.

My (3-year old) son likes some traditionally "girly" stuff and has been getting some flack from other kids about it at school. His teacher and my wife and I talked about strategies (his teachers are awesome) and one thing we did was check out a bunch of books about being different.

Two of them pull pretty strong on my heart strings:

Neither

https://www.amazon.com/Neither-Airlie-Anderson/dp/0316547697

Jamie is Jamie

https://www.amazon.com/Jamie-About-Being-Yourself-Playing/dp/1631981390/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31CS9009VZAPK&keywords=jamie+is+jamie&qid=1570198131&s=books&sprefix=jamie+is+%2Cstripbooks%2C137&sr=1-1

They're both great. The drawings (of all sorts of odd hybridized creatures) in Neither are fantastic, as is the story. It is the "younger" book of the two.

But Jamie is Jamie brings me (a reasonably masculine man) almost to tears. It's about a kid (Jamie) that likes doing girly and boy-y stuff, and their classmates like Jamie a lot and have an interesting conversation about whether they are a boy or a girl, then decide they don't care.

But what really makes it special in my mind is that it doesn't end there--it shows how after that, the other kids start playing with whatever they actually want to, regardless of gender norms, and are happier for it.

I think it touches me because I can remember being a kid and having interest in some "girly" things--gymnastics, dress-up, cooking... but never letting myself do those things. I think books like this would have helped me try things I wanted to do but was afraid to, and I hope it is that way for my son.

This is never popular when I share it, but this saved us. I start sleep training at 4 months. My second child was sleeping solid through the night at 6 months. From 15 months to 2 years they regress and will call out every 3 hours. If you follow the book, you just go in for 1 minute and leave then they're good, on average.

https://www.amazon.com/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/0743201639

Best of luck!

I have a 2.75yo boy :) We have "pew pew" (thank you, Lego Batman), hitting, throwing toys, and other roughness. We talk about how mistreating toys can turn them into trash (i.e. they break). Toys often go to time out if they can't be played with appropriately (sometimes for a day, sometimes much longer). I tell him I won't let him hit/hurt people (his older sister the usual target) and block him or use time out as needed. I think he has a need to be rough, and I try to provide him with plenty of appropriate opportunities for that. We go places where he can throw rocks, bang with sticks, and get lots of physical exercise. I also like [The Art of Roughhousing.](The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594744874/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_jna1AbCMFK3TB). Thankfully my husband enjoys playing this way, because although I recognize it as developmentally appropriate, I do not enjoy it myself!

Good reminder for Bob's Burgers. I've been meaning to get back to that.

​

Here's some books that we liked around Kindergarten:

• https://smile.amazon.com/Jimmy-Zangwows-This-World-Moon-Pie-Adventure/dp/068985563X/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1423133080 ( We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Gruffalo-Julia-Donaldson/dp/0142403873
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Day-Crayons-Quit-Drew-Daywalt/dp/0399255370
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Book-No-Pictures-B-Novak/dp/0803741715
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Press-Here-Herve-Tullet/dp/0811879542/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Case-Stripes-Scholastic-Bookshelf/dp/0439598389
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Have-Filled-Bucket-Today-Bucketfilling/dp/099609993X
  
  Really any Tony Diterlizi, Dave Shannon, or Mo Williams books are good.
  
  ​

This hits the core of Achtung Baby, a great read! https://www.amazon.com/Achtung-Baby-American-Self-Reliant-Children/dp/1250160170

Wanted to chime in and mention the book Neither. Great for discussing the topic of social inclusion, and empathy.