My middle daughter Dody recently got her sister Toty a present. It was really thoughtful of her, but she didn’t know that Toty had bought exactly the same notebook in exactly the same color
In this post on sleep issues, we talked about using play as a tool that helps children release the minor fears and tensions that hold them back from sleeping well. Sometimes those fears run deeper
It’s easy to feel infuriated when your child becomes rigidly uncooperative or loses it over the tiniest, most illogical thing. But what if tantrums were actually a healthy and useful phenomenon? In this call replay
Sometimes the things that affect our children are not things that would upset us. In our bids to offer solutions, however well-meaning, we often forget to stop and listen. Yet one of the best solutions
A Guest Post with Roma Norriss Tantrums are an inevitable element of childhood. No matter what we do, beginning at around age two, big upsets and crying always appear. It can be as late as
Abigail gets an Instagram message from a confused dad whose sweet little baby is just becoming a toddler. He asks, “What discipline tools actually work with toddlers?”
How can you respond to a hurt child calmly, when you feel panicked yourself? Instructor Emilie Leeks discovers it takes some practice, but the results are easy to see. “We’d only just left for the
Dear Hand in Hand I’ve worked really hard to support my daughter when she cries recently. When I hold her and tell her I’m listening she does come to a point when her tears clear,
Our son is nearly three years old. He still goes through some separation anxiety when he’s without his mom. We usually put him to bed together, but the other night, my wife needed a break.
In his fantastic book, The Opposite of Worry, Lawrence Cohen introduces us to what anxiety in children looks like, and what we can do to help. He covers a great deal of current theory in a
My three-year old daughter had been seeking quite a bit of connection from me for the last day or two. She had been employing all of the tactics we’ve developed over time to get me
It’s the beginning of fall and as surely as leaves will drop, so will the homework. Pages and pages of it. Sometimes whole binders worth. Homework can be the source of many arguments, and I wanted
Setting Limits and Staylistening Those of you with picky eaters are familiar with requests—or demands—for “something else” to eat. Rigidity around food is like rigidity around anything else: it signals a need for help. We
We’ve all had those mornings. The one that begins like nothing will ever be right again: “I do not want to get dressed. I want breakfast.” “I don’t want cereal. I want oatmeal.” “I wanted
Recently, I took my younger daughter to her preschool after a vacation break of 10 days. This transition back to our usual rhythm, and her emotional response to it, reminded me of the many times