I could tell my 6-year-old daughter had something on her mind. She had been talking about something that had troubled her at school, and while I had listened empathetically, it didn’t feel like she had
My nine year old son usually falls right asleep at night. This has been such a blessing for me and quite contrary to his younger sister who likes to stay up late. On one particular
Earthquakes, tsunami’s and typhoons and wars are hard to process and difficult to discuss with children. Feelings are triggered in each of us as we picture what life is like for those directly affected, and as
When you have a picky eater, the problem isn’t so much with food, it’s with your child’s feelings about food. This is news to many parents. It is not commonly mentioned in mainstream parenting advice.
Q. “My five-year-old can’t seem to stay dry at night. We’ve tried and tried, and nothing I do seems to work. She feels bad when she wets the bed, I try not to bother her
In Potty Training Experience: Playlistening, we explored the healing role that laughter can play when a child has unworkable fears. The mother who wrote in had a three-and-a-half year old daughter who was absolutely terrified
Q. Potty training has been a huge issue for our three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. She tells us when she has to go, wants privacy and is uncomfortable in dirty diapers. And she is TERRIFIED of going on
We adults have lots of ways to distract ourselves from feeling a little off base. We jiggle our feet, chew on a pencil, snack and snack again, read the paper, or sneak in a bit
All of us experienced nightmares at some point in our childhood. Usually, nightmares are an occasional thing. And they need a parent to be close to them, to hold them, and to keep them safe while they get rid of those awful fears.
Many of us sleep with our infants and children. We sleep with them because they love being close to us, and we (at least sometimes) also enjoy this closeness. Some of us sleep with our
Healthy families in many cultures allow children to sleep with parents, and if that works for your family, great. But, if your sleep schedule doesn’t line up well with your child’s, or if the good effects of sleeping close together are negated because no one sleeps well in that arrangement at your house, you do have other options.
By the time she was three months old, my entire life was focused on helping my baby daughter get some good sleep. I hired two sleep consultants, read every book on sleep available, but found no answers or magic cures. What I knew I could not do was leave her alone to “cry it out”.
When my daughter was around two, I was ready for her to move to her own bed. I knew helping children sleep in their own beds could be challenging, and I wanted the transition to be as easy as possible for her, so I thought naptime, instead of bedtime, would be the best way to slowly introduce this idea.
The night before last, my three-year-old, awoke at 4:30 am crying and very scared. He kept asking, “Is someone gonna come?” He had watched Kung Fu Panda with us earlier that day, a movie that
My son has co-slept with me since he was born. When he was about 18 months old, I bought him his own bed with the plan to move him into it so I could have