As parents, we want nothing more than to help our kids feel loved and nurtured. When they are upset, every cell in our bodies leans towards making them feel better. We ache to have the upset stop and to do this, we use a calm voice, a warm hug. Yet often, in the throws of
It’s a new morning, and your child is grumpy and refuses to get out of bed. “You’re so mean!” your child shouts as you tell her it’s time to get up. “I hate you!” These words seem made to rile a frazzled parent. We spend so much of our life-giving for our kids and loving
A guest post by Irina Nichifiriuc Read this post in Romanian In our house, I faced a series of “battles” and obstacles every night as the day wore on towards bedtime. With three children, I found that the task of getting them to sleep was getting longer and more difficult as I faced more and
Babies cry.
It’s hard to listen when all you want to do is find a way to make your baby stop crying. As a parent you’re hard-wired to care when a baby cries, after all. But sometimes, it feels like babies cry for no reason.
Several years before becoming a Mum I went to stay with a dear friend who had recently given birth. When her baby was crying at times when she wasn’t hungry or cold or wet, she simply held her in her arms and listened to her, reassuring her that all was well. I found this fascinating.
Un article traduit de l’anglais par Chloé Saint Guilhem formatrice certifiée Hand in Hand Nos parents, pour la plupart d’entre eux, ne nous ont pas écoutés tandis que nous exprimions nos sentiments de façon passionnée. Ceci n’a jamais été modélisé pour eux. Nous, à notre tour, ne savons pas toujours quoi dire. Il se peut
When my daughter was five and a half, we decided to take our craft project outside on a gorgeous afternoon. As soon as she sat down, a big black spider jumped on her arm and bit her. She screamed in pain and ran back inside. I followed her and saw her arm was getting swollen.
Many children are afraid of visits to the doctor, but my daughter was TERRIFIED. She’d had a difficult birth and was in the NICU for four days; perhaps those early experiences had stayed with her. She would become terrified in the examining room, trembling, screaming and clinging tightly to me even in a routine examination
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 two days earlier. Toty got really mad. She thought Dodo hadn’t thought much about her. Then Dodo got mad at
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 we can offer is space. Listening to children vent their feelings of wrongdoing or injustice can be all they need
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 six before we see them stop, although many parents see big cries from much older children too – something
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 shops when our 3-year-old slipped off their scooter. It was quite a tumble, and they were clutching at their legs
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, and she seems happy and fine to move on. But I’m worried that after she goes off we have no
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. So our routine began. I read him a book, tucked him in and said goodnight. The minute the lights went
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 clear, accessible, and practical way, linking it to ideas you can use immediately. He also touches on how we can
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 to snuggle her. Also, she had been whining and exaggerating each time she got a little bump or ran into
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 often need to set a limit for a child who ventures off to replace our food selections with his own.
Trauma can really undermine a children’s ability to thrive at school, affecting relationships and making it hard for them to follow school structure and directives. Dealing with these behaviours can be taxing on teaching staff, but young children often turn to caregivers to help them manage their responses to the stress trauma causes, putting teachers in