When my 6-year-old son began the first grade in a new school district, school went from being easy to being a big challenge for him both socially and academically. Being the youngest in his class with a late November birthday, it seemed to his teacher and me that repeating the grade the following year might
When my daughter was just under two years old, we were playing one day with a friend and her one-year old son. While gently nuzzling the leg of the younger boy, my daughter suddenly took his thigh in her mouth and bit down, HARD. He immediately started screaming and crying. My daughter lurched away, looking
Everything went well until we got to the checkout line and he asked for gum. I said no and he began to have a full blown tantrum, I was completely overwhelmed with the baby, the groceries and him. So I bought the gum. All the way home, I kept saying to myself, “You are being controlled by a child! This can only get worse.”
It was sports day at my children’s new school. My daughter, 8, was in the first of her races and was keen to “get a place,” as she put it – meaning she wanted to come in first, second or third. She ran the race and came in a joint third place, in her mind
I was driving home with my husband and my 2.5-year old son. We were coming from a sweet evening with some friends of ours who have a son his age. The dinner was lovely, I had felt connected to my husband and the couple, and the boys had played well together. I was filled with a
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 my bed to myself. I tried getting him to stay there, but I could never make it work. We had
My husband and I took our sons to Tokyo. We stayed with my mother and had the boys go to a Japanese preschool for three-and-a-half weeks. It was a great language and cultural immersion and bonding time for the family. But it was a rough start, especially for my younger son, who was almost three.
My 2-1/2-year old son was tired. It was past his nap time. As I laid him down for his nap, he looked up at me very lovingly and said, “Can I have some of your milk, mommy?” His voice was tender and sweet. It had been about six months since I had breastfed him at
My 3-year old son and his slightly younger friend had a play date at our house. There was a bowl with a snack roll in it made of grains and fruit. Frank picked a muesli roll, as he was hungry. My son wanted to follow his lead and picked what happened to be the last
Last fall my husband had to go out of town for a few days for work. The day after he left, my two year-old son and I were sitting in the living room on the couch when it seemed to dawn on him all of a sudden that his dad was gone. He said, “I
We picked the kids up from kindergarten and preschool one afternoon and drove straight to the airport. Our four-year-old daughter noticed that we were not driving home, so we made the happy announcement, “Surprise! We’re going to Lego Land.” Big mistake! Turns out, anything that has the element of surprise in it, was going to
I heard a very touching story in one of my classes recently. We were talking about the value of listening to our children’s strong emotions, and I asked if anyone had been listened to in that way as a young child. One woman raised her hand and said, “Yes. One time.” She had been raised
Help! My 5 year old seems to be out of control these days. He throws toys, he’s very physical with me and our nanny, hitting us (and friends) as hard as can. He’ll be sweet one minute, but when when asked to do something he doesn’t like, he’ll begin a hitting tantrum. I’m worried he
Well, I have bad news for you. It’s true that timeouts are infinitely better than hitting, and yelling. But Timeouts teach the wrong lessons, and they don’t work to create better behaved children.