By Andrea McCracken My daughter was 7, nearly 8, and developing more concerns about the world. At bedtime, she would lay quietly and think about the mysteries of illnesses, aliens and other potentially scary things. They
What is Hand in Hand Parenting?: Day 8 In the last of our series of Listen Launch Posts, Patty Wipfler talks about how children’s deep down fears can erupt in patterns of aggression and how releasing
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”.
Hi Hand in Hand Parenting, My almost 3 1/2 year old is having an especially hard time right now with family coming to visit. He has always had an extremely high need for connection. He
My habit had been to lay down with my five-year-old daughter at bedtime until she was asleep, which often took half an hour or more. She would fall asleep fairly easily when others put her
She started to cry on and off, and I tried to remember if anything had happened that might have upset her.
Has your child ever lashed out and hurt someone? Has another aggressive child ever bothered him?
A few days later I noticed there had been no aggressive behavior since the day of the big cry.
Given the morning conversation, I kept telling her that both mummy and daddy love her, that she was safe and that we would both continue to look after her.
All in all, it was 8 hours of really hard crying, perspiration, and tears. I could smell his body odor—he worked up a heavy sweat.
When your child experiences a traumatic separation, there are simple, practical things you can do to help.
I decided that we had to do some Special Time (whether we wanted to or not!)
I was able to speak clearly and assertively about my feelings and what I had witnessed. He was very open to hearing me and shared some common concerns.
The next time I saw him on tippy toes, with a worried look on his face, I moved towards him and put my arms around him. I said “Hey mate, it looks like you need to do a poo. I’m going to help you”. That was all he needed to start crying – he fought hard against me as he cried, “No, No, NO! I don’t want to.”
I spent some “Special Time” with her, playing until we felt like we knew each other. Eventually, she told me that she wanted to stop sucking her thumb. I said that I would stay with her while she tried to think about taking her thumb out of her mouth, but that I wasn’t going to make her take it out.