Your son just throttled your baby on the head. The baby is screaming. You hoist her up, and scream at your child. “Why did you do that?!” He starts crying, so now there’s two of
In many parenting programs, rewards and punishment reign large. So an approach focussed on connection and listening offers therapists a refreshing change. Hand in Hand’s five empathetic listening tools form an approach that “can be described
My son is now 16 months old. When he was newborn he was a nightmare. We couldn’t lie him flat for the first 6 months of his life. I couldn’t leave him for a microsecond.
Our founder, Patty Wipfler’s book Listen, Five Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges, is a treasure trove of anecdotes and wisdom drawn from her 40 years working with children and families. At the
How could I possibly settle for status quo and watch so many parents struggle when I hold in my hands these simple, yet brilliant, strategies that can help parents create a much more pleasant home front and feel good about their parenting?
I was just reflecting on how much progress my family has made with the listening tools. Yesterday, I was working late, and my au pair (from Mexico) was eating dinner with my children and getting
Talks and negotiations for candy and sweet treats in our house reached an all-time high in the weeks following the holidays and I grew weary of the asking, the begging and the whining. One day when
I have a friend who has twin girls. Ever since they were born one of the twins (the second to be born) was labeled the more difficult one. She cried more than her twin sister, she
There was no way we were going to be able to pay for tickets to New York and have Christmas gifts too. No way.
One morning, my 3-year-old said, “I am my brother, not me,” while I was busy getting my older son ready for school. Ah, a sign of a storm brewing, I thought. I squatted at his
The evening before my 7-year-old daughter had her audition for a community theater production, she asked me, “Why do I have to go to the audition?” I reminded her that she had enjoyed her theater
We had all been excited about watching the Olympic torch run past our house. My 6-year-old son had been particularly excited about it, as he had been working on the Olympics at his school and
My husband was making a pot of oatmeal for breakfast last weekend, and it was time for the family to come to the table. But our 8-year-old son saw that the oatmeal wasn’t the kind
When my two little cousins, ages three and one-and-a-half, came to live with me for several months, I learned that sometimes the adults they came in contact with were not that thoughtful about how to
In one of Patty Wipfler’s talks about Special Time, a question was asked by a mother about what to do if you child breaks something during rigorous play. Patty observed that sometimes children want to