Laura Minnigerode on Listening Partnerships During the winter holiday season, I often feel overpowered with emotions about the past. While I cherish memories of being with my family, I feel out of touch and alone.
If you’ve discovered the simple and seemingly radical tool of Staylistening – of staying and listening through your child’s upset – you may have been amazed by how your child recovers from that tantrum or
Listening Time There’s nothing like raising kids to bring tension into a family. Right from pregnancy it can seem like every decision you make comes under scrutiny, and then feeding, sleeping, schooling, behavior and
A friend and I were spending our vacation together. Between us we had five children aged from three to six years old. It was their first time meeting. A few times I had perceived a little
Handling “I hate you!” Almost every parent was once a child who was shouted at by grownups under stress. Almost all of us were called names and told we were bad at one time or another.
A good friend of mine is following my work with Hand in Hand with great admiration, so one day I asked her if she’d be interested in doing a Listening Partnership. She said yes, but reluctantly,
Q: My son is a very dynamic four-year-old. He is attached to me and has a younger two year-old brother. What I’ve noticed is that when we are doing Staylistening, he will sometimes rapidly control
Resolving the biting issue was a priority over other jobs I had, and I rationed my energy and attention to deal with his new aggression. I reduced the time I spent on my household work (I did very minimum vacuum cleaning, dish washing and cooking!) to stay close by when my sons were together so I could reach in before things escalated.
My older son, who was six, had been constantly on the edge for a few weeks. He let out his feelings by crying on weekends and then go back to school on Monday. His first
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
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
One evening when my son was about three, we had a big dinner party. In all of the commotion a large vase broke. My son was very close to the vase when it broke and
I had been having a harder and harder time carving out regular Special Time for my two sons. During the day, when I am the only adult present, neither of them can stand to be
One day I gave my 3 year old daughter a “horsey-ride” on my back. I’d done it many times before and she always enjoyed the closeness and bouncy thrill of the ride. However this day
A few weeks ago I noticed that every time I asked my almost six year old son, Gabriel, to do anything he said, “No.” Well, in actuality he said, “No way, José!” very loudly. Like