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. AÂ few times I had perceived a little
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. Â 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. Â In all of the commotion a large vase broke. Â 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
Often times my son will walk by his siblings and push them down or punch them on their backs or yell in their faces. If they are doing something that irritates him, he will get extremely close and ball up his fists and visibly shake with anger.