The brain is wired to resist coercion. That’s why being told what to do triggers defiance. Unless we feel very connected, in that moment, to the person telling us what to do. This is an intriguing piece of the parenting puzzle that I wrote about in “The secret to stopping power struggles.” Here are some ideas for creating a little connection in the moment: 1. […]
Humans can regulate each other’s nervous systems. Does that sound weird? Less weird, I bet, when I put it this way: When we act anxious, our children pick up on our energy and become more anxious. When we act calm, our children pick up on that energy and become calmer. One session at the Zero to Three conference, on early childhood […]
Q. My daughter (age 2 1/2) is very ‘full on’ for want of a better term. I’m a stay-at-home mum, and from the moment we get up till the moment she goes to bed, she demands constant attention all day. She doesn’t play by herself and always asks me to play with her … which of course […]
Q. I grew up in a home where I was never allowed to be messy. My grandmother or mother always quickly cleaned up everything in anger. I don’t want to be that kind of parent! I don’t want my child constantly caught up in my anxiety. My daughter is 14 months. She loves to rearrange things […]
Raise your hand if you can relate to this question from K.G.! Oh, everyone? Excellent. Q. I made grilled chicken breasts and cut it up for my nearly 3-year-old — who then had a fit because he wanted a big piece. And this trivial little thing made me really uncertain about what to do. Do I refuse to […]
Last week my 3-year-old fell off the swing and face-planted on the ground. She laid there for a second, and I got down next to her. She wasn’t crying, so I said, “What do you see?” “My necklace,” she replied, and she got rather interested in checking out its detail. “Interesting blades of grass there, too,” […]
It’s the worst feeling: your kid hits another kid (or bites or embeds fingernails in or otherwise mauls another kid) during a play date. You make sure the other kid is OK, and now you turn to yours. The pressure’s on: the kid’s parent is looking at you, or pretending not to look at you. You […]
Does grandma get to see your baby regularly? Grandmothers who take care of their grandchildren once a week, a small study showed, may be at lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Why? Consider a story in Atul Gawande’s excellent book Being Mortal. He tells of seniors shuffling the halls in a nursing home, looking lifeless–until an idealistic director breaks the rules and brings […]
Have you ever felt like you’re talking and talking, saying the same thing over and over, and just being flat-out ignored? This happened to me recently. My daughter’s shorts got muddy (we were camping), and I’d encouraged her to wash them in the water spigot (an object of immense fascination). As she began, I could tell she needed to […]
My preschooler came out of her room and stomped once. I carried her back to bed. As I turned to leave, she called out: “When we were camping, C wanted to be alone and I kept at him, and he hurt me. He hit me first. I hit him second. Next time we go camping, I’m […]