Hey Tracy: I am trying to teach my 3-year-old ways to calm herself down when she’s feeling angry. I usually ask her to take a deep breath or go away from people (namely her 6-month-old sister) if she feels like hitting or pinching. Some days we can turn the mood around. Other days it seems […]
“How do I remember what I’m supposed to do in the heat of the moment?” a dad asked me. I was giving a keynote talk at BabyFest NW, and he had stopped by my table to check out my book beforehand. The dad said he had plenty of parenting information. He knew how he intended […]
The best praise is focused on your child’s effort, not your child’s traits. The same is true of criticism. stripslashes(strstr(” “, “class=”) ? “” : “”)In one study by Columbia University researchers, kindergarteners were given a scenario: a teacher asks them to create a house out of Legos, and they forget to put in windows. Then […]
Outlet covers. Cabinet locks. Furniture straps. We did all the usual baby-proofing. But something still wasn’t quite right. Our curious, newly mobile baby found plenty of other things to touch. At times, laptop power cords draped from our dining-room table to an outlet in the corner, an invitation to play a game of plug & […]
My 18-month-old struggled to buckle the straps on her high chair. “Almost,” she muttered as she tried again and again. “Almost,” I agreed, trying not to hover. When she got it, I exclaimed, “You did it! It was hard, but you kept trying, and you did it.” stripslashes(strstr(” “, “class=”) ? “” : “”)The way I praised […]
A playground near my house has a zipline-style swing. You (um, I mean, the kids) sit or stand on a little disc-shaped seat dangling from a rope, grab ahold of the rope, and have someone swing you down the zipline. One day, a boy, maybe 3 years old, perched on the swing at one end of the line. His dad gripped the […]
My toddler got some pink and purple Lego Duplo blocks as a gift. Around that time, GoldiBlox came out with pink construction toys designed to interest girls in engineering. I thought it was all a bit silly, the idea that girls needed their own girly color of blocks to pique their interest in the toy. […]
“I shouldn’t even admit this to you,” my husband began, as he relayed the afternoon’s struggle: how our toddler pushed on the screen door, he told her not to, she pushed on the screen door, he told her not to, she pushed on the screen door, and he lightly slapped her on the wrist. Minor as the punishment seemed […]
“Umm … now what do we do?” I distinctly remember having this thought a couple weeks after my baby was born. Her first days home were a flurry of us trying to figure out how, basically, to keep her alive. How to sleep. Where to sleep. How the heck to feed her. Trips to the doctor to check her […]
The process of becoming a parent makes me think of one of those guys in a spy movie who gets an urgent call, within 24 hours is slipped a new passport with his photo but an utterly unfamiliar identity, and walks out the door attempting to seamlessly adopt this new persona. One day you are who you’ve always been. The next day your […]