Q. My 3-1/2 year-old has started waking every night around the same time, and screaming. I think he’s in the middle of a nightmare. He’s really frightened, and I don’t really know what to do. Not much seems to help—often, I’ll bring him in bed with me, but that doesn’t change the situation long-range. He keeps waking up really scared. Is there any way to help him get through this?

All of us experienced nightmares at some point in our childhood. Usually, nightmares are an occasional thing. Your son probably is experiencing what they call “night terrors,” which go on night after night for a period of time, and usually entail a recurrent dream, or at least, recurrent feelings of fear.

Here’s my picture of what happens to cause nightmares, and night terrors. Your child has an acutely sensitive internal monitoring system that signals strong emotional and physical alarm at the slightest hint of danger, injury, or threat. And because little children don’t understand yet how the world works, their minds register many situations as threatening. Their emotional alarms can go off daily. For instance, a baby might feel afraid while sitting facing the rear in her car seat, because she can’t see anyone there. More challenging situations—going through a struggle at birth, facing a long separation from a parent, or having a scary accident—register deeper fears.

When an experience has caused fear, a child will either go very quiet and lock down his emotional system until it seems safe again, or will scream and cry with all his might. That screaming and crying serves an important purpose! If an adult can come close, hold the child, and let him know that he’s safe now, the child will cry and thrash and keep expressing fear until the fear has been fully expressed. At that point, a child’s system is able too understand that the threat is over. He doesn’t remain afraid.

Many times, at least some of that feeling of fear stays stuck in the child’s emotional memory. The feeling lasts because at the moment the child is frightened, there isn’t the time or the support for the child to really finish expressing how frightened he became. Parents who want to help him will try to hush his expression of fear, because we’ve all been taught that the parent is supposed to hush crying and talk (or threaten) a child out of expressing his feelings. So the feelings of fear that the child didn’t finish expressing are stashed, uncomfortably, in memory.

These emotional memories don’t just sit there. They cause trouble. A child’s stored moments of fear can be kicked into play by little everyday things. A child can become afraid of having his teeth brushed, afraid to wash his hair, or afraid to go into a room by himself, as a way of signaling that he still carries fear within him.

When children are awake, they can stay one step ahead of the feelings of fear they still harbor by being active. Children who harbor big fears tend to be very active—constant activity distracts their minds from the feelings that linger under the surface. But things like the start of school, a parent taking a business trip, a thunder storm, or a tense time in the family can easily trip the stored feelings of fear. The child distracts himself during the day, but in sleep, there’s no escaping the fact that feelings are rankling inside. The mind portrays the fear in the form of a nightmare. It weaves a story or an image with the feelings that were embedded some time ago.

When a child wakes crying and screaming, he’s doing exactly what he needs to do to offload his stored feelings. Crying, trembling, perspiring, and thrashing wildly are the way children dispel the power that fear exerts in their minds. They need to scream. They need to thrash. They need to show you how desperate and terrified they feel. And they need a parent to be close to them, to hold them, and to keep them safe while they get rid of those awful fears.

Your job, as parent, is to hold the child and be his emotional anchor. Make sure a bit of light is in the room so he can see you if and when he opens his eyes. Put your arms around him, pull him onto your lap, or sit very close and keep him right with you. Let him move. Try to tune in to the deep feeling he is expressing, but don’t panic yourself. He needs you to know that he’s in the middle of an emotional bad dream, and to love him and trust that the bad dream will pass. Pour your love and your confidence that all is well into him.

Here are the kinds of things you can say while he’s wild with upset:

“I’m right here, and I’ll keep you safe.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you. I have you in my arms. You are OK.”

“Whatever frightened you is over. It’s never going to happen again.”

“I’ll stay with you until you can tell you’re safe.”

“I am protecting you. I’m watching over you every minute.”

“If you look into my eyes, you will see that I am right here. If you can, take a look.”

Be patient. Working through a big chunk of fear takes time. The kinder and more confident you are, the harder he will cry and thrash, but then, eventually, he’ll feel OK. The bad dream will lift. He’ll be glad to go back to sleep again. And he’ll wake up bright and cheerful in the morning.

Night terrors happen when the fear a child is trying to offload is not a small one. So the child’s mind cooks up a frightening image night after night to set up a chance to work through and be finally rid of the fear that sits so uncomfortably in his memory. Children who have spent time in neonatal intensive care, who have had accidents, or who have been through other overwhelming experiences often have night terrors. Their instinct is to heal fully from frightening experiences, and night terrors help a child to do this difficult but liberating emotional work.

You have great power to assist your child’s emergence from old fearful experiences if you stay, listen, and guide their emotional release process. We call this kind of help Staylistening. If it’s difficult for you to do, because your child seems so distraught, then it’s smart to find a listening partner. Our booklet, Listening Partnerships for Parents, outlines how you can arrange an exchange of listening time with a friend or another interested parent. We parents are, understandably, saddened and sometimes frightened by our children’s raw moments. We love them so much, and, by and large, we haven’t ever taken on the job of helping someone while they face their worst fears. It’s difficult. But a listening partnership can give a parent the emotional wherewithal to help a child heal fully from the fearful experiences he’s had.

Here’s how it can work:

My son had an accident that split his hand open when he was just a year old. We rushed him to the emergency room. My husband and I were frightened and shocked, and I’m sure seeing us so stricken added to his fear in the situation. In the emergency room, they drugged him, strapped him to a board, and stitched him up. I was with him every moment, but the whole experience was not what you would wish for a twelve-month-old child! He cried a few times in the next few days, but he didn’t have a huge emotional reaction to the incident at the time.

When he was three years old, he began to have night terrors. For several months, he would wake screaming and fearful every single night at about 10:30 pm. I figured that he was probably finally tackling the fear from his accident, but there was no way to know for sure why he kept working so hard on fear. He couldn’t really tell me anything while he was screaming, fighting, sweating and trembling. And when he would finish, the fear banished for the night, he would just cuddle a bit and go back to sleep. One night, he screamed so loudly that the neighbors over the back fence knocked on our door to make sure everyone was OK.

Every night, I reassured him, held him, and told him that whatever had scared him was over and it would never happen again. He would thrash and scream. It was as if he couldn’t hear or process any of the reassurance I was offering, but I knew that it was important to be his anchor, to supply a steady counterweight to his fears with my confidence that he was OK. He was fine in the mornings—the emotional episodes didn’t seem to leave any residue to taint the next day.

During this time, he had the same wildly fearful response to any tiny physical injury—any scuff on his knee, or bump on his head. When I could, I did the same, holding him and offering him a safe, close place and time to process his emotional memories of that earlier accident.

He had his terrors every night, like clockwork, until his mind finally was rid of the fear, and didn’t send up any more bad dreams. And throughout this period, a deep seriousness and watchfulness that seemed to be his personality gave way to more laughter, more sparkle, and more appetite for adventure and humor. He began to play with more abandon, and to seek out more daring adventures. Being held and reassured through his night terrors was lifting the heavy weight of caution, and allowing him to see the world as a safer place.

Hand in Hand is a parent education non-profit that has been helping families to build the super-protective factor of parent-child connectedness for twenty years.  You can learn more by reading the Listening to Children booklet series by Patty Wipfler or by signing up for our free monthly newsletter, Connecting! . Or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ListenToKids .

 Q. It seems to me that children aren’t playing with each other the way they used to. Sometimes, it looks to me like they hardly play with each other at all–they act out imaginary scripts, and they’re each in their own little worlds, next to each other. What can I do to get them really playing again?

I have to agree! Something important has happened gradually over the past 20 years to children’s play. The play in schoolyards and preschools has slid toward more scripted acting, and in many places has moved away from flexibility and from the inclusion of whoever wants to participate.  In spite of this trend, there are simple things parents can do to help their children retain their ability to play flexibly and cooperatively.

Children Are Interested in Each Other from Infancy Onward

Having worked with infants, toddlers and preschool children for many years, I think that children’s inherent ability to notice each other and to care about each other is great, from their early months onward. Very young children may not express themselves in words, but they show that they are highly interested in other children. Through their body language and the expression of feelings, they show acute sensitivity to what happens between themselves and other children. 

Many used to believe that children only do “parallel play,” and don’t really respond to each other fully until they are past 2 years old.  If you look closely, however, you will see that very young children can acknowledge each other, can be thoughtful of each other, and can respond to each other’s initiatives much earlier than two years old, as long as those children have themselves been treated as though they are intelligent, thoughtful people. I remember one 13-month old child in the infant-toddler center I ran who showed a special interest in one of the younger infants there. When her parents took her on a 3-week trip, she called his name every day. She missed him and remembered him often.

Building Empathy and Flexibility in Play

There are two major factors that enhance a child’s ability to show empathy and sensitivity toward other children in play: respect and freedom from canned media input.

Respect

One of the foundations of empathy and connectivity in play is the parent’s ability to honor the child’s intelligence. For instance, with a three-month-old, a parent might say, “OK, Tammy, we’re going to change your diaper now. It will only take a minute,” or, “Tammy, it’s time for me to leave. I’m going to work. I’m going to say good-bye now, and I’ll see you tonight. I love you, I love being your Daddy.” The parent makes the assumption that a 3-month old can make sense of his tone, his words, and the situation. From the moment a parent starts this kind of respectful treatment, his child’s ability to feel trust in others grows. That respect and the confidence it builds promotes language development and allows the child to feel safe enough to show compassion and interest in others.

Part of honoring a child’s intelligence is learning to respond to a child’s crying or tantrums with a willingness to listen. Rather than saying, “Oh dear! What’s the matter now! Can’t you see I have to strap you in the car seat!?” and assuming that the child’s crying is nothing more than a nuisance, the parent would respond with, “I’m here. I know you hate the car seat. I need to buckle you in, but I’m here. You can tell me how hard it is.” The parent would honor the child’s need to express her feelings fully, even if those feelings include wild protest.

We call this Staylistening. It’s very simple, but it’s hard to do. We want to solve our children’s upsets immediately. We don’t want to look like “bad” parents with a “spoiled” child. And if we feel rushed and pressured, we have a hard time slowing down to listen to feeling. Our schedules feel much more important than taking time to honor our child’s upset. However, all good children need to have frequent good cries and healthy tantrums. It’s the way they clear ordinary, everyday bad feelings out of their systems. It’s the way they dissolve the issues that bother them, so they have the emotional capacity to take interest in their parents, their siblings, and in other children. When an adult warmly listens to their big feelings, they make gains in their ability to respond flexibly to other children in play, and to cooperate with the adult more fully in everyday interactions.

TV- and Video-Free Environment

A second important determinant of a child’s empathy and flexibility in play is how much TV and video programming he is exposed to. TV and videos offer free “baby sitting” for harried parents who are overburdened with work and the stresses of parenting. But the breather the parents get is a very mixed blessing indeed.

The price exacted by TV and video programming, even programming “designed for children,” is that it wraps the child’s mind in one-dimensional experience. Children are built to learn by using their bodies and all their senses. They need to experiment, make thousands of necessary mistakes, and try out all the ideas they have in a safe environment. TV fascinates children, but it glues their attention to a flat screen experience that has little to do with real people or real life.

Children see cartoon characters being chased, caught, bopped on the head, or plunged into flaming crashes. They see appealing little creatures threatened by forces much greater than they can handle. And if they watch sports with Daddy, they see highly sexualized adult interaction during the beer commercials or scenes of horror when the latest movie release is advertised. These create scenarios in their minds that can’t be processed, because they are not congruent with the safe, emotionally warm, protective environment their minds need in order to function. The images keep popping back into the child’s consciousness as their minds try to work out what they mean, and their play becomes a repeated effort to crack the meaning of the violence, the threat, the interactions contain no love or respect.

The TV or video experience tends to isolate the child. As he plays, his attention is on the images in his mind, not on the child next to him. When that child doesn’t play according to the script, the child with the mental TV script has big feelings. When a whole roomful of children have TV scripts driving their play, the play is between many separate children each alone with their invisible script, rather than many children creating something together, and flexing with each other’s ideas. 

The eruption of feelings in play is fine, if an adult nearby understands that the upset is rooted in the vivid media experience that’s stuck in the child’s mind. As he cries about the non-cooperation of his playmate, or the fact that his mighty sword (just like the one on the video!) broke, his attachment to those rigid scenarios begins to melt.  He sobs that life isn’t like the video, and with your closeness to support him, he recovers from the isolation that those scenarios enforced. When he is finished, he’ll be able to notice other children much more fully, and will be able to respond to them, rather than to the canned experience that had a hold on his mind.

It may sound radical in the electronic age, but I urge parents to set the policy that they watch TV only when the children are not present, and keep their children away from TV and videos until they are well into elementary school. By that age, children have developed strong interests and talents, built good friendships, and have learned to read and to tell their own stories in writing and art. They are in a much better position to manage the slippery understanding that programs and videos are not the real world. However, even pre-teens can be adversely affected by movies and video games that offer harsh, violent, or highly sexualized content.

TV saps parents’ power to connect, too. When our children see us watching TV, they see the parents they love temporarily unable to engage with them. TV flips off the big switch of connectedness: when it’s on, we lose the feel of our connections to each other. This is hard for young children to understand–why are their beautiful Mommy and adored Daddy so unresponsive? Why are the games or the news or the soap operas more important than anything else?

We parents do need time to take care of ourselves. We do need relief from the pressures and from the emotional currents of the day, which can toss and turn us until we’re exhausted. Sometimes, we seek refuge by turning on the TV and tuning out an unpredictable and demanding world around us.

There are a few decent videos and a few decent TV programs for young children. Look for the real-world based videos, and for Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, and Sesame Street. Beware of Disney fantasies, as these always portray good and evil in ways that are frightening to young children. 

Experiment with turning off the TV, or unplugging it entirely, as did the mother in the story below. Staylisten as your children go through “withdrawal” and regain their capacity to connect with you and play flexibly with each other. Seeing the “before” and “after” difference will help you figure out the policy on TV and video that works best for your family.

Parent Success Story: No TV for a week!

I’ve been sick for over a week, and feeling distraught over stressful events on holiday with my parents and siblings. It was simply a time where I didn’t have much attention for playing with my kids.  Due to my feeling bad and a broken lock on the TV cabinet, they’d gotten to watch a lot of PBS kid’s programs.  And on vacation our host had purchased some really good kids’ videos, and they had spent a lot of time watching them on TV in our hotel room. 

I believe the studies that suggest that TV isn’t really helpful for children because such passivity occurs for the viewer. Yet, I’d let the viewing get out of hand during a difficult few weeks.

So, even though I wasn’t over my cold yet, I had a good Listening Exchange, in which my listening partner reminded me that I’m a good mom, and I had a chance to release some of my many upsets.  I took courage and asked my husband to fix the cabinet lock for me. The next morning when the kids asked for TV I said lightly, “We’re taking a break from TV!”  For a while we just snuggled but within 20 minutes my 4 1/2 -year- old son was sobbing on the floor about not getting to watch TV.  This was interesting since his first response to things unpleasant during the heavy TV period was to get angry and loud.  Now, with no TV, his sadness was instant.

I took heart, held him, and wondered what the day would be like since it had been an unusually long stretch that we’d watched a lot of videos in our house. I wondered what feelings might have been kept in check due to that distraction.

Within minutes the kids initiated a discussion on what there was to do.  And they asked why we were taking a break from TV. I said (as has been discussed between us before) “when we’re watching TV we aren’t really playing, or learning by noticing the world around us. Today we could draw, cut things out of paper, look out the window, or play in the sandbox outside.  We could eat breakfast, play–so MANY things!”

They both decided they wanted BIG teddy bear pancakes for breakfast and they both wanted to help. It was fun stirring the batter together. I realized the weeks with TV had halted their usual cooking-with-me time we’d had before.  At breakfast my son began crying hard again about “pretexts” such as his pancake wasn’t big enough and then I put his milk in the wrong cup.  Previously he had several minutes on the floor crying hard because I chose the wrong pants for him to wear.

I had a few concerns about whether I’d have enough attention for them particularly with my cough and headache–but I was able to kindly say, “I hear you, honey” or even get close for a few moments and put my warm hand on his shoulder. Then my 2 1/2-year-old daughter started in too. She began crying hard because she wanted to “win” at getting to the bathroom door first.

“Oh boy,” I thought, “This is gonna be a day!”  But I managed to just be there and not be impatient. I was just thinking to myself that I had a lot of courage to turn off the TV when I’m sick, when to my surprise, my son broke out in song.  This is what he sang, complete with hand motions and dance steps–a song from his preschool which he told me later he’d never sung all by himself before.  It’s such a beautiful song with these words:

 “Let all the children waken, The sun is in the sky,
Awaken! Awaken!  And hear the Cuckoo cry.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Wake up! Be Happy! Wake up Mr. Sun,
The night has gone, The day has begun! ”

Tears came to my eyes and I was so GLAD that I cared enough about my kids to turn off that TV.  My daughter then stood in front of the mirror and practiced opening one eye while closing the other.  By having time together, feelings and all, rather than virtual time my children had already showed me the interesting ways their minds work.  I wasn’t right at their side all day, either.  Here is a list of a few of the things they spontaneously did together while I cleaned, wrote, answered the phone and made tea.  They made letter shapes out of bead strings, played hide and seek, laughed and hugged, played by the back door, called hello to neighbors…

 Turning off the TV and allowing and supporting their feelings (even if not perfectly) immediately opened up possibilities–and the reality of their creativity, intelligence and hopefulness about the day. (Mine too!)

–a mother in Portland, Oregon

Q. My daughter insists she wants to play with the two girls who live next door but she comes home every time highly emotional and upset. I watch them without her around and the older one is extremely mean to the younger one. I am not sure how to avoid this situation, or what to say to my daughter. I don’t understand why she wants to play with kids who are clearly mean and not willing to play reciprocally. She has reported that other kids at school don’t want to play with her. I think she might be bullying at school, having learned this behavior from the neighborhood kids.

A. Bullying is a highly contagious behavior that transmits immediately from child to child, like the flu. The behavior can start with an adult bullying, threatening, demeaning, or harshly excluding a child. Some parents do this as a matter of course: it is accepted in many families as rightful discipline. But disrespect and intimidation set a behavior example that children absorb in full. When a child has been treated badly, or has witnessed harshness, the behavior enters the child’s experience, but her mind can’t process it. Children simply do not understand meanness or harshness. It always hurts, even when they are not the direct target.

The words said, the facial expressions a child sees, the body language of the aggressor are all recorded in a child’s mind, much like a movie. And whatever feelings the child has—fear, helplessness, shame, confusion, perhaps anger—are stored in the child’s emotional memory, mixed in with this indigestible incident.

Children’s minds don’t naturally accept these wads of unloving experience. The way children try to get help with unloving experience is to display it openly—that is, to say the kind of thing that was said to them, to exclude another child the way they were excluded, to call someone a name they heard called on the playground. They do this when they feel upset, tight with fear, or far from the feel of love.

Being far from the feel of love is an emotional emergency for a child. The lack of a warm connection means that the child can’t be generous toward others, can’t be flexible, and must have things her way and her way only. Children display the worst of what they’ve seen in relationships when it’s been too long since their last cuddle, their last relaxed chuckle. Children need to see the love light in their parents’ eyes, and need to hear interest and consideration in the voices of their teachers, to function well.

The most vital thing you do as a parent is to connect. Children need their parents to take the time to make warm eye contact, to cuddle, to wrestle, to play, to hang out, to be available, and to offer limits when their children’s behavior turns sour. And children need their parents to listen to their feelings when they’re having a sad or a frustrating time of it. But parents are overburdened with work and the pressures that parenting create. So even when they do know something about the importance of connecting with their children, and allowing for emotional moments, they can have a hard time doing it.

When your daughter comes home from playing with the neighbors, she probably has witnessed what we call “off-track behavior.” It has upset her, and she’s signaling to you, with her own version of off-track behavior, that she’s in trouble. So when she gets upset at you, move close, put your arms around her, and tell her that you won’t let her say those things to you. Because you are close, and kind, emotions will heat up. She’ll spray more cutting words around, and she’ll show you her meanest faces. You won’t see her face. You’ll see a reasonable facsimile of what she witnessed next door or on the playground. To help her, accept her outpouring of upset, and guide her gently.

Say things like, “Sweetie, I’m your Mommy. I’m not going to let you talk to me that way. And no matter what you say, I’m going to be here with you.” Or say, “Something hard must have happened to make you say that. What happened, honey?” Don’t expect her to tell you. Your interest and warmth will help her feel the awful emotions that have collected. She will want to get away, will use more harsh language, and she may even start to try to hit or hurt. Gently but firmly keep her from hitting you or hurting you, but do let her have the feelings and the struggles that fuel this behavior.

You might also offer your daughter the reassurance that she is a good person and a good friend, and that anyone who gets to know her will see how special she is. If she “hates” you saying those things, back down a bit, but not entirely. Protest might mean that you’ve struck a chord of hurt, and that she needs this kind of reassurance, though it makes her cry harder and fight harder at the moment.

When she begins to cry or tantrum, you’re on the right track. The tears and the struggling and fighting that come next are every child’s way of offloading feelings of fear. If you want her to move out of these difficult behaviors, you need to allow an outlet for the feelings underneath, in your arms, with you guiding things along. You listen. She spouts and cries and yells and is beside herself. You tell her you care. She spews the things she has heard next door and on the playground, aiming them at you. You keep telling her that you’re going to stay with her while she feels this badly.

She needs you. It’s your attention and caring that are going to help her right her overturned emotional boat, once all the tension it carried has floated away.

We call this Staylistening, and it works beautifully to relieve a child of the meanness she’s been showing. Listening with kindness is the cure for the “bully infection” she caught. Your love replaces the hurtful memories she is processing. Here’s an article that contains a powerful anecdote in which an adult diffuses meanness in a child with Staylistening.

There are also playful ways to respond to a child’s upsets. One kind of response that works really well to diffuse meanness is described in the article, The Vigorous Snuggle.

Those are the things to try with your daughter.

But you don’t want to have to mop up after the neighbor children’s treatment of each other and your daughter every day.  Children who are out of bounds with each other need an adult to stop them, with kindness but full intention that this behavior will stop. If no one at their home is setting effective limits, then I wouldn’t let her go there, or to any unsupervised place to play with them. 

Here’s where you have some choice. You can, instead of letting her go there, invite them over to your place. For them to have half a chance of being good to one another, you’ll need to help all three of them feel connected to you. That probably means playing with all three. Pillow play, hide and seek, or active chasing and romping are the kinds of play that have the best chance of getting laughter (and thus, connection) going between them. If and when one begins to target another (and it doesn’t matter whether it’s your child or sibling-on-sibling harshness), intervene playfully and physically, “Ohhhh! Suzie has a few grumpies today! Hmmm, how do we get those grumpies out!? Shall I pick them out of your hair for you? I bet I can get them all! I FOUND one! Here’s another!” or “Hmmm, how do we get those grumpies out? I think I have to pump your arm up and down a bunch to squirt them out! Here goes!” If you’re strong enough, pick one of them up and turn her upside down and shake her…something like that. Offer immediate, vigorous, playful intervention. See if you can get them laughing, and “showing” you their mean moves, so you’ll tackle them again.

Let these games go on for as long as you can—they’re healing, and they help children find a way to have a good cry, sooner or later. The aggressor child needs some good big cries, to help her get her upsets taken care of.

It may not be workable for you to offer the neighbor children that kind of resource. 

If not, you can try setting limits seriously, but kindly. You might say with your most friendly tone, “Suzy, I can’t let you be hard on Sally here. If you have to be angry, come with me and tell me how you feel,” and bring her with you into another room. Listen to her upset until she feels better.

Or you can say, “Suzy, I can’t let you be hard on Sally here. I’m going to ask you to go back to your house for awhile, and come back when you feel better. We like you so much, and we want you here, but that kind of talk doesn’t work at our house.”

This last is the least workable, because it sends a child who is in her worst emotional state off by herself. She can’t help but feel blamed and shamed. And it may be that if she is sent home, she’ll get more harsh treatment there, fanning the “Mean Girl” flames for another day. But if your resources are at low ebb, it might be all you can do.

You’ll be able to think about these alternatives, and figure out which ones feel like they fit what you can manage, and what the neighbor children might be able to tolerate, too.

Let us know what you figure out!

Patty

Hand in Hand is a parent education non-profit that has been helping families to build the super-protective factor of parent-child connectedness for twenty years.  You can learn more by reading the Listening to Children booklet series by Patty Wipfler or by signing up for our free monthly newsletter, Connecting! . Or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ListenToKids .

My husband and I read to our two daughters on a daily basis. We love sitting down with a big pile of books and sharing the stories. But in our increasingly busy lives the art of actual storytelling seems to be slipping away.

PlainTails recently launched several CD collections that focus on classic storytelling. PlainTails First Tales is geared towards toddlers and preschoolers. “The Gingerbread Boy and Other First Tales” had my daughters’ attention from the minute I put it in our car CD player. They usually spend our commute arguing and tattling on who stuck their tongue out last. For 48 blissful minutes they were lost in the world of The Gingerbread Boy and The Frog Prince.

The stories start out with a few bars of music and then begin. While I had planned on enjoying some quiet time in the front seat, I actually found myself listening to the stories. There are a total of four stories on the disc. I assumed my daughters would be done with it once we heard all four, but they surprised me by asking to listen to them again.

PlainTales Explorers has several CDs with themed stories on each. “Animal Tales: Raccoon, Bear, and Coyte” are fictional tales about these three animals, but include a lot of educational material within the story. “Johnny Appleseed and Other American Legends” is a great way to introduce your child to some classic American stories about famous figures like John Muir and Lewis and Clark.

The CDs are $12.95 each and will really encourage your child to starting spinning their own yarns. It helps them look at the world through different eyes and forces their imaginations to expand as they think about each story.

Q.� � I really want to connect with the kids this Summer when we’re less busy. I would love some relaxed ‘down time’ with just the family but don’t want the kids to complain the whole time that they’re bored. What do you suggest?

What do you remember of the lazy days of summer when you were a child? What were the best times? What did you look forward to all year long? What new experiences did you have that taught you new things about the world, your talents, and yourself?

For parents in two-job and three-job households, the anticipation of the fun of summer is lost in the pressured rush of figuring out child care, camps, and whether or not a vacation is financially possible this year. But it’s important to think, for a moment, about what opportunities summer does bring, both conventional, and unconventional!

There are chances to play more fully

The chance to play all day, every day is wonderful for children. They need those long days and weeks with no pressure to perform, pass tests, or prove themselves, except by their own choosing.� Play is the natural habitat of children. At play, they are using all their minds and their hearts to learn and grow.

We can relax some of the rules and worries we usually live by to let fuller play happen. Having water fights in the yard, playing hide and seek at dusk in the neighborhood, staying at the park until it’s really dark, making a mud hole and some really thick “chocolate” cakes in it, making a tent from a sheet in the back yard as a hideout, spitting watermelon seeds as far as you can—these are the kinds of play that don’t require electricity, don’t require any purchases. They just take imagination and a “Sure, that sounds great!” attitude from a parent.

Any play that includes laughter (and doesn’t include tickling or making fun of someone) is play that helps children grow strong. They gain confidence in the goodness of others as they laugh. They feel like there’s genius in the air when they laugh. And, chuckle by chuckle, they shake loose from their fears and worries.

There are chances to learn in unusual ways

When you have a toddler nearly ready to use the toilet, you can allow him or her to roam the back yard naked, learning to master bodily functions in a place where there can be no “accident.” You can pee with him in the bushes, and laugh together as the leaves dance. When you have a child afraid of the dark, you can sleep outside with her when the moon is full, to see what it’s like to have it be light all night long without a night light. When you have a child afraid of the water at the pool, you can try to stick your toe in, and then run playfully away, “afraid” of the water, so he can laugh while you “borrow” his difficulty for a half hour or so. When you’ve got a child who chews her fingernails, you can grab a puppet, and let the puppet want a nibble, getting some laughter going as your child denies the poor puppet a taste. Summer means that fresh new things can happen, usual boundaries can flex, and parents can relax a bit more around play that one wouldn’t allow when life has to be more structured.

There are chances to learn to help children with the feeling of boredom.�

Some summer days can lose their sparkle. Children feel listless, and say they are bored. You’ll notice that there actually are things they could do, and people they could play with, but they are missing that sense of adventure that can turn a simple piece of paper and a scissors into an experiment with hat making, or airplane crafting, or cut out design. The feeling inside of them is actually the problem, not any lack of things to do.

As far as I can tell, when children say they’re bored, they really are telling you that they don’t feel connected enough to feel hopeful. So rather than become irritated that they don’t appreciate all the things they have, or all the time you’ve spent trying to make them happy, move in close. Lie down with them, or next to them, where they languish. Don’t try to solve the problem of what to do. But do look pleased to be with them. Do cuddle. Do just stay there with them, until they can absorb your presence and your attention. If you want, after several moments of just lying with your child, paying attention but not prodding, you can begin musing about stuff they could do. But be silly in your suggestions. Say things like, “Well, we could start a booger collection and pick all our noses and see how much we can get, and figure out where to store it!” “We could try to give Bowser an airplane ride like you get on my feet!” or “We could hide under the bed when Daddy gets home, and see how long it would take for him to find us.” or “I could lick your toes and see how they taste!” or “I could shake you upside down, and see if that gives you any ideas at all,” or “We could put a cotton ball on the overhead fan, and then turn it on, and see what happens!”�

Any silly idea will do. You’re not trying to solve the problem of what to do. You’re trying to get a bit of laughter going, and then a bit more, and then even more. While children are laughing, the bridge between you and them rebuilds. Your silly ideas, and the release of laughter, jumpstarts their minds. Soon, they know what they want to do again. If not, they become irritated with you, and your presence becomes more and more of a bother. They work themselves into a good cry, which is the other way children clear their minds of emotional sludge, and regain their enthusiasm for life. Stay. Listen to what a dumb day they are having, and how you are a stupid parent because you won’t let them x, y or z. To really get the awful feelings out, they need someone safe as their target. That would be you! You don’t have to believe that this is their full and final evaluation of your parenting. It’s not. It’s just what they need to do to get the tears going strong, so they can come back to you and feel their love for you again when they have finished.

Vacations provide the chance to help children over big behavioral humps.

For children, the best thing about vacations is that their parents aren’t so busy. The prolonged contact (which often starts in the car or on a plane) gives children’s emotional minds a sense of greater safety. This, in turn, translates into children trying to set up chances to heal from the harder times they’ve had. Any times of forced separation, strict boundaries, or tense parent preoccupation with adult issues leave an emotional burden sitting heavily in children’s emotional memory.

When the family comes together and spends extended time, a child’s limbic system, the seat of her emotions, gets the signal that all is better than usual. Feelings that don’t correspond to the closeness, the ease, or the sense of relaxation pop up, ready to be released. Those feelings, held in storage for days or months or years, don’t match the present circumstances. It’s as if the limbic system says, “Hey, we have a wad of xyz upset in here that is old and taking up lots of space. The world isn’t xyz any longer. Let’s heave it on out!” and up comes the upset, right at the time when the parents are trying to relax and enjoy their children.

If you’re not ready for your children’s emotional cleansing sessions, you’ll be irritated for sure. You’ll think, “This ungrateful kid can’t tell that we’ve practically stood on our heads to get her to Jungle World. And now she’s crying because we won’t buy her a second stuffed animal! What have I done wrong to raise such a child!?”�

If you have remembered that, when conditions are extra good, children then cry about when they weren’t wonderful, so they can leave the emotional debris of that past incident behind, you’ll think, “Well, this is a hassle for sure. But here we are, we don’t have anywhere we have to be. We can sit here and listen to her cry about wanting a second stuffed animal. We can just keep saying ‘No,’ and loving her. That’s what she needs, and that’s what we’ve got. Time and love. The rest of the people here we’ll never see again. If they are bothered by us, they can find another gift shop.”

Here’s how it works:

One of our Hand in Hand moms went with her husband and her two sons on vacation in Hawaii. It was a very special trip. The whole family went through a three-hour time change, and this upset sleep and family rhythms for the first day or two. They used Playlistening—wild wrestling and pillowfights in the morning—to help relax her children, who were tense with the changes and the early rising. They also took care to give their boys Special Time—each of them took one son, and did Special Time each day, trading boys back and forth day by day. The boys were also getting unusual treats: special foods, lots of fun in the water, and even a video or two, usually forbidden at home.

By the third day, their older son, who has been an edgy, tightly wound child from the beginning, launched into a big cry. The pretext was small, but the theme was, “You never take me anywhere!” He went on for very long time. His next upset was, “You never buy me anything,” launched right after he’d been allowed to have a new toy. He was clearing out old feelings that the new and relaxed situation had shoved up for healing. The parents guess that, over the next week, he cried a total of 4 or 5 hours, hard! They listened and didn’t hurry him. Yes, it was disappointing at times, but they decided to trust his sense of what he needed to do at any one time. His little brother also had some really big cries, the most obvious of which was one sitting on the jetway on the way home, refusing to walk because the airline attendant had handed his brother a boarding pass after scanning it, but not him.

The parents were feeling a bit badly done to, as they had imagined an idyllic time, full of play and enjoyment, but finding at least one big long cry each day was being chosen by one or the other or both of their sons.

When they returned, they noticed a huge payoff in the behavior of their oldest. He was one who refused to touch a vegetable. He began showing off, eating every vegetable at dinner, and salad for breakfast! He would never clear his plate from the table. “It’s too heavy,” was his usual excuse. After vacation, he has been showing his parents how many plates he can carry at once—he is up to five at a time! He would never allow his mom to help him with spelling or other homework. Any suggestion was rebuffed, or taken as a criticism. After vacation, presto! He was easy to work with, interested in suggestions, open to help. The boys’ mom says that they have a neighbor who gives very few compliments, and who has known her son since infancy. A week after they came home, he said to her, “Your son has become so flexible, so easygoing! I’ve never seen him like this.”

She is sure that what allowed this progress to happen was the close family time, and the Special Time, Playlistening, and Staylistening they did. They hadn’t planned to create an emotional “spa” for their children. But children know when an opportunity is at hand, and they’ll go for healing and a better connection any chance they have.

May your vacation offer such chances. May you remember that your children’s upsets are the beginning of a summer growth spurt, a healthy sign that they love you and trust you to care.

For more stories of how parents use the tools of Parenting by Connection with their children, visit our new blog at http://superprotectivefactor.wordpress.com/

Hand in Hand is a parent education non-profit that has been helping families to build the super-protective factor of parent-child connectedness for twenty years.� You can learn more by reading the Listening to Children booklet series by Patty Wipfler or by signing up for our free monthly newsletter, Connecting! or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ListenToKids� .

My daughter is becoming a pre-teen, and I’m worried! She has big emotional upsets now and then, but is fine with us other times. How do I ride this roller coaster with her, rather than be upset with her for being on it. I know this is a hard time for kids!
�

Dear Parent:

Good for you for thinking ahead! Adolescence is a stage that gets very bad press, which is unfortunate for teens, and for parents as well. It is a growth stage that is full of promise! The perils get much more attention than the excitement of seeing your child grow, learn, and explore her expanding world.

The fact that your daughter has occasional passionate emotional upsets is a good sign, not a bad one. Children who feel safest with their parents are the ones who tend to have open upsets. Your daughter’s explosions are a sign that she is using her instinct to offload emotional tension, whenever she feels overloaded and can’t march forward one more step.

Here are some ideas about building a safe, secure relationship with a child who is entering adolescence. There’s not room here to cover everything, but these ideas may be helpful.

Find a listener! Parenting an adolescent is a big deal!

First, find a good listener (not someone who will judge you, analyze you, tell you what to do, or tell every story about their life that they feel relates to yours). After ten or so years of parenting, you will benefit from a chance to look at the background noise in your mind that will be accompanying you and your child from here on in. The things to talk about are, “What happened to you when you were ten, eleven, and twelve years old (or the exact age of your child)?” “Who did you feel close to then? Did you feel safe and valued?” “What did you love to do? Hate to do?” “How was school for you during these years?” “What did you worry about then? What helped?”

We parents may already have a dim awareness of how heavily our own history tints our experience with our child. Memories of adolescence, both the good and the hard, send up emotional smoke that has a strong effect on our relationships with our children. For instance, if you felt lonely and out of place during those years, then when you look at your child’s unhappy face, you’re sure that your child feels that very same way. This projection from the past blurs your ability to understand your child, who may indeed be unhappy, but for entirely different reasons. Having a chance to talk at length about your own adolescence with someone who will be interested but not judgmental will help you see what emotional landmines were planted in you as you grew. It will help you tiptoe around them as you try to support your fresh new teen.

The second set of things to talk about has to do with your ten- to twelve-year relationship with your child. By now, there are things that go well in that relationship, and interactions that always follow the same unfruitful pattern. With a listener, ask yourself these questions; “What do you remember thinking and feeling when you realized that you would be having this child?” “How was pregnancy? How was birth?” (These are important questions for fathers, too!) Often, dynamics get set up in a relationship between parent and child in the first days or weeks of the baby’s life, if not before. It’s good to remember back to those early days, and to go over your history with your child in detail. We all have memories of times we wish hadn’t happened, and of times we wish we could have had more often. Talk about them. Notice what feelings you have about them. And if your feelings happen to spill out into tears or laughter, that’s wonderful. Your story as a parent is important, and it’s right and good that your feelings are close by. You love. You care. You have worked so hard. Of course you have feelings. Let them show!�

Often, a parents’ patience for and “feel” for his or her teen is vastly improved by talking about the above subjects, and by the emotional release that can come with telling your story to a good listener.

Nurture the good times by offering Special Time
�
The second initiative I think makes a big difference is to begin to do Special Time with your child. Offer an amount of time you can manage, set it up ahead of time, and tell your child that you’ll do whatever he or she wants to do during that time, short of things that are illegal or unsafe. And you’ll need to put monetary restrictions out there on the table. “Yes, we can spend up to $4,” or “No, we won’t have any spending money, but you can figure out what else would be fun to do.” Then, give your delighted and undivided attention to your child. Be pleased with him or her, no matter what. Use whatever activity he or she chooses as a vehicle for your delight in your child. Offer more eye contact, more affection, more energy and more closeness. And do not bring up even one sore subject. Not one!

Set up a tradition of doing Special Time now, so that it can carry through adolescence. Make it a priority. Make it happen. It’s going to be the recurring place that your child can count on for feeling your approval and your efforts to listen and to love. Don’t tie it to doing chores or to getting homework finished: this is a parent/child given, like brushing teeth every day is a given. It helps keep your relationship with your child healthy.

Your pre-teen might want to have you listen to his favorite music. Or to show you his skateboard moves. He might want to teach you a video game, and then win over and over again, while you lose badly. She might want to bake. She might want a backrub. She might want to be taken somewhere special. Let your child experiment with what to do.

This kind of time ensures that your child will see you as a resource, as someone who is interested in them, someone who wants them to have fun. And whatever other difficulties the two of you might face, they’ll be able to count on Special Time, during which you don’t try to tackle those difficulties directly. You’ll see that Special Time can play a big role in resolving difficulties, simple as it is. It gives parent and child a time for things to go well, so that when you make your appointment with your child to discuss her falling grades or her rising cell phone charges, she can remember that you love her. The hard things will go better.

Find the “grooves” for closeness that you and your child have developed.
�
There are things you and your child have done together that were lots of fun in childhood. Maybe it was letting her jump on the beds when she was three and four. Maybe it was making cookies together. Maybe it was playing catch in the park. Maybe it was romping together with the dog.

Never let go of one of these grooves. If you have had the habit of spending some time lying with your child before sleep, don’t stop because he or she has become ten or eleven or twelve years old! School is getting tougher. Adult attention there is becoming more dilute. The chances to play are being stolen away year by year. Keep that cuddling going!

If you have let the children cuddle in bed with you on Saturday mornings, call for them, or wait until they finally wake up, and pile into their beds instead!

If you have a child who loves his back rubbed or scratched, spend time doing this whenever you can.

If you have had sock fights, with “warring” camps on either side of the living room sofa as a family when the children were small, get them started again. Gather all those big-sized socks. Have another family “battle.” Lose, but not too quickly.

If your child now wants to talk with you at midnight on Saturday night, arrange for a nap on Saturday, so you can listen well while he or she pours out thoughts and experiences that are important to hear.

Here’s one mother’s experience of keeping a groove of play and closeness open into teen years.

“My son is 15 now, and he’s much bigger than I am. When he was younger, he used to chase me, and get me down and tickle me. And he just loves that, absolutely loves that. He laughs and laughs. Now, he’ll take a stinky shoe or a stinky sock, and chase me around, or pick his toenails and try to gross me out with what he found. Of course, I am VERY grossed out, playfully! My yelping and running gets him laughing and playing hard. This kind of play is really good, because he’s so big and strong; it’s a way we can have fun without me being too overpowered.”
�

Don’t worry that other families don’t seem to be doing what you are doing. It’s your family. It’s your relationship with your child. And every relationship, like a thumbprint, is different, lovely in its intricacy, and reflective of just you, and just your child. You’re not supposed to be like anyone else! Neither is your child!

And finally,

When your child begins to cry or rage, listen. Don’t argue or teach. Just listen.
�
We’ll say the least about this, but it might be the most important idea. Crying and being angry and upset are signs that your child is doing the healthiest thing possible to get rid of bad feelings and tension. They are our natural safety valve for an overload of feelings. If you’ve set a limit and this is what set your child off, relax and just stick with your limit, or your expectation. Your child will be totally unreasonable for the period of time that he or she is scrubbing out the upset. Then, sweet reason will return, especially if you don’t get angry or insulted in return. Just listen. It’s pain coming out. It’s pain your child doesn’t want to hold in any longer. It’s a messy, hot-button process. But it works to clear your child’s mind and heart of sadness, anger, and distance. If you listen, you’ll be helping in a way that most of us never experienced.

I wish you well in your journey into this exciting stage of parenting! Hold on to your hat, and expect to learn a lot from and with your child.

Hand in Hand is a parent education non-profit that has been helping families to build the super-protective factor of parent-child connectedness for twenty years.� You can learn more by reading the Listening to Children booklet series by Patty Wipfler or by signing up for our free monthly newsletter, Connecting!
�

At Operation Shower, we could not continue to give amazing showers to military moms-to-be whose husbands are currently deployed overseas without your help.

In addition to our annual Mother’s Day unit-wide and multi-unit wide celebrations, we also send individual “Showers in a Box” throughout the year. Here’s how you can help.

When you visit the Operation Shower website at www.operationshower.org there are multiple ways to contribute to the cause. By clicking Contribute on the Operation Shower website you will see a number of different ways you can help.

One option is to donate a specific monetary amount. Dollars that are donated to Operation Shower go directly to the moms we are showering. For our annual Mother’s Day celebrations when we bring groups of moms-to-be for a big baby shower, funds help provide items like food and refreshments. Funds are also used to purchase things like boxes, tape, packing material, to pay for shipping individual boxes throughout the year, and to buy gifts like toys, blankets and books that help “round out” each shower in a box to make it unique and special.

Another option on the Operation Shower website is to earmark your donation to go toward a specific type of purchase. For instance, you can choose to give $20 towards baby bath items or $25 to buy a pair of Vincent Shoes.

Finally, we love for people to help by hosting a fundraiser to help raise money or collect product. Please contact me at kris @ cleverparents (dot) com to learn more!

To learn more about corporate sponsorships, please contact me at kris @ cleverparents (dot) com.

CLAYTON, MO (April 24, 2009) Sixty-five new moms and moms-to-be from four branches of the military in 15 states across the nation will be showered with gifts between now and Mother’s Day as a part of the latest efforts of Operation Shower. Operation Shower, a non-profit organization run by two stay-at-home moms, produces and coordinates baby showers for pregnant and expecting military personnel and their families.

This Mother’s Day, Operation Shower has teamed up with Cloud B and thirty-three more sponsors to host green baby showers for expectant women whose husbands are currently deployed overseas. Thanks to many generous donations, Operation Shower will put smiles on 65 women’s faces when they open their special eco-friendly “Showers in a Box” containing gifts and surprises valued at several hundred dollars each; all donated by generous companies and people from across the nation.

“Becoming a parent is challenging enough when you have the hands-on support of your spouse, friends and family, doing that with a husband fighting in a war is something you can’t imagine unless you are in those shoes,” said Operation Shower co-founder Lena Morrissey.

“Putting on these showers is one small way that we hope gives the moms a special memory and shows our support for the sacrifices these dedicated women and their families make for our country.” added Operation Shower co-founder Kris Jackson.

Military moms-to-be in Fort Hood, Texas and Scott Air Force Base, Illinois will be celebrated at unit-wide and multi-unit eco-friendly baby showers on May 2nd and May 9th respectively. In addition to all of the amazing “green” gifts the moms will receive, Operation Shower is making sure the showers are as green as possible by using recycled paper goods and celebrating with real dishes, flatware, glasses and linens; creating centerpieces and décor items from gifts that will be used as giveaways; and sending keepsake invitations from Tiny Prints on recycled cardstock. Even the boxes and limited packaging materials for each of the boxes used recycled material and Operation Shower will be planting a tree via the Arbor Foundation in every baby’s honor.

Each mom will receive stylish, eco-friendly items from shower sponsor Cloud B as well as wonderful products and services from the following sponsors: Baby Blend Tees, Care.com, Childish Clothing, Cozy Cocoon, Flower Duet, Hug A Monkey, ImagiPLAY, Julian & Co, Kirby Ink, Moms on Call, MyBabyPlace, PeaceLoveMom, Resa Design, Sage Creek Organics, Sprig Toys, Sofia Bean, The Safe Sippy, The Ultimate Green Store, Tiny Tales and Vincent Shoes.

“Cloud B is excited to participate with Operation Shower to help provide these wonderful ladies with a baby shower that they deserve. Our products are designed to help children and their parents get a better night’s rest, and we are delighted to make bed time routines more relaxing and easier for these families. Cloud B truly appreciates the sacrifice that these men and women have made to serve our country, and we hope our contribution will help bring extra joy to this happy occasion,” says Nader Hamda, co-founder and COO of Cloud B.

Surprises will continue at the showers when the moms have the chance to win amazing raffle items from Anka, Angela Breckenridge Photography, City Sprouts, Jane Marvel, lillebaby and Micralite. W.N. Epstein & CO. donated shipping services for the showers and media sponsors include Clever Parents, Integrity, Lena’s Notebook, Stem, teensygreen and The Cradle.

May 2nd will be even more meaningful for the founders of Operation Shower. After showering more than 200 military moms-to-be since 2007, Lena Morrissey and Kris Jackson will meet for the first time at Fort Hood, Texas.

ABOUT OPERATION SHOWER: Operation Shower is a non-profit organization (pending 501(c)(3) status) created by the founders of Lena’s Notebook (www.lenasnotebook.com) and Clever Parents (www.cleverparents.com), two websites focused on parents and parenting, to recognize and honor the sacrifices military families make by producing and coordinating baby showers for pregnant and expecting military personnel and their families. For more information about the showers and to donate, visit the Operation Shower website at www.operationshower.org. In addition to the unit and multi-unit wide showers given in honor of Mother’s Day, Operation Shower sends “showers in a box” to expecting military wives throughout the year. Moms-to-be can submit themselves or be nominated to receive a box online at www.operationshower.org.

ABOUT CLOUD B: Cloud B is dedicated to helping children of all ages sleep better. Our philosophy is that every child deserves a sound night’s sleep for healthy development, Cloud B has become a trusted name with parents worldwide. Our award-winning products are developed in consultation with an Advisory Board of pediatricians and specialists with a single focus: to achieve a better, safer sleep for your child. Our devotion to innovation is matched by our passion for design and style. Cloud B uses only the finest materials to ensure the quality and elegance that your child deserves. Cloud B is also dedicated to providing less fortunate children the quality sleep they deserve through product donations and financial contributions to charitable organizations nationwide.� (www.cloudb.com)

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It seems everywhere you turn these days, someone or something is “Going Green.” Sure, some may say it’s just a huge trend or the latest fad, but I ask, how can becoming more conscious of the impact on the environment be anything but good? Consuming less and reusing more sounds like a win for everyone!

With the increase in awareness it only makes sense that this new found sense of responsibility would make its way into our not only our daily lives but our special occasions as well. Throwing an Eco-Conscious Baby Shower doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice style or serve your guests wheat grass punch. There are a lot of ways that you can make
your next Shower Baby-, Guest- and Earth-friendly.

Décor and Food

• Make sure your décor items can do double duty. For example, display unwrapped gifts in creative ways for centerpieces.
• Use locally-grown flowers from your farmer’s market.
• Shop the farmer’s market or organic aisles at the grocery store for your food. If using a caterer, try to use one that does the same.

No Paper Goods

• If an online invitation is out of the question, then look for invitations printed on recycled card stock.
• Use linen napkins and real dishes. If you don’t have enough of either, check out local rental companies. Plain white dishes and napkins are extremely affordable to rent.
• Don’t be afraid to try local discount or dollar stores either. A simple set of plain white or clear dishes and napkins will go with any theme and is something you can use over and over.
• Want to do it without spending money? Call your friends and see what fun, mix and match combo you can come up with for a fun and festive look.

Favors
Give favors that will actually be used by the guests later.

• A flower in a simple bud vase is something that will make your table look great and just as easily brighten up a desk or kitchen window at
  your guests’ home.
• Hang a reusable shopping bag on the back of each chair as a favor.
• In lieu of favors, go to the Arbor Foundation or another online source and plant a tree in each guests’ name.

Gifts

• There are hundreds of amazing eco-friendly products for baby on the market now. With just a little research you can find products that
  will surely elicit the requisite “oooooo’s and “awwwww’s” from your guests.
• Think of new ways to wrap presents. Use baby blankets or towels in lieu of wrapping paper. Present gifts in reusable shopping bags in
  lieu of paper gift bags.
• If you just can’t imagine the mom not having any traditional presents to unwrap, then use some of the many adorable recycled gift wraps on
  the market and be sure to recycle the wrap when the party is over.

Finally, designate a bin for recycling any gift wrap or paper goods other guests may bring.

Most importantly, be creative! Look at throwing an Eco-Conscious event as a fun challenge to see how many ways you can reuse and
re-purpose things you already own. When you see how little waste you have after the event, you’ll be so glad you did.

Corporate downsizing, a sluggish economy and high unemployment has left many people fearful of the future as they struggle to provide for their families. As a result, job fairs are experiencing a record number of attendees and unemployment agencies are being inundated with new applicants daily. In an attempt to obtain employment, today’s job seekers want to know what types of skills are needed and which skills really pay off in the long run. Many are looking to reinvent themselves and retool their skills.

Stopping to ask, “What do I need to learn to fit into today’s job market?” and then seek training to develop the necessary skills are important steps to gainful employment. The concept of reinventing oneself and learning new skills is vital for obtaining employment.

Consider for a moment how the concept of reinventing oneself can also be applied to parenting. Learning new parenting skills is vital to the role of raising responsible children in today’s world. Keep the following suggestions in the forefront of your mind as you look to retool your parenting.

1. Stop parenting the way you were parented. Most parents use similar techniques and strategies to those their parents used with them. “Well my parents did it this way with me and I’m fine,” some parents offer as an excuse to keep from learning alternate ways of managing children’s behavior. Much has changed in our world from when we were growing up as children. Be open to seeing new ways to approach your important role as a parent.

2. Change yourself first. When your child misbehaves, ask yourself, “What is it that I need to know?” “How am I contributing to this behavior?” “What could I do differently that would help my child?” Seek first to understand the situation, the contributing factors, and how you can change yourself. You may discover that you need to add a few tools to your parenting tool box.

3. Reinvent yourself by learning from others. Take parenting classes. Read parenting books. Consult parenting experts. Actively seek information and ideas from the many ways it is provided today. One can find parenting techniques on YouTube under parent professor, in books stores, or by attending workshops in your community.

4. Increase the number of tools in your parenting tool box. When you develop a well-stocked parenting tool box, you increase the likelihood that you will match the most effective tool with the appropriate situation. The more you learn the more options you have when a difficult behavior arises.

5. Learn what best fits your children. Some children are visual learners, some are auditory learners and some are more tactile in their learning. When your child behaves in a way that calls for your correction and guidance, stop to ask yourself what would be the best way to deliver the guidance. Choose the method that fits their learning style and the odds that your child will learn more efficiently increases.

6. Seek to teach and guide, not punish and shame. Your role as a parent is to help your children learn how to manage their own behavior. When you shame, threaten and punish your children, ask yourself, “What is my behavior teaching my children?” Consider that the main lesson you are teaching them is that shame, threatening or physical force is an appropriate way to get what you want in this world. Is that the lesson you want your children to learn?

7. Remember “how” you are, is as important as “what” you do. How you apply a parenting technique is as important as the technique you choose. Take a moment right now to create a vision of yourself being the best parent you have always wanted to be. The next time you implement a parenting strategy, ask yourself, “Is this strategy helping me become that best parent I can be?” If the answer is “No”, choose a different strategy.

In response to the many new challenges that children present today, reinvent yourself. Eliminate the controlling, manipulating strategies of the past. Change the way you handle irritating, annoying, frustrating behavior. Discover what’s best for raising confident, caring children in a world of economic instability. Be certain about your children’s behavioral and emotional future. Retool your parenting.

Military Moms-to-Be Receive Baby Showers ‘In a Box’

Imagine becoming a parent while your spouse is overseas fighting in a war. The emotions of giving birth are life-changing and with a spouse deployed overseas, those feelings have an additional component that can’t be imagined unless you are in that situation.

In celebration of Mother’s Day, Operation Shower has partnered with Cloud B to honor moms-to-be with their first ever eco-friendly baby shower. On May 2nd and May 9th, 60 deserving moms-to-be whose husbands are deployed overseas will be showered with gifts donated by generous companies and people across the nation.

Military moms-to-be in Fort Hood, Texas and at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois will be celebrated in style – eco-friendly style, that is – with fabulous gifts from many people and companies. The showers are possible in great part because of generous product sponsors, including Cloud B and the following:

Anka
Baby Blend Tees
Childish
Cozy Cocoon
Flower Duet
ImagiPLAY
Jane Marvel
lillebaby
Micralite
Kirby Ink
The Safe Sippy
Sage Creek Organics
Sofia Bean
Sprig Toys
The Ultimate Green Store
Vincent Shoes

WN Epstein is the official shipping sponsor for Operation Shower and media sponsors include Clever Parents, Lena’s Notebook, Integrity, Stem and The Cradle.

Donations are still needed to make the boxes complete. To contribute, please visit the Operation Shower website at www.operationshower.org.

Q. My 6-year-old daughter seems to be suffering from performance anxiety and perfectionism not only at school but overall in her life. I’d love to get some ideas and/or resources for help with this issue. Specifically what I notice is that my daughter will start on a homework activity (for example, a math word problem) and get into an emotional frenzy such that she cannot even read the actual word problem (which she is easily capable of doing). This problem is not just limited to schoolwork, but affects every area of my daughter’s life.
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Dear Thoughtful Mother:

Yes, it looks like feelings have trapped your little girl into a box that is getting tighter and tighter for her. Good for you for reaching out for some ideas and help!�

One way to look at her fear of making mistakes is to see it as a symptom of some knot of fear that she carries into every situation. If you just address the symptom—the difficulty with math, for instance—the things you do will be less effective than if you address this as a situation that calls for your help with her fears in general.

One way to help children gain confidence in a global way is to play hard with them, to play rambunctiously. Children’s strength and confidence is built with pillow fights, chasing through the house, horseback rides that end with you bucking her (carefully, but not too carefully) off onto a soft carpet, contests in which she jumps on the bed or the sofa while you try (but mostly fail) to catch her feet, and putting her on your back and giving her bouncy rides around the house.� During this kind of play, watch carefully to see what lets her laugh, and do more of that, working to get as many giggles as you can. Take the less powerful, less capable role in the play. Be goofy, try to catch her but trip and fall, offer kisses and chase her all over to land just one. You don’t need much of an excuse to play this way. Just start, notice the moments when laughter breaks through, and do more of whatever created that opening.

Try to sustain this kind of play, which we call Playlistening.� Be watchful not to play so forcefully that you overwhelm and frighten her, but do challenge her every now and again in the middle of play she knows she can handle. You don’t want her to feel that she’s in danger of being defeated. Always give her a chance to rise again to “get’ you back. Her laughter helps her to offload fear and build a sense of resilience. When she gets hurt (minor bumps may bring floods of tears or anger), just move in and listen. Let her cry passionately for as long as she needs to. These hearty cries, with your support, are part of what’s necessary to help her move from easily feeling overwhelmed by small tasks toward feeling her power even when she’s challenged.

Vigorous Playlistening sets the stage for this next piece of work, which will address her fear of making mistakes more directly.

I’ll now describe the Staylistening tool for helping her with her fear. You’ve told her, probably many times by now, that mistakes are OK, and are part of the learning process. That’s important, but it’s a step you can now consider “done.” Your verbal guidance has done as much as it can. Concepts don’t help us when we’re upset. When her “I’m overwhelmed” feelings come up, they blot out the good things you’ve tried to convey. You can’t teach her anything during those moments. What you can do is pay attention and offer your caring while she is overcome by the feelings she has and offloads them in tears and tantrums.�

So, let’s imagine that she’s become flustered over a word problem in math. You say, “I’ll help you while you try the word problem again,” with a light and encouraging tone. She says she doesn’t want to, and feelings arise. Move in, get close, and say, “Well, I’ll help you. Let’s take a look at it.” Then she gets angry and says she doesn’t want to. Stay close. Listen. Let her become engulfed in feelings. Be as warm and confident as you can be, under the circumstances. When her crying or tantrum slows down, say, “I think you can probably do it. Let’s take another look.” Let her blow up. Let her cry. Let her be beyond reason. Let her be angry with you. Let her say horrible things about you and school and anything else that’s on her mind. Listen. Your attention is a powerful antidote to the feeling she is battling.

Keep putting forward the idea that she can do it. That you will stay until she is ready to try again. That it will be good to try again. That she’ll figure it out. But don’t talk a lot. Just say a few words now and then while she rages or cries. Keep her there, where she is positioned to try again. Don’t insist that she try again within any particular timeframe. The expression of feelings is healing, and it will take whatever time it takes. There’s no rush. She’s in the middle of an emotional bad dream, and her perception is warped by the bad feelings as they make their exit. When she has worked through a chunk, she’ll be able to think and try again.

This is the healing process. This is discouragement melting. This is frustration draining away. This is, “I can’t do it! I’m no good!” washing out of her. Don’t try to reason. don’t try to convince her that she’s smart. Instead, Listen till she feels better–it may be a long time. But she will feel better when she’s done, if you can listen until she is done.

So, any time she goes into an upset, about math or anything else, get close, and offer very mild encouragement. If she says, “I hate math! I’m terrible at it,” say something like, “That can change, sweetie. It’s not always going to feel this way, or, “Honey, I think you probably can do this.” (Not “Oh, sweetie, you are SUCH a smart girl! Of COURSE you can!”) Just indicate mildly that things might turn out OK in the end, and that she’s not alone–you’re with her while she feels this badly. You’ll be her anchor through some world-class emotional episodes. And she’ll move this fear out of her way.� You can see how a little bit of this process worked for one father we know in our new blog.

A word about praise here: the effect of constant praise for children’s efforts and the work they produce is not entirely helpful. What actually is helpful for our children is those moments when they feel good about what they’ve done. Our feelings about their work are important, but secondary. The most powerful motivation to learn is a child’s own sense of accomplishment and mastery. And they “get it” when we’re pleased, even without words of praise. They can hear delight in our voices, and see it on our faces. If we can get enough listening time from another parent so that our tension has an outlet, then we can feel and show our genuine delight, so our children also feel “seen” in their accomplishments.

As Alfie Kohn points out, we want children to work for their own inner satisfaction, rather than to try hard to earn our praise. Special Time is a good tool for helping children feel that inner satisfaction, as well as our pleasure in them. During Special Time, we pay pleased attention to them, and they do what they love to do. This keeps children aware of their own feelings, and able to access our delight in them by asking for Special Time. They master things because it feels good to master things. We want to notice them, acknowledge them, but not use praise as part of a “reward system.”� Connection with us, which will foster their natural drive toward mastery, is all they need.

I hope this is helpful to you. We’d love to hear what you try, and how it goes on our discussion group. It may sound like a lot of work, but it happens only one minute at a time, and the rewards last a lifetime!

Yours,

Patty
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Hand in Hand is a parent education non-profit that has been helping families to build the super-protective factor of parent-child connectedness for twenty years.� You can learn more by reading the Listening to Children booklet series by Patty Wipfler or by signing up for our free monthly newsletter, Connecting!

Someone recently mumbled something to me about being scared to hit 40. “Are you kidding me?” I answered. “40’s the best age yet.” I can say this because I’m, well, how do I put this gently–past 40. And I’m not ashamed to admit it. So maybe some of you under-40’s right now are raising your brows questionably, or secretly thinking I’m lying to the world as well as to myself. Or saying, “THAT chic just wishes she had her bikini-bod back like I do.” But nope, I’m sticking to my story. (Plus, in my mind at least, I don’t look that bad in a bikini). I like being 40-something, love it actually, and amazingly, so do all the other 40-something year-old women (and men) I’ve questioned.

Here’s why. It’s my assessment that precisely on the day you hit 40, all the knowledge you’ve been gathering for the past 39 years suddenly comes to the forefront of your brain and starts making itself useful. I firmly believe that on your 40th birthday, you sit down in the middle of your third piece of birthday cake (yes, third. It is your day) and you realize that finally, FINALLY, you’re free. Everything just clicks. You no longer have to compete with all the other women in the world. You no longer have to pull out all the stops to at least somewhat resemble a Victoria’s Secret model. This is the day you let out that never-ending sigh of relief and allow yourself to be simply…(drumroll, please)…you.

And it’s awesome. Because what a You you are.

You can dress how you want, say what you want, do what you want, and no one can stop you. You’re 40 for pete’s sake! With age, comes wisdom, right? Of course it does. And, “age” doesn’t have to be 90, it just has to have seen enough of the world to know the rules and know when to break them. See? 40. Old enough to have gathered the wisdom, young enough to enjoy it.

The theme of the Forties decade is Freedom. It’s like when you grew up and left home for the first time, burst into the world to make your way, failed miserably in your first job interview, but then sailed through your next interview because you’d already made all the mistakes in the first one. You’ve learned. You’ve been there. You’ve dealt with that personality type before or dated that kind of man before or had to deal with crap like that before. And now, you’re with it, you’re savvy, you’re wise. And you’re better. You’re better than all that, and basically, you’re just better. Not to mention, thanks to all the antioxidants out there, you’re lookin’ good to boot!

So, the next time I hear someone complain about being 40, maybe I’ll correct them, or maybe I’ll roll my eyes and groan, or maybe (probably) I’ll go skipping off with my new attitude and not care what anyone thinks, and ponder all the knowledge I gained with every moment of my 40-plus years. And then, when I’m done skipping and pondering, I may even go don my bikini.

Children with autism require structure.� Based on the DSM-IV (Diagnostic Statistical Manual) criteria, children with autism require several things in order to be successful in an environment.�

They require:

• � Physical Structure�
• � Behavioral Consistency
• � Visual Organization
• � Visual Supports
• � Concrete Teaching Expectations
• � Way to Understand Social Environment
• � Clear, Simple Communication

Let me give you 5 key things to keep in mind as you begin to structure an environment for children with autism.� Each of these is based not only on the diagnostic criteria but also current researched best practice.

1.� � � � � Visual Supports are vital.� Even though the children may be verbal, they also require visuals in order to make sense of the environmental expectations.� These visuals may be in the form of photos, picture symbols or words.� Supports may be needed as explanations of events, of academic tasks, of behavioral requirement or just as reminders.�
(example:� place a visual picture/symbol/photo next to the posted behavioral expectations of the classroom.� This will enhance understanding)
2.� � � � � The environment should be set up so that it makes sense to the children.� Children on the spectrum do not understand the environment as do typical children.� So make sure the layout of the setting helps to give the children clues to the expectations of the setting.
(example: create a work area, leisure area, group area, etc.� Include visuals of the expectations in each of the areas)
3.� � � � � Structure the environmental setting to encourage independence.� Do not do tasks for the children that they can do for themselves.� Structure the environment to the point that the children are independent then lessen the structure as they obtain mastery.
(example: label classroom materials so that the children can access the materials independently)
4.� � � � � Minimize visual clutter.� Stand at the door of the room and look around.� Does the room appear cluttered?� The room should appear uncluttered and visually organized.� Lessen the decoration in the classroom and make better use of visuals primarily for the purpose of teaching.�
(example:� use solid color fabric to cover up visual clutter on bookcases.)
5.� � � � � Encourage communication of some kind. Even though the child is nonverbal, encourage the use of sign language, picture symbol exchange or even an augmentative communication device.� Whatever the form of communication, it should be used in all settings so to promote generalization and independence.
(example: use a picture symbol wallet with children for requesting needs or desires)
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The old parenting paradigm calls on the parent to control the child. Be in charge. Make the decisions. Set the rules. Enforce those rules. Exercise your rightful parenting authority or your children will become unruly, undisciplined, and out of control.

But hold on. What if it isn’t so? What if a controlling parenting style breeds resistance, resentment, and reluctance? What if it creates defiance or the opposite, blind obedience? What if it fails to produce children who think for themselves, develop a healthy inner-authority, and become decisionally literate?

The power struggles or meek compliance resulting from a heavy parenting control style often breed strained relationships, unempowered children, and frustrated parents. If you are not enamored with the results of attempting to control your children, you might want to examine a shared control style that often leaves the parent with more control than they had to begin with. Consider the art of allowing.

Allow your children by…

1. Offering controlled choices. “You can pick the sweatshirt with the hood or the heavy sweater. You decide.” “We are having milk for dinner. Would you like to choose the pink cup or the green one? The parent controls the choice and the child is allowed to have some control over his own life.

2. Instigate opportunities for consensus seeking. Allow children to have input on where you go on vacation, how you divide household chores or when the family participates in study time. By having some say they learn to use their voice to help create the life they desire.

3. Eliminate commands. “Turn the TV off,” can be replaced with “It’s time for bed.” That change of language allows the child to make the choice to turn off the TV. “I am being bothered by the noise in the other room,” is less commanding than, “Quiet down.” “I am being bothered by the noise in the other room,” communicates without words, “I think you are smart enough to figure out what to do.” It allows the child to come up with an appropriate response.

4. Ask questions. “Why do you think that?” “How are you going to handle that?” “What do you think you will do next time?” These types of questions allow the child to do the thinking.

5. Show empathy and compassion. Resist running in immediately with solutions. Stop offering unsolicited advice. Show compassion first by leading with empathy. “That must really be frustrating,” allows the child to hear your concern and empathy and prevents you from saying, ‘You need to tell your teacher you need help.” “What a shame. That’s terrible, communicates the empathy that allows the child to feel the feeling rather that having to consider your solution to their problem.

6. Don’t care. Stop caring if your child completes her homework or not. If she chooses not to do it at school then she is choosing to do it on Saturday. Allow her to care whether or not she has a free Saturday. If you do all the caring she doesn’t have to.

7. See it all as perfect. If she does her work at school, it is perfect. She is learning to budget her time and take care of her own responsibilities. If she doesn’t do it at school, it is still perfect. It is the perfect time to help her appreciate the cause and effect relationship that exists in your home. Allow her to be the cause of how she spends her Saturday.

8. Let the consequence do the teaching. If you son forgets to pack his tooth guard in his equipment bag and doesn’t have it for Karate, allow him to experience the consequences of his actions. Do not buy a new one. Do not drive him home to get it. Do not rescue him. Allow him, without lecture or reprimand, to feel the results of his actions. him to make the connection himself.

9. Speak Softly. When you volume is turned up, yelling or shouting, your child focuses on your anger rather than on your words. They look at your behavior rather than at their own. Allow them to look within by taking the focus away from yourself by speaking softly.

10. Allow your child to learn her own lesson. If the lesson does not involve a health or safety issue assume that she is the best judge of what she needs to learn. You may want her to do her chores in a timely fashion. She may decide she needs to learn what happens when she ignores her chores. You may think she needs to learn how to create a report on Switzerland. She may know she’ll benefit more from learning what happens when she turns her report in late. Trust you child to attract the appropriate lesson and allow her to experience it.

Any force or control produces a counter force. Reduce power struggles, lessen resistance, and build mutual respect by stepping out of the need to control. Use the ideas above to allow yourself to allow your children to take greater control of their lives. It will help them grow toward becoming responsible, empowered, and self-reliant young adults.

While cutting costs and spending less these days is a prudent action, there is one thing that you never need to skimp on – your family. Family is a constant in any economic environment, to be enjoyed and loved for rich or poor. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on lavish vacations or expensive evenings out to enjoy your family time together. Here are 4 creative ways to spend quality time with those closest to you without spending a dime:

Movies – Instead of trekking the whole family out to the latest release in the theatres, try scrounging up your old videos. Just because a movie was made more than a decade ago, doesn’t mean the next generation can’t enjoy it just as much as you did. Recently, I came across a bin of old videos and once I dusted off the VCR, our family re-enjoyed such classics as Back to the Future, Superman and ET.

Family Game Night – If you have a pack of playing cards, you have an endless supply of games at your disposal. Teach your kids some games you used to play as a kid or play their favorites such as Old Maid and Crazy Eights. Several families boast about their family Poker nights with kids as young as four! Dig out some old board games that you’ve been too busy to play. Make a night of it with popcorn and smoothies. Family game night is one of my kids most treasured events.

Make your own Game – Put a further twist on your game playing and let your kids make up their own game. Grab some poster board, colored paper, markers, tape, glue and dice and just let them go. This will keep them busy for hours and then you have the fun of all sitting down and experiencing this masterpiece together.

Dance Party – This is a family treat for all ages. Get out the old records or just turn on the radio, clear a space and dance. My kids and I enjoy the 80s station for our dance party. Have a contest on the craziest dance move, the sillier the better. What fun your kids will have watching mom and dad dancing letting loose and goofy!

Feeding your 12-24 month old

Babies are introduced to solid foods at about six months old, and from this time to about 24 months old, they will learn plenty about food, and it goes well beyond taste.

First it is just swallowing solid foods, then lumps, picking up pieces, chewing (or gumming) and much more. It takes a great amount of coordination, muscle development and motor skills for your baby to master these tasks. The best approach is to take things slowly and to wait for your baby to give you signals he or she is ready. There is no need to rush this development process.

While babies are people, they are not little adults. Their dietary requirements are different than adults, and different than toddlers, preschoolers and adolescents. Unless your baby’s diet is under the supervision of a healthcare professional, it is not necessary to count calories, or choose low-fat and non-fat foods.

In the past three decades, the number of overweight two year olds has doubled. Hurried lifestyles, the abundance of processed foods, and the lack of focus by parents is creating unhealthy two year olds with poor eating habits and cheeks that are much too chubby. These statistics are alarming and should concern all parents. When your baby reaches 12 months old, you need to focus on some basic nutritional aspects.

Breastfeeding/Formula/Milk:

The fat and calcium found in breastmilk, formula and milk are essential for bone growth and brain development. While the requirement for fat reduces dramatically after two years old, the calcium requirement gradually increases through adolescence.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding your baby to 12 months old and the World Health Organization recommends to two years old. If you decide to wean your baby at 12 months old, you should wean them to 16-24 ounces of whole milk (preferably in a cup) per day. If you wean your child at two years old, you wean them to 16 ounces of low fat or nonfat milk (in a cup) per day. If your child is not being introduced to dairy products, it is very important that you introduce calcium-rich foods that will satisfy their calcium requirements.

If you were unable to or decided not to breastfeed, you should switch from formula to 16 to 24 ounces of whole milk per day when your child is 12 months old. If you have not already done so, this is also a good to transition from a bottle to a cup. At two years old, you switch from whole milk products to 16 ounces of low fat or nonfat milk products per day.

Unless recommended by a healthcare professional, toddler formulas and toddler nutrition drinks are not necessary. Many of these drinks contain large amounts of fat and sugar and are high in calories.

Serving sizes are small for toddlers

Over the past 20 years restaurants and food companies have been increasing the amount of food that is contained in a serving. These larger serving sizes are considered to a contributing factor to the rise in obesity. Interestingly, children eat more if the size of the portion on their plate in larger.

In most cases, a serving size for a child under two years old is one ounce — about 2 tablespoons. Every day, your baby should eat two to four servings each of fruits and vegetables and two to three servings each of proteins (beans, eggs, lean meat, fish) and grains (preferably whole grain brown rice, whole wheat bread and pasta, oatmeal).

Meal frequency

Your little baby has a very small tummy and a fluctuating appetite, so The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends small, frequent meals over fewer larger ones. Your baby should be fed four to six “mini meals” per day. Each meal should include a fruit or a vegetable and you may want to vary proteins and grains throughout the day. Following the mini-meal concept, means that you need to pay just as much attention to offering well-balanced nutritious snacks as you do the traditional meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Variety

As your toddler begins eating “grown up” food, they might also develop “grown up” eating habits – like too much junk food and too few vegetables. It is important to pay attention to eating patterns, and to remember that the ultimate key to a balanced diet is variety. Different foods provide different nutrients. In order to ensure your child is getting all of the nutrients he needs to grow, he has to eat a good variety of foods.

Everyday, your baby should eat vegetables, fruits, whole grains (i.e. whole-wheat bread pasta, brown rice, oatmeal), proteins (i.e. beans, fish, lean meats), and dairy products. When your child is 2 years old, you should switch dairy products to low-fat or nonfat varieties. According the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) the average 2 year old should be eating the following amounts:

Vegetables 8 ounces
Fruits 8 Ounces
Grains 3 ounces
Proteins 2 ounces
Dairy 16 ounces milk/yogurt or
4 ounces cheese

To sum it all up a healthy approach to feeding your toddlers is to offer small servings, many choices, frequently throughout the day.

Here are few time saving tips for healthy homemade meals:

1. Make meals in large quantities, in advance, and freeze them ice cube trays or small plastic containers. When it’s time for a meal, simply defrost a few food cubes or a small container. Some toddler meals that freeze well are:
a. Whole wheat macaroni and cheese with tomatoes and peas
b. Ground beef (or firm tofu), spaghetti sauce and whole wheat elbow macaroni
c. Burrito filling made from beans and mild enchilada sauce. Defrost a roll up in a flour tortilla.
d. Hash brown potatoes with chopped broccoli or spinach. Defrost and serve with melted cheese on top.
2. Have no-hassle healthy snacks on hand at all times.
a. Frozen veggies (peas, carrots, green beans) – a small handfuls cooks up quickly
b. Fresh fruits (blueberries, peaches, strawberries, grapes) – avoid hard fruits (unless they are cooked), and cut the fruits into small pieces, grapes should be quartered.
c. Whole grain cereals (puffed wheat, cheerios)
d. Rice cakes and whole grain crackers
e. Yogurt
f. Semi-hard cheeses (cheddar, Jack, Provolone) cut into cubes of thin slices
3. Bake healthy foods for your family. Most baked goods freeze great and defrost quickly. Freezing some of your homemade treats
a. Make cookies with real fruit or fruit juice. Do not make large cookies, keep them small. For toddlers, two cookies are much better than one, not matter what the size.
b. Add shredded carrots or zucchini, or pureed pumpkin to muffins and sweet breads. Consider buying a mini muffin pan or slice the quick bread loaf in half longwise and then slice it into pieces.
c. Bake bread with whole-wheat flour.

Q. What’s the Problem with Spanking?

In most Western cultures, there’s a longstanding history of permission to spank children. Many of our parents spanked. And most of us hold the perspective that our parents were doing their very best to love us. So whether to spank children or not is a confusing issue—if we turned out OK, and our parents spanked us, then isn’t spanking an acceptable, even desirable way to make sure that children do what’s right?

It seems to me that there are three core questions to ask about spanking. The first is the broader question, what’s the long term effect of spanking on children? The second is, does physical punishment really achieve the goal of controlling a child’s behavior in the moment? And there’s a third important question, seldom asked but certainly relevant and a good place for us to begin: what does spanking do to us as parents?

What does spanking do to the parent?

Most parents feel angry when they spank. An angry person is determined to assert control in a situation, and doing something physical feels like it will bring some relief. So spanking a child may make a parent feel temporarily righteous, back in control, vindicated, and/or satisfied that he did not allow himself to be victimized.

However, there are very few parents who have gazed at their newborn child and thought, “I can hardly wait until I can spank my beautiful daughter!” or “When he gets a little older, it will be so good to have the chance to spank his little bottom.” We know that these statements are absurd! When a parent feels he has no alternative but to spank, he is acting out of desperation: he doesn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t part of his original plan for relating to his precious child.

Parents have to steel themselves emotionally in order to follow through with a spanking. We have to harden our hearts. Or, perhaps more often, a challenging situation that we’ve been trying hard to deal with finally sends us into the emotional badlands, where love can’t be felt. And there, we feel that our child has driven us to spank—it’s too heartbreaking to think that our child was actually asking for our help, and we attacked instead.

Does spanking control a child’s behavior in the short term?

When a child is spanked, his or her limbic system (the emotional center of the brain, and the part of the mind that mediates learning and understanding) goes into alarm mode. The child’s brain clearly perceives spanking as an occasion of danger, and responds accordingly. For the child, it is an experience of being small and unable to control an overwhelming and unpredictable force. In this state, his mind can learn nothing. His prefrontal cortex, the center of reason and judgment, shuts down. Hence, a child’s behavior during and after a spanking is not thoughtful behavior. It’s reactive. The “control” that the parent is striving for has everything to do with fear, and nothing to do with teaching, learning, or a child’s understanding of concepts of right and wrong. What the child “learns” is that, seemingly out of the blue, for reasons he can’t fathom, he has been hit or hurt by a person who loves him. This is a confusing lesson indeed.

Spankings are perceived by a child to be random acts of violence. Over time, they create a wedge of fear and resentment between child and parent. The more time a child spends with his mind shut down by the fear response that physical attack brings, the more reactive his behavior becomes. A vicious cycle results: a fearful child becomes aggressive or withdrawn, the parent spanks in response, the child becomes more frightened, and loses more of his access to his own good judgment.

So, though a spanking may result in a quieter, more cautious child for a few hours, that apparent peace has a high price. A child’s sense of safety, and with it, his ability to reason, to cooperate, to learn, and to trust, are all eroded with every spanking. So is a child’s openness to love from his parent.

What are the long-term effects of spanking?

Many studies have been done on spanking in the United States and in other countries. The evidence is clear that the effects on children are strongly negative. The American Academy of Pediatrics and a long list of other professional societies take a clear stand against the corporal punishment of children, both at home and in the schools.

One large study showed that the more parents spanked children for antisocial behavior, the more the antisocial behavior increased (Straus, Sugarman, & Giles-Sims, 1997). The more children are hit, the more likely they are to hit others including peers and siblings and, as adults, the more likely they are to hit their spouses (Straus and Gelles, 1990; Wolfe, 1987).

Studies show that even a few instances of having been hit as a child are associated with more depressive symptoms in adult life (Strauss, 1994, Strassberg, Dodge, Pettit & Bates, 1994). A landmark meta-analysis of 88 corporal punishment research studies of over six decades showed that corporal punishment of children was associated with negative outcomes, including increased delinquent and antisocial behavior, increased risk of child abuse and spousal abuse, increased risk of child aggression and adult aggression, decreased child mental health and decreased adult mental health (Gershoff, 2002). It has also been shown that corporal punishment has an adverse effect on a child’s cognitive development.

What is a parent to do instead?

We parents need more support than we get. It’s not right that we must repeatedly face parenting issues that drain our patience entirely. It’s not right that there’s no dependable way to restore our emotional balance when we’re beyond frustration. It seems to me that spankings point to our need for more help, more kindness in our own lives, and less worry about our futures and the futures of our children. We want the best for them, and we need better for ourselves, too.

We parents need to listen to each other’s stories, to hear each other out. We need to hear how many troubles an exhausted or frustrated parent has seen. We need to offer each other appreciation for the things we do well. We need someone we’ve built a measure of trust with to hear all about our anger, our worries and our desperate moments. It’s remarkable how much difference the chance to be listened to can make in a parent’s life!

And then, we need to move close to our children, instead of attacking them for their troubles. It’s an unusual thing to do, but to move close, set a limit, and then stay with a child while the passionate feelings pour out is far kinder than punishment. It also helps a child learn from the limit that was set. His mind flushes lots of emotional tension out while you keep things safe around him. And in the end, he knows you love him, and that drive to cross the limit again is gone. You’ve connected with him. His mind has moved from an “I don’t care what they say!” state to feeling like part of the family again.

Listening until the child’s feelings are spent helps a child actually learn from mistakes and poor judgment. At the end of a good cry or tantrum that’s supported by his parent, a child can make sense of what just happened. He understands the limit that was set, and that limit doesn’t leave lingering resentment or anger. Short range, it helps a child rebuild his connection with the parent who listened to him, so his mind works again, right here, right now. And it gives a parent a way to exert real power when a child has gone off track. The parent uses the power of his caring, and the power of his good judgment, to retrieve his child from behavior that wasn’t working for either of them.

Here’s how it can work:

“It’s been really hard. Our four-year-old son has been extra demanding lately. He has been asking for what feels like constant attention and in often unflattering ways. Requests for help come out as demands. He also has been intensely rigid. The shoes aren’t tied right. The hood isn’t just so. All of which have triggered down on the floor tantrums with wails and flailing legs and arms. And they have come some days endlessly one after another even with all our many hours of focused attention.

“To add to it lately, he has started hitting his sister, me and my husband. He only hits at home and never has hit friends or other relatives.

“This morning we could see it coming again. As my husband and I both can feel triggered by the intensity of our son’s rage, especially when it was directed at us, we decided until things shifted, we would work together when we could to help our son through his big feelings. This morning was our second attempt together at helping him, the previous night we had stayed together as well.

“This morning, my husband set the limit and brought him upstairs. I joined him and together we stayed with our son while he flailed on the bed, screaming at us. He didn’t want to hit a pillow or any other object; he wanted to hit one of us, with our faces being the prime target. We kept ourselves safe and reminded him that he was safe. As the feelings intensified, he complained of not being able to breathe when it was clear to us that physically he could breathe. I think that he was having some kind of emotional flashback. We told him we could see he was breathing and that we would make sure he continued to breathe just fine. He pushed hard against us with all his strength. It went on like this for what felt like forever.

“Then he stopped, just stopped and popped up his head. He nuzzled close to me and, with no forethought, I made a circle out of my arms which our son took as an invitation to squirm his way through the circular opening in my arms. Making it safely to the other side, he came back triumphantly to squish his way back through the circle again. He asked to do it again and again. “Tighten your arms this time” he’d request. Each time he made it through he’d smile. Back and forth he’d go between his dad’s arms and mine. Soon his sister, hearing his giggles, joined in and we all had a good laugh on the bed. We needed it. We made it through. I wonder whether, that whole time, he had been working through feelings from his birth. We’ll never know, but he was sure enjoying getting through a tight spot again and again at the end! And he was easy-going for the rest of that day.

Hand in Hand is a parent education non-profit that has been helping families to build the super-protective factor of parent-child connectedness for twenty years.� You can learn more by reading the Listening to Children booklet series by Patty Wipfler or by signing up for our free monthly newsletter, Connecting!

Do you ever wonder if your child is developing typically? It is especially difficult to determine if your child is meeting developmental milestones at a typical rate if this child is your first. You look at that toddler and think that everything they do deserves applause….and it does! But…..do you ever still just wonder if everything is okay?

I do not want you to wonder or worry. But I do want you to be knowledgeable about typical developmental milestones because the earlier that you are able to intervene with problem issues the better. I want to provide you with research based information that may help to alleviate your worries. Too many times, new parents see problems in their child’s development when there aren’t any. But there are other times that I see parents ignore issues when they shouldn’t.

There are a few things that I would like for you to keep in mind:

1. Do not believe everything that you read on the internet. You need to base your information on the knowledge and experience of the experts in the field.

2. Do not look for problems that are not there. Your child will have periods of great progress and periods of no progress. Sometimes a concern for you is just a bump in the road, in terms of your child’s development. But always ask your child’s doctor is you are concerned.

3. Do not ignore the opinions and observations of others close to you. Sometimes you can not see the forest for the trees. Listen to your friends and relatives and do not ignore an issue that comes up as a concern to several different people in several different settings.

4. Always compare your child’s development to a same-age peer group not just one same-age peer. You can not compare your little boy to “little Bobby” in day care. You need to compare your child’s development to the entire 2 year-old group – because all children develop at different rates.

5. Remember that development is not going to be consistent in all areas. Your child may begin talking early but walking late. Your child may have wonderful ability in using crayons to color but have trouble dressing themselves. We all have strengths and weaknesses. But again, if you are concerned always ask.

6. Be observant and concerned if progress stops altogether or if regression occurs. This is a serious red flag in any area of development. This is especially noticeable in toileting skills and communication.

I’m going to use this site to provide you, as parents, good information that will help guide you in helping your child. The Center for Disease Control has a wonderful website with research based information that is perfect for new parents. It has an interactive checklist that can be completed by the parent, printed and kept as a guide to the child’s development. This site is a wealth of information.

Not only are the developmental guides good for determining if the milestones are met but are also good for helping new parents determine when they should give the child some space to become more independent. In addition, it will also help guide them on what skills to encourage at what age.

Check out the CDC’s website for this wonderful video. Don’t worry so much but be very observant and if you ever become concerned with any portion of your child’s development – do not second guess – talk to your child’s pediatrician.

If there is a problem, early intervention is key.

Once you get the basics down (feed the baby, burp the baby, change the baby, rock the baby to sleep) you’ll be faced with the inevitable curveballs, the problems you have to solve in the moment. With some field-tested solutions, and your innate smarts, you’ll be prepared for anything!

1. The Last Diaper

A time may come, if it hasn’t already, when you are down to one diaper—or no diapers!—either at home or while on the go. You have options:

• Advanced Warning: The following isn’t as gross as it sounds. If you have only one diaper left, chances are you have some sanitary pads in the house or, if you’re in a mall or restaurant, you can buy one from a ladies room vending machine. Stick a highly absorbent pad into that last diaper. The pad will absorb all or most of the mess and enable you to just change the pads until you can get your hands on more diapers.

• Keep first aid adhesive tape on hand—at home and in your diaper bag—for when a closing tab is accidentally ripped off of a diaper. While many types of tape will work (duct tape, masking tape, packing tape, though not so much cellophane tape), I prefer first aid paper tape, which has the gentlest adhesive if it touches the skin.

• For when you’re totally out of disposable diapers, be sure to keep a few cloth diapers on hand (which you can put to use as burp cloths while they await their time at bat). You can also craft a diaper out of a towel or dishcloth. Here are some basic diaper folding instructions, from which you can improvise as needed:

1) Fold the cloth into a rectangle. (Depending on the size of the child, your finished rectangle will be approximately 6” x 10”; a larger cloth can be folded over by sections in order to provide you with extra layers for absorbency.)

2) Place and center the baby vertically on the length of the cloth.

3) Bring the bottom part of the fabric up between the baby’s legs. Flip the left and right sides over to lay on the baby’s belly, and then secure all three sections together.

If you don’t have diaper pins in reserve, use the aforementioned tape. If you don’t have rubber pants to put over the diaper, consider fashioning a very temporary pair out of a gallon-size plastic bag or even a plastic grocery bag. (See caveat below.)

2. Create a bib on-the-go

Speaking of plastic bags, let’s venture into another practical use for plastic grocery bags—with the caveat that this method is to be used correctly under constant adult supervision because, as all plastic bags tell us themselves, they must be kept out of reach of babies and children.

When you’re out and about and have no bib, but desperately need a bib, you likely have or have access to a plastic shopping bag. If so, size up the bag and your child. Depending on which will be the better fit, choose from these tailoring methods:

Option A: Tear open the bottom of the bag. Use the bag’s pre-existing opening for your child’s head and the handle openings as arm holes. Adorn your child in, essentially, a plastic tank top.

Option B: For a top with less “cleavage,” tear a hole in the bottom of the bag. Put the child’s head through that new hole. Pop openings in each side of the bag and guide your child’s hands and arms through those new holes.

Ta-da! You now have a full-torso covering for impromptu restaurant meals, ice cream cones and even finger-painting. Yes, the bib will be bizarre looking, and you and your bag-wearing baby might get some odd looks. But I have used this technique in public on many occasions and have been praised by restaurant servers and diners for my ingenuity.

3. Always have fresh milk on hand

Yes, a mother can breastfeed her child, which makes having milk in the fridge a non-issue. Short of that, all parents with young milk drinkers should acquaint themselves with ultra-pasteurized UHT shelf-stable milk. Packaged in box-like aseptic cartons, the milk needs no refrigeration until it’s opened. UHT milk tastes like regular milk, only a bit sweeter, and is widely used in countries that don’t have consistent refrigeration. I always keep several of the one-quart cartons in my pantry as back-up for when we run out of fresh milk.

Because the milk, which comes in whole, 2-percent, skim and chocolate varieties, is also sold in a six-pack of individual serving sizes (like a juice box), you can keep milk handy in your car, stroller or diaper bag without having to worry about cool packs or spoiling. (The cartons do have expiration dates, which are usually several months out based on storage at room temperature.) Hint: At the supermarket, look for UHT milk in the baking rather than daily aisle. Similar shelf-stable packaging exists for milk products made from soy and rice.

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Melissa Stanton is the author of The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide: Field-tested strategies for staying smart, sane, and connected while caring for your kids, published by Seal Press/Perseus Books (www.stayathomesurvivalguide.com). Prior to becoming an at-home mother of three, Stanton was a senior editor at LIFE and People magazines. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, Parenting and MotherVerse, among other publications and websites. Stanton is the founder and editor of “Real Life Support for Moms”  (www.lifesupportformoms.com). She lives with her family outside of Washington, D.C.

Copyright  2008 Melissa Stanton