It’s so common to see little three and four-year-olds telling their peers and adults what to do with such ferocity you wonder where that gumption came from. It stops being cute when they keep demanding their way and you find yourself helpless to curb their appetites for getting what they want from others all the time. They expect their peers to play what they choose, follow their rules for as long as they want until they change the rules to suit them or change the game.
Author • Psychoanalyst • Artist
Rushing to Work When Your Child Has Separation Anxiety
Separation anxiety is a problem for parents when they need to go to work. This creates a conflict for a busy parent rushing in the early morning hours. What to do?
Because your child has separation anxiety, always leave at least half an hour of free time before you leave for work. This probably means getting up earlier, but it’s worth it.
- Listen to your crying child’s words of fear about you leaving. Paraphrase their worry so they know you listened and care. (“I know you’re upset I’m leaving the house now. It’s distressing.”)
Managing Anxiety in Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers
Anxiety in preschoolers is important for parents. Managing anxiety in under fives depends very much on their ability to verbalize. If their vocabulary isn’t large it’s important to attend to their body language. Here are some tips for managing anxiety in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
Infants
Infancy from birth to age one is a wonderful time for rapid growth. Only you know your baby’s ways of communicating as you get to know him or her. She communicates by crying, turning her body this way and that, facial expressions, wiggling her toes, turning her head away from you or towards you, and many more gestures that only you pick up so frequently.
Kids’ Healthy Expressions of Anger
Help your kids, children and teens, learn that anger is a healthy emotion that can be constructively shared. If kids learn this then they are less defiant, less oppositional, more open, and self-assertive. Here’s how to accomplish this feat!!
Parenting Tips for Healthy Expressions of Anger
- Let kids know early on that anger is a natural emotion that everyone has but it’s all about how it’s expressed to make a positive impact on others.
Parenting Kids with Overt and Covert Anxiety
Parenting kids with overt and covert anxiety using Parental Intelligence will ease their minds.Kids show their anxiety in overt and covert ways. For some it is obvious. They are nervous, panicky, fearful, obsessive, phobic, and socially awkward. But others show anxiety indirectly masked behind unusual irritability, frustration, annoyance, and even anger that seems out of control. The latter are kids who have trouble verbalizing their anxiety and they can be harder to reach.
Helping the Overt Anxious Child with Parental Intelligence
Parenting Through Temper Tantrums
What is a Tantrum?
A tantrum occurs when a child’s whole system of managing their feelings and thoughts collapses. A tantrum is a communication that seems to happen suddenly for both child and parent. The child may lie down on the floor with flailing arms and legs, screaming and crying. The parent needs to discover the trigger before taking action except for making sure the child is safe. The triggers may be minor such as disappointing a child’s wish for a toy, saying “no” to requests, expecting kids to tolerate delays and be patient when they have not learned to tolerate frustration well, and rivalry with siblings.
Critical Thinking and the Importance of Plau
Play is often structured in games, sports, video games, and classes that teach something like karate or painting. But there are great advantages to unstructured play which is left to the imagination of the child. Without specific rules or an adult present.kids are left to use their own creativity to create narratives about whatever is on their minds. This may take the form of climbing a tree, building a fort out of couch pillows, or playing with superhero figures in a story. What ever form it takes, the child is the creator.
Critical Thinking
The Joy of Breastfeeding
If you wish to breast feed let me share with you the wonderful moments that I remember with my baby. Sitting in a comfy chair in the middle of the night when all is calm and quiet and it’s just you and your baby there’s nothing like that moment of feeling your infant at your breast nursing quietly skin to skin. It’s a feeling of utter meditation that you can only learn for yourself. It’s a moment of quiet reflection focused on your baby with no one or nothing interfering. It’s a moment of peaceful joy. Yes, you are nourishing your infant. Yes, you are feeding him nutrients and imunities. But at that moment in the middle of the night, you are alone with your bonded sweetheart in a way you won’t forget. Together you feel like one being. It’s not something anyone can ever take away and you and your little soul feel like a strong breath of air surrounds you ever so gently.
How Parents Help an Angry, Willful, Anxious Child
A Willful Child Needs to be a Skillful Child
Willful children are a misnomer. They actually are belligerent because they can’t articulate their needs and express their anger and anxieties. Typically when parents face a child with a temper tantrum or oppositional behavior, they try to use rewards and punishments to teach the lessons they want to share. However, the punishments are usually resented and the negative behavior increases. The rewards may work temporarily but the lessons learned aren’t internalized only the wish for the reward.
The problem with this typical scenario is that the child is delayed in his or her critical thinking skills. What are they?
The Joy of Unstructured Summertime Play
Play is the joy of summer time when all those structured, sometimes overscheduled activities during the school year are over. Now is the time to give your kids free rein to explore and discover what interests them. It’s a time for imagination to bloom as kids find new outlets for their infinite creativity.