My daughter is learning how to pedal bike, which means she is also learning quite a bit about facing her fears. Recently, she learned to pedal small distances without me holding her bike. This increased rather than decreased her fear of falling. For a while, the better she got, the more scared she was. The […]
Yesterday, my daughter was in a terrible mood. She didn’t eat enough, and she skipped her nap. The littlest things would trigger the biggest tantrums. Whoever happened to step on the landmine of her bad mood was the person she thought was causing the bad mood. For a three-year-old, this makes perfect sense. Screaming from […]
My daughter recently turned three, and this is an age of great leaps in communication skills for her and her friends. When she started going to school in January, she experienced conflict with other classmates that sometimes turned physical, with her on the receiving end of pushes, head-bonks, bites, etc. The first time this happened, […]
There has been a ton of buzz around the latest cover of Time magazine, the one with the mother breastfeeding her toddler next to the title “Are You Mom Enough?” The goal of the picture is to shock people who aren’t accustomed to seeing this sort of thing, and the goal of the title is […]
The other day, my daughter told me that she doesn’t like two of the kids in her class because one of them asks why too much, and the other cries. She then labeled the two children as “The Why-er” and “The Crier.” I restrained myself from laughing at the irony of this, since she probably […]
I haven’t written in this blog for a while because my household has been doing what I call “Immunity Boot Camp.” All of us have had multiple illnesses since our daughter started preschool in January. Needless to say, writing here was on the bottom of the to-do list. It may still be a low priority […]
Being a toddler, my daughter struggles with the concept of sharing with others. She likes to play with friends, but she also wants to have things go exactly her way. She gets frustrated when they don’t. She is learning a painful but important lesson about what it means to live in the world with other […]
A common relationship dynamic is the loaded question. You want something specific from your partner. Instead of stating the desire, you ask a seemingly innocent question with a correct answer in mind. If the question is answered incorrectly, you punish your partner for getting it wrong. Maybe you want a romantic evening on Valentine’s Day, […]
It is easy to get caught up in the rush of activity that comes with a busy and full life. We revert to autopilot as we rush around, and this affects all of our relationships. If you are in autopilot much of the time, it is difficult to switch back to the present moment. You […]
The other day, my daughter and I saw an interesting drawing: it was of a puzzle being put together by a child who was in the puzzle itself. My daughter had questions. Why was the child in the puzzle? Why was the child doing a puzzle? She forced me to think about this drawing in […]