Respond with Sensitivity

Mommy’s here

October 5, 2012

Just after my daughter’s second birthday, she had a prescription to get blood drawn. I told myself it would be okay and I decided that it would be easier for her if she watched me do it first. We went to the local hospital. I had gone there many, many times during the past year [...]

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Baby: from Other to Teacher

September 28, 2012

If you survey mainstream Western baby-care advice from the past two centuries, you’ll see a common theme: the perception that babies are wild beings who need to be tamed in order to be incorporated into family life. The concept of “otherness” is familiar in the history of humankind – it’s a driving force behind the [...]

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What’s the Word? Child Communication and Frustration

August 8, 2012

As adults, we’ve all experienced a language barrier at some point or another. You try and try to understand each other, but for some reason, your wires keep crossing. Depending on what the goal was, you may have just given up, politely disappointed, or angrily thrown your hands up in frustration. Now, consider preverbal babies [...]

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Helping Older Kids Adjust to a New Baby

July 16, 2012

My older son was 2 years and 8 months old when his little brother was born.  I’d agonized for a long time about child spacing, and was worried about how Sol (my first born) would handle the addition to the family.  We’re 3 months into being a family of 4 and I’ve learned a lot [...]

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Crying as Sport?

July 13, 2012

Everyone loves babies. We’re programmed to. It’s biological: A 2008 research study at Baylor showed that the happiness centers in our brains light up when we see a baby smiling at us. Conversely, a 2012 study at Aarhus University showed that a baby’s cry elicits a unique, lightning-fast response in his parents to soothe the [...]

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The Talk

July 9, 2012

So today, was ‘the talk’ with my dearest Larissa, age 7.  Not the sex talk – the Santa talk.  Never in my life have I experienced something quite like that.  This morning we were running around, barely on time for school and Larissa asked me, “Mom, I wondered who hired Santa?  Who was the first [...]

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Toddlers at War: Sibling Rivalry

June 27, 2012

“My eldest daughter stalks the younger one, trips her up, hits her, bites her, takes her toys, scratches and pushes her. Yesterday she put a pillow on her sister’s face and every time I jump to intervene, she tries to be nasty on a daily basis. Only my intervention or having them separately will prevent [...]

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Life-long Attachment Parenting

June 15, 2012

There will be another day and another chance to get it right. When I was a little girl, I hated my father as much as I could. He was the most unloving, torturing, awful person in the whole wide world, and so was my self-talk 30 years ago. At the same time, I adored my [...]

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