The Difference Between Helping and Hovering

“I have found it immensely difficult to let go of control of my daughter. She is now 25 months old and most definitely relies on me quite a lot of the time, even in play. I desperately need some help. For example, she should at least be able to take her socks off but waits for me to do it. I have tried to acknowledge and say that I can see it’s frustrating for her, but she insists I take them off. This is...

5 Surprising Ways to Encourage Your Kids

As adoring parents, encouraging our children should come naturally, right? Not for me. Sure, I knew how to help, coax, cheer my kids on, and I assumed those actions were the essence of encouragement.  But through child specialist Magda Gerber, I learned that what actually encourages our children is far more subtle. To my surprise, most of her advice was the exact opposite of what my instincts were telling me to do....

5 Best Ways to Raise Problem Solvers

“Parenting or raising a child is an impossible profession. The most impossible profession. Number one, we raise children with the knowledge of the past. It’s already obsolete.” This observation is made by infant specialist Magda Gerber in her video “Seeing Infants With New Eyes.” Noting the absurdity of raising children for a future that none of us can predict, Magda asks, “And then the question is, if...

7 Happiness Tools We Can Give Our Children

Our second daughter started college last fall. She’s an old soul who’s always strummed to her own beat, so it wasn’t surprising that she’d found high school restrictive and uninspiring, both academically and socially. But, as we’d hoped, college has been a different story. She’s thriving in the freer, more diverse atmosphere, more fulfilled and content than she’s been in years. Recently, while...

An Infant’s Powerful Moment

One of the greatest challenges for parents and professionals practicing mindful care is allowing children to struggle as they develop skills. It is far easier for us to do for them than it is to trust their natural process and offer hands-off encouragement. Good things often come to those who wait, but sometimes the wait can be excruciating for us. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Mercedes Castle, a passionate...

Don’t Help This Child

Compassion is one of our most positive human instincts, and we parents have an abundance of it for our kids. There’s almost nothing most of us wouldn’t do to ease our children’s pain, prevent struggles, and clear away confusion. We just want to make life work for them.  So, it was a big “Ah-ha” for me when I discovered through my training with child specialist Magda Gerber that our well-meaning support...

Toddler Toy Battles – Interventions That Work

The interventions we use when children battle over toys or engage in other social struggles are reflective of our perceptions of their abilities, as well as our general attitudes toward learning and ‘struggle’. Do we perceive babies, toddlers and preschoolers as basically capable? Or fragile and needy? Are our children born active, self-directed learners (as child specialist Magda Gerber asserted), or do they...

Will You Let Your Children Play?

“Letting our children play” sounds easy and so obvious, doesn’t it? We all know play should be encouraged, because it’s essential for healthy development: physical, cognitive, psychological and, most imperatively, the development of extended potty breaks for parents. Yet many of us find it surprisingly difficult to refrain from interrupting or interfering when our children play. This might be because: We...