Transitions

You have probably heard about transitions being hard for young children. Or, if you haven’t heard this, you have probably noticed that some of the hardest times with your child are times when you are moving from one activity to another—getting out of the house, going to bed—or when any big changes happen in their lives. Transitions are hard for all children, and they can be especially difficult for some children, depending on their

A teacher I know and respect very much says, "We don't stop happy, why do we stop sad?" I love this saying, as it highlights how we as adults often try to stop children from expressing "negative" emotions like sadness, fear, or anger. Our culture in general discourages us all from expressing those feelings. But we all have a range of emotions, and we can't be happy all the time!

To help children grow up to

Is it better to use punishment or rewards to change your child's behavior? I read a great New York Times article last summer about how the best choice is really something else entirely. The article is a bit long, but it has a lot of helpful information and gives specific ideas of things you should say instead of just what not to say.

What it boils down to is this: neither punishment nor rewards is

What about time outs? I am not a big fan of time outs where you just put your child in a corner by himself for a specific amount of time--a minute for each year of his age is one I hear a lot. What is he learning there? That seems to me like punishment, not discipline. I once heard someone compare time outs athletes take during a game or practice to the ones we

This is my second post on discipline for young children. If you want more of an overview and some key points to keep in mind when developing an approach to discipline for your family, check out my first post.

One caveat to all this is that every family and every child is different. What works with one child may not work with another child, and what one parent is comfortable doing, another is not. And

One thing I often see caregivers struggle with is how to discipline their baby, toddler, or preschooler. They're so little; how do you decide when to start disciplining them? And once they get to be a "Terrible Two" or a "Threenager," how do you correct, and maybe even prevent for next time, behavior that is challenging?

I went to a training in the summer of 2017 about the Positive Discipline parenting approach. The training had some

Social and Emotional Skills for Preschoolers

Two and three-year-olds are learning to…

• Have a sense of themselves as individuals
• Develop strong relationships with familiar adults other than their primary caregiver(s)
• Name emotions
• Identify emotions in themselves and others
• Use words to express their feelings, needs and desires
• Begin to regulate their emotions, using new coping strategies for when they are upset, with adult support
• Use self help skills: dressing and undressing independently