When I wrote my last post, The Trust Approach To Screentime, I read a comment from a mum guiltily admitting to using screentime when she needed a break from her children.

It made me reflect on just how hard it is to be a parent in this modern age. As well as being parents, many of us have responsibilities to work outside the home. We often live away from our families so we also lack support and childcare.

Not only that, unlike previous generations, being a parent these days isn’t just about keeping your children fed and clothed and then opening the front door to let them play outside. We know much more about the close connections our children need to thrive, and so many of us are working much harder than previous generations to be ‘good’ parents, to connect with our children on a deep level, and to listen to their feelings, just like we do with Hand in Hand parenting. All of this work is unpaid and often unrecognised by the larger society.

Plus we live in the digital age, where we’re constantly being bombarded with more and more technology. And not only that, parents often feel shamed and judged when they actually allow their children to use this technology!

I sometimes have these moments when I’m playing with my daughter, and I know my heart’s just not in it. I’m exhausted, and I’m faking it, as I roleplay shops or play Lego. In those moments I often notice that my daughter gets ‘bored.’ Her limbic system (emotional brain) can sense that I’m just not feeling enthusiastic about playing. If we go and watch TV instead, it’s actually a relief to both of us.

When I’m lacking the attention to connect, I try to remind myself that it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault that we live in a capitalist society that doesn’t value the most important job in the world. It’s not my fault that I sometimes get tired. I’m doing the best I can. It’s not my fault that when I was young adults didn’t play with me. It’s not my fault, that we are shamed and judged for not being perfect even though we are all parenting under imperfect circumstances.

So when I’m feeling drained we might have some screentime. And I’ll make a mental note, to find more support for myself, and get some listening time. I don’t want to rely on screentime to get through every single day, and every time I get listened to I get closer to being the parent I want to be.

You might also like:

The Listening Cure For When You Just Don’t Feel Like Playing 

5 Tips For Having Fun Playing With Your Kids 

Hand in Hand parenting’s online self-study course for Building A Listening Partnership 

photo credit D. Sharon Pruitt

When you become a parent, there’s so much information out there that it’s easy to get lost. And a lot of parenting information out there is just plain wrong, or completely unscientific. This is often the case when it comes to sleep.

Before my daughter was born I was lucky enough to read an amazing book that changed the course of my life; The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter. I read all about the healing power of tears and how babies cry for two reasons : not just to get their needs met, but also to heal from any stress and upset in their lives. It was so amazing to me that there is a way to raise children that don’t need to recover from their childhoods.

But reading a parenting book before becoming a parent, and putting that knowledge into practise as the parent of a real live baby are two completely different things! When I reread The Aware Baby later, I realised I’d forgotten half the contents.

And I’d been making a ‘mistake’ with my daughter’s sleep. One that perhaps 90% of parents make.

I had been thinking it was my job to get my daughter to fall asleep. I had been bouncing her, and pacing the room with her, or singing to her, until she closed her eyes. Because there was this time in the evening when she would start crying, and each time I fed her she wouldn’t seem to be hungry. So I would attempt to do things to stop the crying.

It was only six months later, that I began to piece together my experience as a new mother, and the book I had read. I suddenly realised that I was creating my daughter’s sleep problems, without even realising it.

Aletha Solter says that all babies naturally cry at the end of the day to release stress and tension. It could be from any overstimulation they’ve experienced during that day. It could be more extreme upsets such as stress in pregnancy or a difficult birth. This is a natural and healthy healing process.

However we don’t understand it. Nobody told us about the healing power of tears. When our babies cry we think it’s our job to get them to stop, even when they don’t have a particular need.

My daughter was naturally trying to cry at the end of the day, and I was trying to stop her by any means possible. Sometimes what I was doing was simply to stop the crying. As she got older and into more of rhythm I thought I was ‘putting her to sleep In actual fact what I was doing was stopping the crying that happened before she fell asleep. In doing so I was actually making the falling asleep process take longer. Also, when she couldn’t fully release those tears, she began waking frequently at night, a sign I later realised that she had unresolved emotional tension. In effect I was creating my daughter’s sleep problems because I wasn’t aware of when I simply needed to listen to her feelings.

I wish I’d known that we don’t have to do anything to ‘get’ our babies to fall asleep. We can simply be there and allow them to fall asleep naturally. When they are young they will cry because they need to. They need to cry, and for us to be there to listen. Being born, is an enormous life experience for babies, that takes a lot of processing. As they get older they will need to cry much less, and will fall sleep easily and sleep well.

Luckily it’s never too late to learn to listen to tears. When I began listening to my daughter’s feelings, without trying to distract her from them, or stop them then she began sleeping much better.

If you have a baby or toddler who takes a long time to fall asleep, wakes up frequently or early, then check out the links below. You can help your child to naturally regulate their emotions, and their sleep.

Further Resources 

Hand in Hand parenting’s New Parent Podcasts

Sleeping Through The Night

Hand in Hand’s online self study course Helping Young Children Sleep

Hand in Hand parenting calls special time the 10 Minute Tool To Change Your Child’s Behaviour. However it’s not always our child that needs to change their behaviour. In fact a lot of parenting challenges could disappear when we change our behaviour.

So lets start with special time. Do you have those days when you feel like you are issuing non-stop orders to your child? When you need them to clean their teeth, eat breakfast, get out the door, etc. etc.

I have days like this too, and suddenly I’ll remember special time, and how powerfully things turn around when we stop being our child’s boss, and let them be in charge instead.

Special time is 1-1 time we spend with our child doing whatever they want. It could be eating chocolate, snuggling up watching TV, or playing Lego. As long as it isn’t dangerous. With special time we always set a timer, so we both have a clear idea of how long it will go on for.

If you find yourself becoming bossy, and notice that the connection with your child is getting frayed then try some special time. It’s the quickest way to shift out of power struggles and back to connected-parenting. And even if you’ve only got five minutes it still makes a difference.

You might also like, 10 Ways To Use Special Time To Transform Your Day, and Ending Power Struggles With Children. 

Struggling to connect? Learn to de-stress and fill your own cup with listening partnerships. Check out Hand in Hand parenting’s online self-study course, Building A Listening Partnership.

This blog post was inspired by something Hand in Hand instructor Sophie Hunter shared with me when I was compiling Giggle Parenting Inspiration For A Back-Talking 11 Year Old.  She said that when she couldn’t ‘get through’ to her 12 year old daughter in the morning a toy tiger could do the job much better.

This started me thinking. If there’s anything we need our child to do, then asking and nagging isn’t the most effective way. When children are in non-co-operative, disconnected mode, that part of the brain that process language just isn’t functioning well.

Having a friendly puppet that does the asking can be much more effective. This kind of playful response goes straight to our child’s limbic brain, where those disconnected feelings are. As your child laughs and playfully responds, they increase their sense of connection with you. Then they begin to think more clearly and actually want to co-operate. As Patty Wipfler says, ‘connection breeds co-operation.’

So in my 15 Tips For Getting Out Of The House With Kids I suggested using a puppet for the getting ready tasks.

And you can use a puppet to help with absolutely anything you want your child to do. All those essential tasks, can be fun for you and your child. So Maybe the puppet helps your child clean their teeth at night or put their pyjamas on. Maybe the puppet brushes your child’s hair, or leads them out of the house, when you’ve run out of milk and they’re reluctant to go.

To add a giggle factor have the puppet do things wrong or get confused. Perhaps they put socks on your child’s hand, or brushes their knees instead of their hair. Puppets could also get shy, or run away from scary situations , building your child’s confidence that they can be the brave, confident one.

The possibilities are endless. So when you’re stuck with a non-cooperative child, and wondering how you’re going to get through the day, pick up a puppet, and see if they can do a better job!

If you try out this puppet play solution, feel free to leave me a comment, I’d love to hear your stories! 

For more tips on building your child’s confidence check out Hand in Hand parenting’s Confident Child Podcast Set 

For more playful parenting solutions check out Dr. Lawrence Cohen’s book’s Playful Parenting

Did you know that letting your children be ‘naughty’ is one of the most effective parenting tools we have? It may sound ridiculous, but it’s true. And no, I’m not talking about permissive parenting where you let your child run riot, hitting other children or destroying the house.

With Hand in Hand parenting we don’t use the term ‘naughty.’ We refer to off-track behaviour, which is how our children act when they feel disconnected, or when upset feelings are clouding their thinking. When children act off-track, the pre-frontal cortex; the part of their brain responsible for rational, reasonable behaviour can’t function well. Their behaviour is like a giant red flag they’re waving at us saying, ”help! I’m upset and I can’t think well. I need some connection!”

So how does letting them be naughty help in any way? Well, imagine your child has come home from pre-school and starts randomly pulling books of the bookshelf and scattering them across the floor. We may wonder what happened and if something upset them. We might ask them, ”What’s up? Did something happen?” and not get much of a response.

It’s not surprising that our 3 or 4 year old doesn’t always tell us what they’re feeling. When the emotional part of the brain – the limbic system – gets flooded with emotions, the pre frontal cortex, where language is housed can’t function well. They may not want to talk about it, and they may want to act out their emotions instead. (adults are often no different).

Perhaps your child felt disconnected at pre-school, because they’re still getting used to being separated from you. Perhaps another child took a toy from them and they felt powerless to stop them. They may not cry there and then, and instead save up those emotions for expressing at home where they feel most safe.

We can move in and set a limit, hold our child’s hand, look into their eyes and say, ”I’m sorry, I can’t let you throw the books.” Our child feels our presence and all of that upset, flows up to the surface, and they may start to cry. This is their natural healing process at work. When we listen without trying to fix or stop, we heal the hurt that caused their behaviour. As Dr. Deborah Macnamara says, ”’crying is not the hurt, but the process of being unhurt.” And when children feel better, they behave better. This is nature’s behaviour regulation at work.

So where does the ‘naughtiness’ come in? Well, sometimes your child may not be on the edge of tears. As you take their hand, and ask them not to throw the book they may wriggle your hand out of yours and giggle as they try to throw it again and again. Laughter is also part of nature’s behaviour regulation system.

In this example we don’t want our child throwing and wrecking our books. But we do want to follow where the giggles go, because doing so gives them the play and connection they need to help recover from what happened.

Perhaps if you have some baby cloth books, you could point them out and tell your child, in a playfully serious tones, ”these are my most precious important books, please don’t throw these ones.”

Your child will probably take it as an invitation to throw these books, and can have lots of fun and laughter as you playfully try to stop them. In my article here, What to do when your child just wants your attention I explain how this kind of play does encourage the behaviour in the moment, but in the long run, it improves co-operation because your child has got their feelings out of their system.

So you do want to let your children be playfully ‘naughty’ in the context of a game, that doesn’t involve hurting people or damaging objects.

For example, the other day, I was tidying up in the evening. I’d given my daughter lots of attention all day, so it seemed reasonable for me to spend a few minutes putting some washing away. She started complaining, and I sensed that she had upset feelings that were making her struggle to play independently.

So I set a limit. I got down on her level, and gently told her that I really needed to tidy up. I thought she might have been on the verge of tears, but she wasn’t. Instead she hid under the covers of her bed, and told me not to come near her.

At this point I was putting the clothes into one of the drawers. Everything was neatly folded, and I said, ”I hope nobody comes and messes up these drawers.” She immediately jumped up and started trying to pull the clothes out of the drawers, while I playfully tried to stop her. We played that for a few minutes, me trying to stuff the clothes back in the drawers and then her throwing them out. She laughed a lot and then happily went off to play a game by herself.

It wasn’t that hard to fold up the clothes and put them back, and I gained time because then she was happy to let me tidy.

This won’t encourage our child to come and pull clothes out of our drawers all the time. They needed attention, and we listened through laughter, so they’ve got that behaviour out of their system.

It takes a leap of faith to allow your child to be naughty. But try it. Try it with something that won’t push your buttons, and when you’ve got time to play. For example put some Duplo bricks in a box, and tell your child ”see my lovely bricks are all tidied away, I really hope nobody comes and messes them up.”

Or, take a pile of non-important papers, and put them on the kitchen table. Tell your child that these are your very important papers, and you don’t want anyone to mess them up.

Children  do know the difference between play ‘naughtiness’ and really ‘naughtiness,’ just like a puppy knows the difference between gently biting for fun, and really biting. When they are upset they may not always act according to their deep seated knowledge of what is ‘right,’ but when we play and connect with them it helps them return to ‘thinking mode,’ so their future behaviour will be much more on-track.

Have fun and laugh, and let your child lap up your attention. Then you may find that when you do want to get something done or need your child to co-operate they will do so because you’ve invested time in connecting.

This post explains more about why children misbehave, and what we can do, The Real Reason Our Children Misbehave

Looking for more playful ways to deal with behaviour challenges? Check out Playful Parenting by Dr. Lawrence Cohen