There are times when a child’s preference for one parent over the other suggests more about underlying feelings of upset they are experiencing than anything genuinely true about their relationship with that parent.

I’ve been having a few of those moments lately. My husband is a teacher, and since the long holiday has started my daughter has been spending more time with him and less with me as I embark on a new writing project. Last week I was a bit busy and preoccupied, so even when I was physically there, I wasn’t exactly present.

I could tell my daughter was feeling disconnected from me, because she kept saying that she wanted to play with daddy, or only daddy could play certain games with her. After a family day at the swimming pool we got on the train, and she said she wanted to sit with daddy. I sensed that this preference had something to do with those feelings of disconnection from me, so I decided to turn it into a fun game.

I started saying in an exaggerated dramatic voice, ”oh no! Don’t sit on the boys side, you are meant to be on the girls side.” Then I would playfully pull her onto my side. She would then escape, and laugh as I jokingly exclaimed how terrible it was that she was on the ‘boys’ side.’ I pulled her back and I also made a ‘door’ with my hands, to block her from going to the other side. I would put up a bit of resistance, and then let her win and escape. After fun and giggles together we were feeling much more connected.

If your child is experiencing strong feelings of preference for one parent over the other you might like to play a game like this. Perhaps have both parents sit on opposite sides of the living room. Then tell your child that you want them to stay on your side, and that you really hope that they don’t run over to the other side. Saying this in a playful tone will probably be just the invitation your child needs to run over to the other side, and you can then try and get them back. You can pull them gently in a playful way, so they get that it’s a game. It’s important not to physically overpower your child. The aim is for your child to ‘win,’ to be in the most powerful role, so always let them escape.

These sorts of games fill our child’s need for connection in all sorts of ways. By feeling their own strength and power, they get to release feelings of upset that get in the way of being closely connected to us. By laughing and playing, we get to deepen our bond.

It’s not always easy staying connected in our busy lives where we need to work, and spend time alone to meet our own needs as well, but the Hand in Hand Parenting tools are always there to heal those major and minor disconnections we all experience from time to time.

Need more help in dealing with disconnection with your child? Check out my article Healing Broken Connections. Sometimes separation anxiety can be behind your child’s preference for one parent over another. These playful ways to heal separation anxiety may  be helpful. Hand in Hand Parenting also has an online self study course, Helping Your Child WIth Separation Anxiety

Would you like a giggle parenting solution for your family challenge? Leave me a comment or contact me via facebook. 

When our babies are born most of us have in our mind that parenting will go something like this: our babies will cry, we’ll figure out what they need and then they’ll stop crying. And we’ll know we’re getting this parenting thing right when we have a smiley happy baby that hardly ever cries, right?

Many of us start off with this mindset and then we have babies that cry for hours, or cry what seems like no apparent reason. We can be left feeling worried, or as if we’ve failed at parents.

The full story of why our baby’s cry is a bit more complicated. In Aletha’ Solter’s book The Aware Baby she explains the science behind our tears, and why babies cry for two reasons, one is to get their needs met and two; to heal and recover from stress and tension.

Dr. William Frey is a biologist that investigated the chemical make-up of tears. He found that they actually contain cortisol, the stress hormone, so that when we cry we are literally releasing stress from our bodies. Tears also contain Manganese a hormone that is important for balancing mood, and other toxins.

Dr. Deanna Minich says, ‘’crying is a form of detox in which we let go of our stored emotions and inner pain. It also literally eliminates inflammatory compounds, cytokines and chemokines. People who cry easily in response to emotion might even have fewer symptoms and better health than those who restrain their tears.’’

It has been estimated that stress causes between 75%-90% of all physical illnesses, so reducing stress is absolutely key to our children’s future emotional wellbeing and physical health.

But what would our babies be stressed about we may ask ourselves? They’ve only just come into the world, and life as a baby is not exactly hard work is it?!

Well actually it is. A baby’s emotional brain is fully developed before birth so that means that their emotional lives are just as complex as our own. During pregnancy all of the mother’s emotions and  stress will effect her baby. It has been found that mothers who feel anxious or worry a lot during pregnancy have babies who cry for longer.

Birth is another life event that can trigger distress for our babies. Psychotherapist Michael Appleton says that we have a cultural blind-spot when it comes to acknowledging that birth can be painful and traumatic for babies.

Even if pregnancy and birth go smoothly babies do need to cry to process their birth, and their daily experiences  in a brand- new, stimulating world. This crying is healthy and good, and it means that even if we or our babies experience difficulties, they have a natural inborn healing mechanism to help them recover. (and it works for us too!)

Because there is not much awareness of the ‘other’ reason babies cry, we tend to go on automatic pilot, treating their healing crying as crying about a need. So when we have met all our baby’s needs and still can’t get them to stop we often resort to what Aletha Solter calls ‘control patterns.’ So we bounce a baby or shhh them, feed them when they are not hungry, or we take them for a long walk, or even resort to a car journey. We tend to jump from ‘meeting needs mode’, to simply ‘stopping the crying by whatever means possible mode.’ It is an unconscious jump that almost all parents, (including myself!) have done.

I know that when I did this, I was thinking about helping my daughter to feel happy again, but as the message of Aletha Solter’s book began to sink in, I realised that what I was actually doing was stopping my daughter from expressing her emotions. As Dr. Deborah Macnamara says, ‘crying is not the hurt, but the process of becoming unhurt.

When our baby’s needs have been met and we stop their crying, we are actually interrupting their vital healing process, and giving the the message that crying is not okay. This can have detrimental effects on their future wellbeing and their behaviour. As we understand more about how the brain works, it’s becoming clearer that children’s misbehaviour is caused by emotional upset, so we cannot fix our child’s behaviour in the long run with sticker charts or time out. We need to help them process their emotions.

The fact that we do try to stop our baby’s from crying is not our fault. It happens first because of a lack of understanding of the healing power of tears. Most of us intuitively sense the benefits of having a ‘good cry’ but there isn’t much information out there about helping our babies or older children to do the same.

There is also a much deeper reason. When we were children, our parents reacted like this to our tears. And sometimes they would have reacted in much harsher ways. Leaving a baby alone to cry it out, or ignoring or punishing a toddler for tantrumming.

We have so much unconscious hurt and pain, about how our own tears were dealt with that we automatically try to stop the tears, without giving it much conscious thought. In Parenting From The Inside Out psychiatrist and parenting expert Dr. Daniel Siegel explains how when we have not processed our own emotions, and created a ‘coherent story’ of our own childhood we tend to act in similar ways to how our parents did.

Our story about tears is far from coherent. We are born with a natural healing process that is barely acknowledged or respected in our society. The cycle continues with our response to tears being automatic. Without thinking or bringing this healing process into awareness, it has remained parenting’s best kept secret. Our instincts are tangled up with our own pain that we have yet to heal. This is the hidden reason that makes tears, and tantrums hard for parents to handle. It’s not about our children’s emotions, but about us..

Dr. William Frey found that 85% of women, and 73% of men, felt less sad after crying, and what seems to be key for crying to heal is that there is another person there to offer emotional support. Bylsma conducted research which showed that people were more likely to feel better after crying if they had a close friend with them. When babies are left alone to ‘cry-it-out’ they give up expressing their feelings, but remain in a stressed state with high cortisol levels. It’s essential that we stay with our babies or toddlers when they cry.

I wrote my book Tears Heal: How to listen to our children to support parents through the process of beginning to listen to their baby, or children’s tears. Because of our complicated history with crying, it can be hard to stay there in the moment, and be calm and patient but this is what our children need. There are mirror neurons in the brain, that reflect and recreate the moods of the people around us. When we are able to be a calm and patient listener, our our child can release their feelings with us, they can attune to our emotional state and will feel better.

When we stop fighting against our child’s nature to naturally heal by expressing emotions, we will see transformative results in their wellbeing, sleep patterns and behaviour. To find out more check out my blog archives, or pre-order my book Tears Heal: How To LIsten To Our Children today!

Toddler Tantrums. It seems pretty obvious why they are hard to handle. The noise, the arms and legs being flung around everywhere. The fact that they disrupt the day, cause us embarrassment in public, and are generally one of the more unpleasant aspects of parenting.

But did you know that all these are really just the surface reasons that make tantrums hard? There’s actually something much deeper going on, and understanding this could transform your attitude to tantrums to one of zen like calm (at least most of the time!). And no it doesn’t involve abandoning life as a parent to live like a monk for a few years!

Before I explain, I’d like to share what’s actually going on when your child has a tantrum. (if you’re a regular reader of this blog or a Hand in Hand Parenting fan you can skip this paragraph!) A tantrum is like therapy for kids. When our child gets stressed, or experiences frustration and emotional upset, a tantrum is a natural and healthy stress release mechanism. This is also the case when our baby’s cry and all their needs are met and seem to have ‘no reason’ for crying. The stress hormone cortisol is released in tears, as is the hormone Manganese which is responsible for mood balancing, and other toxins. Crying also reduces blood pressure. This important healing function is why I recommend to parents that they shouldn’t stop tantrums, as long as they have the patience to be there, to listen and empathise.

We all want our children to be happy, and tantrums are actually key to our child’s happiness.

If crying is so good then why does our child’s tantrum make us feel so bad? It all started when we were children. When we were young the majority of parents didn’t know that tantrums have a therapeutic, healing purpose. Even today, most people still don’t. When we were young, how did our parents react to our tantrums? We may have been ignored or hurt, we may have been told ”don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Even if our parents did respond to us in gentle ways, they probably thought it was kindest to cheer us up, to distract us somehow to give us a toy, or a sweet to put us in a better mood.

In Parenting From The Inside Out Dan Siegal, explains what happens to our brains when we get stressed while parenting. Our limbic system senses a kind of emotional emergency, and unconscious memories from our past get re-activated. When we hear our baby cry, or toddler tantrum, our memories of how we were treated get triggered. Unconsciously we feel the hurt, the anger, and the pain, of having our healthy, healing process interrupted by our parents. We then project all those feelings onto our toddler’s outburst. But really it’s not about them. It’s about us.

Our parents did their best. They meant well. But nobody had deeply listened to their feelings when they were young, so the cycled continued.

There is one way we can break the cycle, and that’s to learn when our child simply needs to cry, and to do our best to be there, to offer warmth and empathy and connection so they can release their feelings, attune to our calm mental state and restore their emotional equilibrium.

Mindfulness can help us in the moment. Being aware of our thoughts, and noticing when we have a strong emotional reaction to our child’s outburst. But mindfulness alone, probably won’t be enough to help us ride the storm of our child’s emotions.

We also need to go back to those early memories, to release the feelings we have been carrying. To have our own big cries with a warm and present listener. With Hand in Hand Parenting, we offer parents advice about how to begin listening partnerships, where two parents come together to take turns talking and listening about how parenting is going. A listening partnership is a safe space, where you can have a good moan about your child’s tantrums make you feel. Having the chance to offload your own feelings regularly means you can return your toddler and experience tantrums for what they really are, something healthy, and good, that will restore you toddler’s natural happiness, co-operative nature, and zest for life.

Are you ready to go on a journey to find your inner calm as a parent? You can find out more about listening partnerships in my book Tears Heal: How To Listen To Our Children 

”So peaceful parenting, is that when parents are nice to their children all the time, even when they are acting out and misbehaving? That sounds a bit permissive to me.”

I have heard variations on this statement many times, and yes, sometimes, being ‘nice’ to our children can be permissive, and not in their best interests in the long run.

Imagine the scene. You’ve had a lovely day out with your child, doing what they love, and soaking up joy and connection. At the end of the day you want to leave the park/swimming pool/playground etc, because it’s getting late. However each time you try to leave you sense your child is on the verge of a tantrum,  so you decide to stay a little longer. And then when they are still not willing to go, you try bribing with the promise of an ice cream or a new toy, because you don’t want to ruin the lovely day, you want to keep them happy.

In this scenario, we are being ‘nice’ to our child, we’re thinking of their feelings and their needs. We know they love the park and playing with their friends. And we don’t want them to feel sad.  We’re not shouting or losing our temper.

But we are also being permissive. The confusion between peaceful parenting and permissive parenting happens because of a misunderstanding of how our children’s emotions work.

Many parents often think that when a child throws a tantrum it means they’ve failed as a parent. When we have days filled with non-stop tantrums, we can feel drained and exhausted and we can often wonder what on earth we are doing wrong. It’s no surprise, that parents often choose to parent in a way that sidesteps tantrums, keeping their children happy by being ‘nice’ to them.

But here’s the thing, when a child has a tantrum, they don’t think that the day is ruined. They’re simply feeling a strong emotion, and when that emotion passes, with lots of warmth and empathy from a parent, they’ll be back to feeling good (and also behaving well) again.

Tantrums are a natural stress release, a way the body releases the stress hormone cortisol, and other hormones that effect mood. They are often not a sign that anything is wrong in the present, but often a sign that everything is right, that your child has been soaking up your love and attention, and now senses it’s a good time to release feelings from when they didn’t feel so good.

Believe it or not our child’s natural state is one of co-operation. Beneath all the ‘no’s and the refusals, and the running away. The fast track to returning our child to their natural state is by setting limits with our children when we know our requests are reasonable, and then listening to any emotional fallout, with warmth and empathy.

It’s in our child’s best interest not to be permissive, and not to be ‘nice’ because when a child is saying no to our reasonable requests, it’s actually that they have an underlying upset, and need to release some feelings. Listening to their feelings regularly means that they don’t need to tell us about their feelings through the behaviour, and we’ll see more and more that their natural co-operative nature shining through.

Peaceful parenting, doesn’t have to be permissive parenting. We can set limits in way that is loving and full of empathy, providing we are able to listen to the emotional upsets. It’s not always easy for us, and I’ll explain more about what to do about that in my next post. Sign up to follow the blog via email to make sure you don’t miss it!

Want to know more about the Hand in Hand Parenting approach to setting limits? Check out this free Setting Limits E-book or sign up for their Setting Limits Online Self-Study Course.  

https://kateorson.com/2016/06/21/is-peaceful-parenting-actually-permissive-parenting/