Is Your Child’s Behavior a Sign of Poor Sleep?

If your child is not regularly getting adequate daily sleep, they may be “chronically overtired” — and poor sleep will directly affect their daytime behavior, learning and growth.

Your child may not seem tired, because overtired children don’t always act tired — at least not in the ways we expect.

Does Your Child Have Separation Anxiety – or is it Something Else?

Separation anxiety, while difficult, is often a normal part of development. There are many ways to help your child cope with separation anxiety; however, there could be deeper emotions and traits impacting your child’s behavior that may not actually be based on separation issues. Coming up with a plan to help your child through this time means that you need to consider why they are struggling.

What Should I Say When My Child is Hurt or Scared?

“Don’t cry, you’re okay.” “Everything will be fine.” “You have nothing to worry about.” These are such natural adult responses! But your child is very likely thinking: “But it DOES hurt!” “I AM worried!” “It’s NOT okay!”

Children, like adults, do feel what they feel; telling them that they don’t just confuses and frustrates them, but doesn’t make the feeling go away. In fact, the child will feel misunderstood and lonely in her fear, pain or worry. In addition, when it comes to physical pain, every human being has a different tolerance level. What “doesn’t hurt” for one person may indeed hurt another. It’s impossible to judge another person’s pain—physical or emotional.

3 Steps to Stop Kids from Fighting & Whining

When your kids are fighting, or your little one is whining it can be so easy to lose your temper and just shout, “Stop!” but that rarely (if ever) helps. Try this technique instead.

How to Eat Out with Kids and Have Fun Doing it

Eating out with kids is not the same as dining without them. When you take children to a restaurant the focus is not the cuisine or the atmosphere. It’s all about controlling the excitement and boredom, teaching your children formal manners, and having quality family time. Here’s how.

The Value of a Bedtime Routine

Consistency and routines create a feeling of security and reliability in your child’s life. It’s a very big world and children learn so much every day that they can easily become overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. When certain important key points are always the same, these things create anchors of security. Young children look for these anchors and thrive on their consistency. They enjoy routines and easily adapt to them, and even look for them.

We can take advantage of this natural desire that children have for routine by actually creating a very specific before bed routine that naturally and easily ends with sleep.

What You Need to Know About Sleep Setbacks

Solving your child’s sleep issues is an on-going process during the early years.  Very often, when things start to go well, and you are just beginning to enjoy improvements in your child’s sleep, suddenly, you’re going backwards! What’s happening with these sleep setbacks?