Our daughter is 2.5.  She naps really well at school, but only gets a nap about 40% of the time on weekends.  At home, she hummssssss with energy, and she doesn’t calm down. We have tried:

• Recreating the day care environment with nap mat, music and dark curtain
• Recreating our night time routine that works great – books, songs, etc.
• Holding her and rocking her, this helps some
• Consequences for not napping, mostly time-outs
• We have tried desperately to not lay down with her, sleep with her or drive her around to get her to fall asleep, but we have done all of these things in emergency situations.

She is a cranky, unhappy child when she doesn’t get her nap. I get sad too.

My questions: 1) Is there something else we can do to calm her down? 2) What is the consequence for getting out of bed?  For #2, we use time-out for other things and it works, but the time out area is her bed in her room, so that doesn’t work so much at nap time. Later consequences (you will have to go to bed early if you don’t take a nap) don’t work.

Do you have any parent coaching tricks?

From a child’s perspective, school and home are as different as apples and giraffes.  Plus, different relationships = different behaviors, so I encourage you to give up on the idea that since she does something at school, she can be expected to do it at home, too.

Your comment about how she hums with energy strikes me as a spot-on Mommy intuition.  I think you’re tuned in to the source of the problem already–weekends are soooo exciting!  You and Daddy are there!  All Day Long!  And sister, too!  WOWWW!  Asking her to stop being with you, and to calm down enough to let her body relax into a sleep state–well, that’s a pretty challenging task for such a little girl.  Sure, her body needs it, but learning to listen to our bodies and make good choices in how we care for them is a lifelong process–challenging even for most adults.  So, cut her a little slack.   (by which I mean, remind yourself that this problem is soooo normal and age appropriate!)

A word about consequences.  Decades of research into behavior modification has unequivocally proven that a purely consequence-based system for shaping behavior is NOT effective.  In other words, we have to do something other than punish unwanted behavior, if we want that behavior to actually stop.  I go even further, because I believe that consequences and punishments can sometimes escalate into bigger problems, like an endless loop of frustrated parents and children who experience the bulk of their parents’ attention via punishment, which often leads to a damaged parent-child relationship.  Also, using consequences (delivered later) to a small child where the problem is her not settling in to sleep is almost guaranteed not to work.  It’s really, really, really hard to force someone to sleep… try as we might, a person kindof needs to accept sleep–to allow sleep to entice them in to settling down.

You mentioned that you have tried “desperately” not to lie down with her for naps, but you also said that you have had success with holding her and rocking her.  That, by the way, strengthens the argument that her weekend time with you is just much more valuable than sleep… so consider that one solution would be to help her combine the two.  She will stop napping in a year or so anyway, and I promise that you won’t be lying down with her when she’s 16–a little naptime snuggle for the next year is really about as painless a solution as I can imagine.  You don’t have to stay in there the whole time (unless you fall asleep yourself, which of course happens all the time to tired parents!) but lying with her will help her body relax, and plus it gets the two of you some sweet snuggle time.

When she gets a little older, and she is able to control herself a little bit more effectively (2 year olds are wild monkeys!), you can start giving her an option at nap times: lie down and sleep or stay in your room for X minutes.  Then you just redirect her back to her room if she forgets and tries to come out, and you make sure to set a timer, and plan to put her to bed a little earlier to make up for lost sleep, but without making a big deal of it.  Plan to repeat the redirection back to her room about 1000 times.

One more thought:  She may be giving up her nap.  It’s a very difficult and sometimes extended period of time that parents hate.  When kids transition out of a nap, ya just try to make the best of things.  Help her nap every other day, maybe.  Run her ragged in the mornings on the days when you think you can get her a nap.  Put her to bed early when she doesn’t.  Try some Benadryl.  I’m kidding about the Benadryl.  :^)  Good luck!

I’m like most parents of young kids, I think, in that I mostly get things done after bedtime or in stolen moments here and there.  But some things just cannot be done in little stolen moments or after bedtime.  I had a very real-life experience of this some months back when I was able to have several hours in my house without anyone else there, especially my (beloved) children.

Once my alone time began, here’s what I did:  I started a load of laundry, picked up the house a little, defrosted some meat for dinner, and wasted time on Facebook. (sound familiar?)  This all took about as long as I usually have to myself.

But on this day, I knew that the rest of my family would stay gone for much longer.  So I waded in to my email inbox and cleaned that out, balanced the checkbook, did more laundry, visited a blog I like, and wrote down some memorable stories about the kids.  And then, only then, could I feel my brain clearing out a little to make room for the creative work I had been procrastinating for weeks.    Then I was able to sit down and begin working on the task that required focus and creativity.

This is an issue of self-care.  One of the hardest things I’ve encountered in motherhood is looking for balance between taking care of others and taking care of myself.  But if I am going to be the best mom I can be, I have to be the best human I can be, and that requires enough sleep, good nutrition, physical exercise, mental stimulation, connection with others, and… time away and alone.  And not just little stolen moments.

What can you do to get a few hours to yourself this week?

My 4 year old daughter was born without all of her fingers.  It causes her no issues in daily life. However, she does get a lot of comments, questions and stares.  We are working with her on ways to answer questions, ask people to stop staring, etc…but it doesn’t seem to be sticking.  She prefers just to give people the “evil eye” and make a face at them if she feels uncomfortable.  Should we consider therapy for this?

I think we’ve all been there (I know I have.) Especially when we ourselves are tired, hungry, emotionally drained, or stressed–our children’s negative behaviors can really push us to–or past–our limits.  Yanking, yelling, whatever your version of “not parenting the way I want to” is… everyone has had that moment.

When this father and I talked about this incident later, he was still full of self-doubt.  What was he “supposed” to do?  His daughter was being uncooperative, unkind, defiant, and disrespectful–all traits that we parents believe that we are supposed to teach our kids NOT to be.  He wondered if he had done the wrong thing by letting her “get away with” those bad behaviors.  He worried that he was teaching her that she doesn’t have to respect him, or his limits, or his authority.

My take on this scene is that the immediate need was a moment’s pause, a deep breath to help everyone regain their inner balance, even just a little.  In that moment, here are a few items our higher selves might be able to remember:

• Right now, we are ALL tired and thirsty and hungry, so no one is at their best… these behaviors are definitely related to our physical states.
• When a person is stressed (tired/thirsty…) they CANNOT learn.
• This child of mine is, usually, pretty darn cool and cooperative and kind.  The behavior in front of me now is NOT the norm.  (refer back to #1.)
• I need to calm my own anxieties about raising a good kid here, and remember that taking the long view is key in parenting.
• When my brain is peaceful, I can see solutions or options that would otherwise be overlooked.  In this situation, there were other water bottles available, so that the immediate need (baby’s thirst) could be handled.
• The non-immediate issues (defiance, etc) can be handled later! When we have all come back to our normal selves (rested, watered, fed, etc) I can bring this incident back up for discussion with my child.  Her ability and likelihood to listen, discuss and absorb will be 1000% improved.

When we are peaceful, we have better perspective, more creativity, and are more effective in whatever we do.  So when you find yourself in the moments of high conflict and parenting stress–just try to remember to take a breath.  Then take another… and very soon your own inner best self will show you what comes after that.

Three hours on this topic (healthy sexual development, signs of a problem, and how to talk about sex with your kids) might seem like a lot–especially when there is a 45 minute version available… after all, what parent has extra time to spare!  (not me!)  So why ‘should’ you take a 3 hour workshop on it?  There are many reasons, but here are my two favorite:

1.  You can ask questions, get specialized feedback, and really walk away with information that is specifically tailored to your family’s needs.

2.  You get to practice!  The sampler is great, but all you get to do in the sampler is listen to ME talk about talking about sex like it’s no big deal.  In your head you might be thinking that it doesn’t seem so hard now, but there is a big difference between thinking and speaking, and especially between being on the hotseat to answer a question you didn’t see coming!

With the full BBB workshop, you’ll practice, and it makes a world of difference.  Check it out!

Read the article here.

It seems deceptively simple, but trust me–some emotions are awfully hard to “hold.”  Someone who is bitterly angry, or wracked with grief, or sobbing with guilt–is someone who can be hard to be with in the moment.  But, that is one of the things that a therapist is there for.  A therapist gives you permission to have whatever feelings you are having, and stays with you, peacefully, without her own agenda, and without changing the subject, making a joke, or running out of the room, no matter how big and scary those emotions may seem to be.  She keeps holding the bowl for you.

Many years after grad school, I realized that parenting requires the exact same ability.  Only now, it’s waaaay harder, because those strong uncomfortable emotions are coming from one of the people I am most emotionally connected to in the world, and frequently–the strong uncomfortable emotions are about ME!  (aghhh!)  But our children need us to be able to handle their strong and/or uncomfortable emotions.  They need us to be able to handle their fear, their disappointment, their sadness, their fury or their injustice–without telling them they “shouldn’t feel that way,” or minimizing, or making a joke, or punishing them.  They need to know that you are bigger and stronger than their biggest feelings, because those feelings can be frightening or overwhelming to them.

The next time your child is having BIG emotions, take a deep breath and think about your response for a moment.  What does your child need?  Perhaps what you need to do is Hold the Bowl.