Articles

Soothing Sibling Conflict - Part I

"My 20 month old daughter started to cry and when I went in, there was my 5 year old son standing there. She had a red welt on her forehead and I was convinced he'd hit her, but he denied it. I began interrogating him, and wound up accusing him of hitting her. I found out later that she'd hit her head going under a table. I felt so guilty!"

"I walked into my infant son's room where he was lying in his playpen. My 3 year old son had taken every item of clothing out of the dresser drawers and piled it on top of my four month old. I was horrified!"Read more...

Soothing Sibling Conflict - Part II

Now we're going to talk about stepping in when our children are fighting. I want to emphasize, however, how important it is to support our children in coming up with solutions to their own problems. If we do, they'll have a sense of "I can handle things myself" as well as tools to handle future conflicts, not only with siblings, but also with peers and others -- even through adulthood. And if our children can approach adolescence and adulthood feeling confident in their ability to handle conflict, they're more likely to thrive.Read more...

Stepping Out Of The Dance

"My daughter is driving me crazy!" Elizabeth complained. "I feel as though I'm constantly disciplining her. She's rude, sneaky and really unpleasant to be around. The other day I found her hiding in the closet using my nail polish, which she knows she's not allowed to do without my permission. I gave her a consequence - I made her take off all the nail polish and told her she couldn't use it for a week, but she didn't even seem to care. It's almost as if when I discipline her about something, she shrugs her shoulders and is off to the next thing." Read more...

Talking To Your Child About Strangers

"Don't talk to strangers."

"Speak when someone asks you a question."

"Don't take anything from strangers."

"Be polite."

Do these seem to be contradictory statements? They are. Yet as parents, we admonish our children with words similar to these on a regular basis. With the number of child abduction cases growing it is time to stop and rethink some of the things we say to our children that may make them easy prey to kidnapping.Read more...

Taming The Holiday Monsters

As New York begins to spread its finery like a proud peacock in preparation for the holidays, and people bustle through the streets making private preparations for Hanukkah and Christmas, many parents watch with dismay as their loving, appreciative children are slowly transformed into greedy, insatiable monsters. Read more...

Teaching Compassion

Every day we and our children walk by the homeless on the street. When our children are very young we feel especially protective because their instinct is towards empathy: they ask us why that person doesn't have a home, where does that person sleep, and can't we give them some money? And we teach our children from an early age, when these questions first arise, to be careful and make a wide berth in case the person is dangerous.Read more...