Parenting

Tips for Feeding Your Toddler from Earth’s Best Organic

April 9, 2012 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

baby and apple Feeding a toddler is nothing if not interesting! Whether you’re trying to convince your picky princess to try a new food or are dealing with a fussy son’s tendency to throw most of his food on the floor, adventurous doesn’t even begin to cover the experience. But this isn’t just the time when children learn to feed themselves, it’s also the time when they develops healthy eating habits that will last their whole lives.

As my regular readers will know, I am an Earth’s Best Blogger and one of the perks of the program is that I get to share great articles and resources from Earth’s Best with my readers. To help get you through this important stage of your child’s development, Earth’s Best Organic has a great article with some tips and guidelines for feeding your toddler. I liked the idea of making food more attractive to toddlers by arranging bite-sized pieces in a fun pattern. I was also surprised to learn that the four most common deficiencies in toddlers are iron, folate, zinc and calcium. While iron deficiency is something that I hear quite a bit about, I have to admit that I didn’t really expect many toddlers to have calcium deficiencies!

The article can be found on the Earth’s Best website and is a must-read for any mother of a toddler. Nutritionist Sue Gilbert wrote the article and she really knows her topic! I appreciated having guidelines about what actually constitutes a serving for a toddler and knowing exactly how much of the different food groups a toddler needs every day. Check it out for yourself and get some great tips for making the adventure of feeding your toddler a little easier!

Calm Parenting: Anger Management in Children and Teens

March 13, 2012 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

Many parents want to know how to manage anger in their children. Maybe your child acts out and is belligerent, and you’re at a loss to help him control those feelings. Not only is it upsetting to see, it impacts the entire family.

angry boy But here’s the truth: Whenever we want to manage someone else’s feelings, particularly our child’s, not only is it impossible, but it will also make the child angrier. No one likes to feel managed or controlled, and trying to figure out ways to contain someone else’s intensity will just add fuel to the fire. The natural reaction for a child—or anyone else—is to resist feeling controlled.

If you’re trying to figure out how to manage your child’s anger, you might want to take a closer look at the basic relationship patterns that exist between the two of you currently. Is your pattern one in which you try to manage him in other ways as well? Do you carry the common parenting myth that you’re responsible for the outcome of your child’s behaviors, feelings and thoughts? If you believe you’re able to succeed at that, your child will go out of his way to show you that you’re just not that powerful by resisting you through defiance and anger.

Believe it or not, the best way to help manage your child’s angry emotions is to stop trying to manage them. Recognize that you’re not responsible for how he feels or behaves; you’re only responsible for how you feel and behave toward him. Allow him to have his own feelings, perspectives and identity. Be with him as he experiences intense feelings of anger, rather than jumping into his box and trying to make him feel differently. This is when you can start being instrumental in helping him with this issue. If you’re emotionally untangled from your child, you will also see him more clearly and realistically, rather than from your own perspective.

For example, let’s say your 14-year-old daughter wants to stay out late and asks for your permission. This situation already has a catch, because as far as she’s concerned, there’s only one right answer and she already knows it. But let’s say your answer is no. She immediately starts tantruming, throwing things, and threatening you. Her anger is in full force and continues to escalate. When you try to give her your logical reasons for saying no, she just gets more infuriated.

It’s very easy to want to manage her anger at this point by giving in to her wishes—or by yelling or screaming back. But instead, pause, breathe, and give the problem back to her. If she wants permission for something, don’t feel compelled to say “yes” or “no” so quickly. Let her do the work instead of you feeling it’s your job. How do you do that? You can say, “I’m willing to consider letting you stay out past your curfew after the homecoming game, but how will you make it work for us? Dad and I give you curfews for your own safety. If we are to say yes, and I’m not promising that we will, what steps would you take to ensure your safety? And if we do say yes to your request, how will you make us feel like responsible parents when you are out until one in the morning?” In other words, it’s her job to get you to yes. This changes the pattern and often de-escalates a power struggle very effectively.

Here’s another scenario: Let’s say your six-year-old son is angry because he wanted to go for breakfast at the pancake house, but instead your family went with his brother’s preference, the diner. Your six-year-old spends the entire meal furious and sulking, and this mood continues for the rest of the day. Make no mistake, one of the aims of his fury is to keep an intense emotional engagement with you. You might feel annoyed by his sulking, or even guilty for not giving him what he wanted. Perhaps you respond by getting angry back at him or trying to talk him out of his feelings. You say something like, “Oh c’mon, Josh, it’s only a restaurant. Cheer up.” Realize that any of these reactions—guilt, irritation or your attempt to cheer him up—will usually only intensify his anger. He knows you’re trying to get him to stop feeling a certain way so he’ll just dig in his heels and prolong the uncomfortable situation. At this point, you have to be careful not to get angry at him even though your attempts to change his feelings didn’t work; this will only cause a counter-attack. Don’t give in or give him anything to respond to—remember, his aim is to keep the emotional interaction going. Seeing that he’s made you feel bad—or hearing you beg him for forgiveness—will only serve as ammunition.

So what can you do? Absolutely nothing. Allow him to be angry and sulk. Act towards him like you would any child who’s in a bad mood and not talking. Don’t force a response from him. So if you’re at the diner and you say, “Josh, could you pass me the bacon? “ and he ignores you, continue with something like, “Oh well, I’ll have to reach over and get it myself.” Essentially what you’re saying to him is, “You may be very angry right now, but I’m not. You can be in a bad mood and I will continue to be in my good mood.” The other important message you’re sending is the following: “I’m not mad at you for not feeling and behaving the way I would like you to. And I don’t love you any less because of it.”

But what about those terrible, awful temper tantrums? We all want to manage those because they’re hard to take. (I’m not talking here about a tantrum where your child is frustrated and just needs a hug—I’m talking about an “I want my way” tantrum.) It doesn’t matter if your child is three or 43, no one likes the feeling of trying to be emotionally controlled or contained. What is a child, or an adult for that matter, saying through his or her tantrums? “I am not getting my way; I want my way; and I want that to change now!” But again, trying to stop your child’s fury will only make it worse.

Like many parents, you may have used different types of anger management on your child in the past when he was in the throes of his explosion. You might have given in to his demands, or gotten angry and threatened him with punishment. You may even have tried reasoning with him. But any of these attempts probably just prolonged the tantrum and deepened its intensity. Remember, your child feels like the tantrum was a success once he has an audience and/or gets a reaction from you. What you want to do instead is make the annoying behavior as ineffective as possible—and to do this, you must ignore it. When ignoring it is no longer possible, separate yourself from the tantruming child. Separation is necessary until the tantrum is over. Understand that this is not a punishment. Let your child know that he’s welcome to return when he is calm. In effect, you’re saying to your child, “You are welcome to tantrum but not around me. And it won’t get you what you want.” If you continually make the behavior ineffective, there will be fewer tantrums.

What to Do When Your Child or Teen is Angry and Defiant

Teens who are oppositional, defiant or angry much of the time will frequently try to draw you into arguments and power struggles. The best thing you can do is be your solid self and figure out what your limits are: what will you or won’t you put up with? Then disengage and let your child learn how to regulate his emotions of disappointment and frustration. And when I say “disengage,” I mean truly disengage. One word of caution: disengaging can enrage people, so don’t do it as a reactive, emotional response to your child. You can calmly say, “You have my answer. We can talk about this when we’ve both calmed down,” and then walk away. After that, don’t respond to him or “get into it” again, no matter how much he tries to draw you in. Your child’s goal is to keep things stirred up and continue the engagement with you. The more you react, the more he’ll pull you in, so you’re just fueling the power struggle if you continue. Now let’s say you go into your bedroom, but your child keeps banging on the door or keeps coming in to argue with you. Just ignore his attempts to pull you in—turn on the radio or the TV. If your child is old enough, you can go for a walk or a drive. Note: If you feel endangered at any point—if your child is kicking down your door, for example, or threatening you—then one option is to call the police and tell them you don’t feel safe.

5 Tips to Help You Deal with Your Angry Child Effectively

Here are five things you can do that won’t escalate the situation—or result in a power struggle—when your child is angry:

You can’t manage anyone’s feelings or behaviors—stop trying. You will only increase your child’s anger and resistance. Let him feel what he’s feeling; allow him to sit in his anger or disappointment. Remember, finding ways to cope with his uncomfortable feelings is a crucial part of developing into a mature adult.
Try to see your child as objectively and clearly as possible. Work on becoming emotionally separate enough to be able to see him without taking his behavior personally—or taking it on yourself. Understand what your child might be going through by seeing things through his lenses, not yours. Allow him to have feelings that make you uncomfortable.
Your child is not you. By accepting that your child has feelings that make you uncomfortable, you can better determine your response—and ways you can be most useful to her. And you can best help her manage her strong emotions by managing your own.
Think instead of react. Ask yourself, “When my child gets angry, what gets stirred up in me? What can I do with my feelings that won’t add fuel to the fire?” Remind yourself that your child’s job is not to behave or feel the way you think he should so that you can feel good—that’s your job. Your child is entitled to his own experiences. Pause and think, “What are the values and principles I want to live by in response to my child’s behavior?”
Wait until your child asks you for help in managing their anger. If you try to jump in and give advice without your child’s consent, she’ll probably feel you attempting to change her—and she’ll resist and get even angrier. If she asks for guidance or seems open to hearing ideas, you can talk to her and help her discover her triggers—the things you’ve observed that cause her to get angry or melt down. It might happen more when she’s tired, hungry or stressed about a test, for example. Maybe your teen daughter gets upset when her tween sister takes her things without asking. Talk to her about what you’ve observed. Next, help her with a plan of action. For older kids, it’s often useful to give them an acronym, like STOP, to help them calm down. This stands for “Slow down, Think, Options, and Proceed.” So an example conversation might be,

Next time you’re really angry, Slow down and take a breath. Think about what you want to do or say. And then review your Options. Next, Proceed to action. Think about what you could do instead of screaming at your sister or pulling her hair. What will you do differently instead of getting into trouble?

Remember, attempting to control or manage anger is going to make it worse, not better. Get yourself out of that role and try to understand what’s going on with your child and see things from her point of view. Ask yourself, “Is it really anger at me that I’m trying to deal with, or is my teen son angry at everything in general?” Pay attention. If his anger is impacting you, you’ll have a different response than if he’s upset about his homework. Use “I” statements with him to let you know how he’s impacting you. “I don’t like it when you yell at me as soon as you walk in the door.” If your child is often angry at his teachers, his friends, or his siblings, then you can simply empathize and try listening reflectively by paraphrasing what he’s saying. Just be there with him—not joined to him, feeling as if you have to calm him down every time he’s upset about something. Instead of getting into his box, sit next to it. You can say, “Wow, that must’ve been tough. Let me hear more about it. What do you think you can do about that? What really got you upset there? Let me know if you want some of my thoughts on this—I think I could help.”

Instead of blocking communication by judging, criticizing, shaming, ordering or lecturing, just listen. When your child feels truly accepted for who he is and where he is in his life, then he’ll be free to move on from there. He’ll begin to think how he wants to change and will begin to understand that inappropriate behaviors will no longer work to get him what he wants.

Calm Parenting: Anger Management in Children and Teens is reprinted with permission from Empowering Parents.

This post was contributed by Debbie Pincus. For more than 25 years, Debbie has offered compassionate and effective therapy and coaching, helping individuals, couples and parents to heal themselves and their relationships. Debbie is the creator of the Calm Parent AM & PM program and is also the author of numerous books for young people on interpersonal relations.

Five Steps to Better Baby Sleep Habits

February 20, 2012 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

If your baby falls asleep on his or her own and consistently sleeps through the night, this article isn’t for you. This article is for parents of nap resisters and bedtime fussers, of late-night wakers and early risers. In other words, it is for most parents of most babies. For you, here are five steps toward a longer, more consistent night of sleep for your baby.

Step 1: Establish A Nightly Routine

You should have a fixed routine leading up to bedtime with the same steps in the same order every night. For example, after dinner you might have an hour of play time, then a bath, change into pajamas, a warm bottle, book and then bed. These are more than just necessary preparations; these are sensory cues – the warmth of the bath, the soft touch of pajamas, the sound of your voice reading a book – that relax your baby and prepare him or her for sleep. When you do the same things every night, it teaches your baby that there are a series of steps and that when they’re over, it’s time for bed. Do it right and your baby will fall asleep seconds after hitting the mattress.

Step 2: Focus On The Evening Meal

A lot of parents think that the last bottle of the evening is most important for keeping the baby content overnight. This certainly matters, but I think that the evening meal of solid food (for babies that can have it) is even more important. When our boys started waking up earlier (4 a.m.) at around 6 months of age and after they’d been sleeping through the night, we eventually figured out that the problem was hunger. The last bottle wasn’t holding them over – they needed more solid food at dinner. So we topped off at dinner time with an extra bowl of single-grain cereal and it had them sleeping 2-4 hours longer almost every night. However, solid food needs some time to settle. Thus, it’s better to do the solid food at dinner, then offer a bottle just before bed.

Step 3: Set An Early Bedtime

Many parents think that “Early to bed, early to rise,” applies to babies so they keep their babies up later in hopes of them sleeping in later. This just doesn’t work for babies (or toddlers, for that matter). They’re hard-wired to go to sleep early, say an hour or two after dinner. Any later than that and they tend to get cranky and over-tired. Setting an early bedtime lets your baby match up sleep with circadian rhythms, the body’s natural response to light and dark that triggers sleep hormones. They sleep better, and almost always longer, if you put them to bed early rather than keeping them up late. It also frees up your evening so you can spend time with your spouse and other children. You have to try this one!

Step 4: Let Your Baby Fall Asleep In The Crib

A cornerstone of successful sleep habits is teaching your baby to fall asleep in the crib on his or her own. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t rock your baby or read a book at bedtime, of course. The important thing is that you put your baby in bed before he or she falls asleep. Otherwise, you could be rocking for half an hour or longer, only to have your baby wake when you put him down. Worse, this conditions your baby to expect to fall asleep in your arms. Put him in bed, insert the pacifier, and leave the room.

Step 5: Soothe Your Baby Back To Sleep

Even if you do everything right, your baby will occasionally wake up at odd times overnight. When your baby is old enough (say around 3 months), you can often get away with not feeding the baby and instead just soothing him back to sleep. Enter the room quietly and look at your baby. Is he moving? Are his eyes open? If not, you have an excellent chance of avoiding waking him up to eat. First, find and re-insert the pacifier. Touch your baby’s head softly and whisper to him. Tuck the blanket back in. Often, this is enough to comfort a baby back to sleep. If not, pick up and rock your baby a bit. If you can avoid feeding or changing the diaper, do it. Your baby will stay drowsy and might sleep for hours more.

Try all of these things, and I hope you’ll see a difference with your baby. Good luck!

This post was contributed by Dan Koboldt, a father of three and the author of Get Your Baby to Sleep, a blog about establishing good sleep habits, soothing techniques, and getting your baby to sleep through the night.

Summer Camp Survival Guide: Don’t Let Bedwetting Prevent Your Child from Enjoying Summer Camp-Guest Post

May 20, 2011 by Kathryn 1 Comment

When I was a child, I had problems with bedwetting. I was a very deep sleeper and I simply didn’t wake up when I needed to use the bathroom. It was frustrating for me and, of course, for my mother, but most of the time it didn’t really affect my day-to-day life.

Then one day my babysitter, who was a close friend of my mother and like a second mom to me, invited me to come along on a trip she was taking. I was incredibly excited and begged my mom to let me go, but she told me that she didn’t want to make my babysitter deal with my bedwetting problem and so I couldn’t go. The fact that I remember this event in detail 25 years later is proof of how disappointed and hurt I was.

Bedwetting is a fact of life for many kids and fortunately it is usually easily dealt with in the home without a need for anyone else to know about it. But summer, the time of family vacations and overnight camps, can be a much more challenging and stressful time for a child battling bedwetting. That’s why I’m excited to bring you this informative and useful guest post by author Ann Douglas, which is full of information that any parent whose child wets the bed will want to read. Enjoy!

Summer Camp Survival Guide: Don’t Let Bedwetting Prevent Your Child from Enjoying Summer Camp
By Ann Douglas

Your daughter is heading off to summer camp. She should be looking forward to making new friends and trying new activities, like the ropes course that this camp is famous for, but the only thing that’s on her mind is what could happen in the middle of the night, after campfire singalongs and ghost stories. What if she wakes up in the middle of the night and discovers that her sleeping bag is wet?

A child who has a problem with bedwetting does a lot of thinking and worrying; a lot of planning and avoiding. Many decide to forgo the summer camp experience entirely, for fear of having their secret discovered. It’s one thing, after all, to wet your bed when you’re at home in your own bedroom. It’s quite another to wake up in a wet sleeping bag in a tent full of other campers.

And yet bedwetting is an all-too-common experience for Canadian kids:

More than 500,000 Canadian children aged five years and older struggle with bedwetting, and, among those over the age of seven, the condition is twice as common in boys as it is in girls.
Bedwetting tends to run in families: if both parents wet the bed when they were young, there is an 80% chance their child will wet the bed; if only one parent wet the bed, there’s a 50% chance; and if neither parent wet the bed, there’s just a 15% chance.

What makes bedwetting a particularly painful and isolating experience for those children who experience it is the fact that many adults fail to understand that bedwetting is a medical condition—that a child who wets the bed can’t control the bedwetting simply by trying harder or wanting the bed to stay dry. If that were the case, there would hardly be any wet beds at all. Kids who struggle with bedwetting want nothing more than to stay dry.

Unfortunately, their bodies aren’t ready to stay dry quite yet. Typically, once children achieve daytime dryness, nighttime dryness follows soon after. But, for some kids, it takes a little longer. Eventually, the body will slows down urine production at night; and the child will wake on their own when the child’s bladder is full and go to the bathroom as opposed to wetting the bed.

So what can you do to help your child in the meantime: if she’s still wetting the bed and she’d like to go to summer camp?

Set up an appointment with your child’s doctor

Your child’s doctor will take a complete medical history, conduct a thorough physical examination, and test a sample of your child’s urine. This will allow the doctor to rule out any other medical issues that could result in bedwetting, such as urinary tract infections, problems with the urinary tract, diabetes, sleep apnea, and constipation. Once a diagnosis has been reached, your child’s doctor will be able to help you come up with a plan for minimizing the impact of bedwetting on your child’s summer camp experience. A treatment for bedwetting will be recommended, based on the type and severity of your child’s symptoms. Both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments are available.

One of the treatments your child’s doctor might suggest is DDAVP® Melt, a product that treats the root causes of bedwetting by limiting nighttime urine production. (The DDAVP® Melt formulation dissolves quickly under the tongue without the need to consume water, eliminating the need for children to drink fluids or to swallow a tablet at bedtime.)

Talk to the summer camp director

Find out how camp staff typically deal with incidents of bedwetting at camp; and talk about ways you would like the staff to support your child, should an incident occur during her time at camp.

Suggest that the camp minimize the amount of fluid your child consumes right before bedtime; that your child avoid drinks with caffeine (a diuretic) throughout the day; and that the camp staff encourage your child to use the bathroom right before bedtime. Let the camp director know that your doctor has prescribed DDAVP® Melt for your child.

Reassure your child

Let your child know that she’s not the only child in this situation: that other kids will be heading off to camp with the same worry about bedwetting as she has.

Reassure her DDAVP® Melt has been prescribed for her to minimize the risk of an accident at camp.

Let her know that it’s important to go to the bathroom before she goes to bed and she should minimize her pre-bedtime drinks.

Make sure she has a flashlight (plus spare batteries) so that she can find her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Tell her what to do in the event that she has an accident: she simply needs to let a camp counsellor know and they will ensure that her sleeping bag or the bedding on her bunk gets washed during the day.

Finally, congratulate yourself and your (soon-to-be) happy camper for going ahead with the summer camp plans. By tackling the bedwetting issue head-on, you’re ensuring that your child has the opportunity to enjoy the stuff of which summer camp memories are made.

For more information about bedwetting, please visit www.savvymom.ca and www.medbroadcast.com/bedwetting