Most people these days know not to drink their hot coffee over the baby’s head while nursing. But one issue that has become a widely spread problem today is the television exposure of babies and young children. More and more babies are put in front of televisions while parents are convinced they are stimulating their little Einstein’s brain and preparing baby for Harvard. This perception is wrong. Even if they are watching so-called educational baby videos, these babies are not getting what they need the most: Interaction with parents, siblings, care-givers. The American Academy of Pediatrics has put it very clearly: Children under age 2 should not watch any TV.

To develop healthy social interactions and stimulate a baby’s brain there is nothing more important than human contact. For a baby-friendly living space, make sure the TV is turned off (it also distracts adults from paying attention to the baby). Hold the baby, cuddle, laugh together and look into each other’s eyes. Have some colorful baby toys of different textures to stimulate the baby’s senses. This is how your baby learns, not by watching colors go by on a TV screen.

Patty Pless MD, PCI Certified Parent Coach®, www.familyequilibrium.com

As temperatures keep dropping and snow is imminent, you are tormented between forcing your child to wear appropriate clothing for the weather or fearing social services knocking on your door for neglecting your child’s needs for warm clothes. Forcing your child, you know, will lead to a fight of life and death between you and your child. Ignoring the issue will leave you worried about your child’s well-being and feeling somewhat inadequate as a parent.
I have several thoughts about this (and many years of first-hand experience of going through this struggle).
Some children have a very hard time dealing with changes. Any kind of changes, really. They are not putting up a fight just because they like to fight so much. It is their only way of saying: “Mom, I have a really hard time getting used to doing something different than what I have done over the past four months. (Which was jumping into a T-shirt and shorts every morning)”. These children don’t have the ability of seeing past their inner resistance, understanding it and learning to deal with it – yet. They need your help. Screaming contests won’t make it any easier for them and won’t teach them much for the future of how to deal with changes, either. Here are some ideas of how you can help your child in this situation:

• Don’t have these discussions in the morning when everyone has to rush out the door to be on time for school and work. Even if your child is dressed inappropriately for the weather that morning, let it go.

• Take a quiet moment to talk to your child about the changing season and temperature. Talk about the fact that changes in clothing will be necessary.

• Ask your child for input! Give him/her some control over how and when they would like to make the change to warmer clothing. Let your child come up with a plan. Children are more likely to follow through if they have a say.

• These children need a gradual approach to changes with some time to getting used to them. Take changes in small steps and leave time for anticipation. Example: Next Monday, we can start by wearing a sweater over your T-shirt. The Monday after, you can choose between wearing long pants or shoes with socks (instead of flip-flops).

Let’s look at a different group of children who might give you a hard time with changing clothes: Children who have special sensitivities to certain types of clothing or materials. These sensitivities are real and those children are not trying to be defiant just for the fun of it. They could resist wearing the long pants because they just don’t feel right on their legs. The tag in the back of the long-sleeve sweater could be irritating enough that the child will refuse to wear it. With these children you can save yourself a lot of aggravation when you follow these steps:

• Go through your child’s wardrobe for the winter along with your child. Ask your child to point out which clothes he/she likes to wear and which ones not. Then go through the ones he/she doesn’t like and ask what specifically is the problem with those pieces of clothing. Children really appreciate being taken seriously and you might be surprised at their comments.

• Brainstorm together about what could make those clothes easier to wear for your child. Again, let your child come up with solutions. Cutting a tag or wearing a favorite T-shirt under a insufferable sweater might do the trick.

• In the future, you might be better off taking a child with sensitivities to certain types of clothing to the store with you. You need their input in choosing their clothes which will prevent fights over wearing them later on. Have them try on every piece of clothing before you buy it.

Now let’s talk about children who don’t seem to have any real issues but like the power struggle with their parents over which clothes to wear. For these children, the best approach is letting them experience “natural consequences”. This means that you bite your tongue even when you are wearing your down winter jacket while your child insists on going to school in shorts. Some children need to experience on their own body what it means to be cold before they change what they wear. This is what is important with this approach:

• Don’t nag; just give matter-of-fact information about the weather and temperature for the day. You can suggest what type of clothing would be appropriate, but then let the topic rest.

• Don’t make the child feel bad when they come back into the house and want to change their clothes to something warmer. “You see, didn’t I tell you…” or “Finally, you have come to your senses…” doesn’t help your child. Just be happy about having an independent child who just made a good decision.

• Some children really don’t feel cold as easily as others. Accept your child for who they are and trust them. That’s the best way to raise an independent and self-confident child.

• No, your child won’t be catching a deadly virus from walking around in shorts and T-shirt when most people are already wearing long pants. You can relax and let your children get cold once before they realize themselves that warmer clothing might be a good idea. A lot of the stress around appropriate clothing for the weather comes from parental anxiety.

If nothing works and you are at your wit’s end, you have one ace up your sleeve: While your child is in school, have all summer clothes disappear magically into the attic. The next morning your child will have the option of wearing whatever weather appropriate clothing you left in his/her closet or go to school in pajamas. Your child might be very upset about this, but will get over his/her initial anger. The important thing for you is to stay calm and state matter-of-factly that your child can pick anything from his closet to wear to school that day. The next morning, getting dressed is most likely going to be a non-issue.

Patty Pless MD, PCI Certified Parent Coach®, www.familyequilibrium.com

Patience and delayed gratification is very difficult for children. I teach both concepts to my children with a point system. They earn points (colored paper snippets) for chores they do every day. Once a week, I open my “shop” where they can buy items with their points. The shop includes cheap items from the dollar store as well as that Red Sox shirt they have been asking for or new markers my daughter thought she really needed in the middle of the school year. Weeks before Halloween their very much wished for Star Wars costumes could be found in my shop. The bigger items cost more than the smaller, just like when I bought them. The children have learned to handle the big dissappointment when they find out that they are missing just one or two points to buy the item they really want. But this is life! You can’t have it until you can pay for it. They asked me if they could play with the costumes until they could buy them next week. Well, no, you can’t do that at Target either – until you have the money to pay and take home the costume!

I like this system because it teaches several skills at the same time:

1. Doing a chore to earn points (work to earn money)
2. Learn patience if there are not enough points for the item they really want
3. Handle the disappointment in a safe environment
4. Learn to make decisions between buying something small for the feeling of immediate gratification or choosing to save up for a bigger item while passing on the still tempting smaller ones.

Patty Pless MD, PCI Certified Parent Coach®, www.familyequilibrium.com

Surprises can happen! In the afternoon while helping my son with his homework, he suddenly said: “You know, mom, how it is hard for me to get up in the morning when you wake me up and I am still asleep?” I answered: “Yes, I have noticed, you tend to get really angry.” He continued: “I would like to tell you how to wake me up so that I don’t get angry.” Amazed and a little afraid of what kind of unreasonable requests might come next, I said: “That sounds like a great idea. Tell me.” This was his request: “I want you to come into my bed and lie down next to me. Give me some kisses and caress me a few times. Then I will get up without a problem.” Sounded easy to me. Adding my part of the deal, I gave him a little warning that while I would love to follow these directions, I wouldn’t be able to lie in bed with him for a long time, since I had so much to do at that time of the day. This was a two minute conversation that came up out of the blue.

Next morning, I was ready for the test. I had overslept and was under time pressure, my son was deep asleep. This could have been a nightmare scenario. I controlled my urge to walk into the room and say: “Come on, get up, we are late.” Instead, I crawled into his bed, kissed him a few times and caressed his arm. While I was telling him that I had overslept, he sat up with a smile (!!!!) started to climb out of his bed with his eyes half closed to get dressed. He left me sitting in his bed with my mouth open. Then he said: “You see, I told you I would get up without a problem if you woke me up like this”. I thanked him and rushed downstairs to make breakfast. I had spent less time snuggling with him briefly in bed than on the days when I had woken him up “my” way and we had started the day in a good mood. What an accomplishment!

So much about allowing our children to help us find solutions to our every day struggles.
Have you asked your child for advice today?

Patty Pless MD, PCI Certified Parent Coach®, www.familyequilibrium.com

1. Take your time

Stress is generated by not having enough time. Do you already feel stressed when you are trying to leave the house on time in the morning, to get everyone ready for school, to get yourself ready for work, to prepare lunchboxes for everyone, to set up the gear for after-school activities? Did everyone eat their breakfast? What about making sure that everyone brushes his or her teeth? You have to go to the bathroom NOW? Everyone is yelling, running around like headless chickens. And, well, you are late.

Let’s try to reduce the chaos by allowing enough time for the critical activities. Is getting your kids out of bed in the morning part of the problem? Does it take 15 minutes until they finally crawl out of bed? Are those the 15 minutes that are missing later at a time when you would like to leave the house? So, let’s set the alarm 15 minutes earlier or, even better, 30 minutes earlier. What could be better than having 15 minutes of spare time in the end? Of course, that implies that the kids actually did everything on time and in the amount of time you had scheduled for the task. Otherwise you might be happy to have started 30 minutes early!

In general, make it your goal to arrive 10 minutes early anywhere important you need to be. That gives you a little time to breathe. Some people find it helpful to set their watch five minutes early. But no cheating: Just because you know that you have a five minute grace period, that doesn’t mean you can now arrive at 12:05 instead of 12:00!

2. Think about whether or not an issue is really worth getting upset about

Is it more stressful to get upset about your son having wiped his chocolate milk mouth on his now no longer white shirt at breakfast or would it save you some adrenalin to just calmly let him know that he needs to change his shirt before he leaves to school? There is a pile of laundry that needs to be washed anyway. One more shirt probably doesn’t make a big difference. I know that you are saying “one shirt doesn’t make a difference, but seven do (one for every breakfast!!!).” I would, indeed, try to educate your son to better manners and provide a napkin in that critical moment. But this is something you can talk about in a quiet moment (maybe once you have everyone buckled in the car and they can’t run away). Having an emotional outbreak at the breakfast table won’t help anyone involved.

This is just one small example of many situations parents face every day, at home and at work. Try to catch yourself when you feel you are beginning to get upset over something. For a second consider if it’s really worth spilling all that adrenalin. Maybe you can just drop the issue without saying much? Could you talk instead of screaming? Or could you postpone addressing the topic later when calmer feelings prevail? There are actions which certainly call for immediate action. They usually concern safety and the breaking of important rules (i.e., no hitting). A lot of the other scenarios that get parents upset include the so-called nuisances – repetitive or annoying behaviors. Getting stressed over these issues is most likely not going to change them – it’s a vicious cycle. It needs to be interrupted by changing the parents’ behavior and by discussing the problematic behavior with the child at a different time, when things are calm.

The key is to relax the demands we put on ourselves.

3. Think and talk positively

During a day full of challenges and stress it can be hard to stay positive. Parents end up nagging their children a great deal and at night parents end up talking about all the difficult and impossible moments of the day. Remember the song “always look at the bright side of life?” It does help to compel yourself to just leave the bad moments of the day behind and focus on the positive. When you find yourself thinking and talking about what didn’t work that day, think and talk about something good instead. It will make you feel better and take some of the stress and worries away. If you changed your son’s wet and poopy underwear 3 times that day because he seems to be resisting potty training, think about the fact that this won’t last forever and that he will not be soiling his underwear by the time high school comes around!

Put things into perspective and choose consciously to look at them from the positive side rather than from the negative. It will enrich your life. This approach certainly will not ensure life’s important challenges will fade, but it changes how you deal with them and that in turn will bring on less stress.

4. Delegate

Delegate some tasks to anyone who crosses your mind or path. That definitely starts with your children: Ask yourself what repetitive tasks you are performing for them that could become their own obligation. You are trying to nurture responsible, independent human beings. After you emptied half-eaten meal pieces out of yesterday’s lunch box, washed the box, made a new lunch, would it be too much to ask from an elementary school child to remember to put his lunch in his backpack along with his homework?
Every child should also have a simple job in the house, like taking out the trash or the recycling box, making her bed or clearing her plate and cup from the table after meals. In the beginning those tasks need reminders, they might not be done perfectly, but after a while they become real help – and they help engender responsible children.

On your to-delegate list you could next have your spouse and close family members. If they are unavailable or tied up, see if your budget allows for salaried help. That could include a house cleaning service once every two weeks or someone who could do your laundry. Or it could mean that you get to leave the house by yourself for one hour every week. These are important stress reduction measures that should be planned in advance and something you can look forward to.

Don’t be afraid to delegate. There is no way you can or should do everything in your and your family’s life. Delegating does not mean that you failed in doing your job. It just means that you are smart in staying sane and healthy and that you can still enjoy life.

5. Include a relaxing moment in your daily routine

Everyone knows: After you had 15 minutes (or even 10!) to yourself without anyone calling your name, you feel like a new person. You are then ready to tackle the rest of the day with all the challenges it might bring. It doesn’t matter if you are a stay-at-home mom or a parent juggling both career and kids. A built-in quiet time to recharge every day helps everyone.

If you are a parent of young children you could for instance start by introducing “quiet time” for the children in the house. With four young children and a dog on tow, in my own home, this means that everyone gets to be in a different room for one hour every day. Only books and some simple quiet games (like puzzles or toy cars) are acceptable. Kids who still nap are brought to bed at the same time that the older ones stay in a room for a quiet period. We typically set a timer so that the kids don’t have to ask constantly when time is up. Our doggy usually goes to a different room with the door closed, as he typically barks when everyone is asleep and quiet! We even used to post a note on the door for the UPS guy who always rang the bell during our sacred time just to announce that he left a package in front of the door. “Leave the package and don’t ring the bell!”

There are two key things to make this work: 1. Be consistent. There is no day without this quiet period unless you are not at home. 2. Adults have to do “quiet time” at the same time as the kids. If the kids hear all kinds of interesting noises in the house it is hard for them to stay hush in their room. But what could be better than to be forced to take a little nap yourself or lie down to read a few pages or have a coffee in peace or go to the bathroom all by yourself!!!

Patty Pless MD, PCI Certified Parent Coach®, www.familyequilibrium.com

One of the conversations I had with my husband before our first child was born was my wish to let our children feel that they count as contributing persons in our family.

As we went through very turbulent first 10 years of being parents to four kids, I sometimes found myself stuck in parenting challenges that seemed to repeat themselves over and over. The children and I would create a behavioral pattern that we just couldn’t get ourselves out off – sometimes for weeks to months. Those patterns often stayed unconscious until during an analyzing session while not being able to fall asleep at night, I would recognize the pattern. At that point I was finally able to say: “Let’s do something about this problem”. Easier said than done. We had been stuck on it for a while because I obviously hadn’t seen an easy way to solve the problem.

When I finally had no other ideas anymore and was at the end of my rope about one of the children’s behaviors, I one day asked my child in desperation: “What should we do? Every time you do A, I do B and then you do C. Do you have any ideas what we can do to change the situation?”

And then I was left standing with my mouth open. My 5-year-old had some unbelievable insight into what was happening and why. In his childlike simple and straightforward thinking process, he was able to come up with some comments and ideas that really helped the situation. I just had never thought of asking him for his advice!

This was not an hour long discussion nor did it feel like a therapy session between my son and me. It was nothing else than for a moment stepping out of my I-know-everything parenting role and allowing myself to ask my inexperienced young child to share his thought process with me. I am everything else but an advocate for anti-authoritarian parenting. In my opinion, parents need to be consistent and set clear limits and rules when raising children. But while doing that, they should not forget that children have wisdom inside them that parents should sometimes tap into, without feeling that they are thereby losing their authority.

Children who are asked for their opinions and are allowed to participate in decision making will grow their self-esteem and will learn to become more independent. Apart from that they might actually have something valuable to contribute to the family. Why not give it a try before the next time of going through the nightmare routine of bringing your little ones to bed? Ask your children what they think could be done in order for things to run smoother during the bewitching hours.

Patty Pless MD, PCI Certified Parent Coach®, www.familyequilibrium.com