One of my TMP Times members wrote in about her 4.5 year old son. She'd been trying the two-choices script (i.e., βYou have two choices - blue jacket or red one, this shirt or that oneβ), and he wasn't having it.
She wrote: "He 'sees through' that and realizes that there is a decision behind tha...
The one thing that moves your kid, the guilt of pulling it, and what summer does to make it worse.
It's June. School's out, there's no schedule, no real plan for the day, and somehow it's only 2 in the afternoon. You handed him the iPad a while ago because you needed 20 minutes to yourself, and...
"Mine! That's MINE!"
He's 3, and the floaty is technically his. He carried it all the way in from the car very proudly, the large plastic device nearly bigger than him. Once we finally arrived at the pool, he set it down to get his sunscreen on and shoes off.
In those 4 seconds of putting it do...
After reading this, you'll know why your child's summer dysregulation isn't regression and what to actually do in the first week before the whole thing unravels.
It was early morning and I was in the kitchen when I heard my 3-year-old, full volume, losing it at his older sister.
His screaming i...
One of you sent in a question a few weeks ago that I think many of you reading this can relate to,
She described her 8-year-old daughter as fiercely independent, full of life, and expressive. Sheβs the kind of kid who sings while she does everything, and her mom loves that about her. The proble...
This week, a TMP Times member wrote in about her 8-year-old son.
Every day, he plays in the lane behind their house. It's a good setup. Itβs safe, supervised enough, and close to home. She gives him a 5-minute warning before it's time to come in. She pre-plans. She follows through on consequenc...
"He will acknowledge us and keep on trucking."
I read that line from one of your survey questions and honestly just sat with it for a second. This detail is such a specific kind of frustrating. At least when a child ignores you completely, you can tell yourself maybe they didn't hear you. When ...
She saw you. You know she did, because for one brief second your eyes locked, and then she turned around and ran straight back to her friends like you weren't even there. π« ππ€¬
You said her name and then you said it again, with that edge creeping into your voice that you hate hearing come out of y...
"It's time to brush teeth."
"It's time to put on shoes."
"It's time to get in the bath."
With each request, your 3-year-old looks at you, grins, and runs away laughing or flat-out says "NO!" and refuses to move.
Every single daily task becomes a 20-minute negotiation that ends with you physical...
A mom during a coaching call described her nightly dinner battle: "If my 5-year-old son doesn't eat enough lunch at school, I make him finish dinner before dessert. He just refuses, gets upset, and hits me."
The problem was that she was fighting a battle she could never win.
You cannot force fo...
A parent in my coaching community recently told me something that broke my heart.
"We finally had a breakthrough. Four, maybe five days in a row where my son didn't hit or bite anyone. I thought we'd turned a corner. Then my mom came to visit for the weekend, and it all fell apart. The hitting ...
Last Saturday, I started my toddler's bedtime routine around 4 PM. We went upstairs for bath time. At first, he didn't want to take a bath.
"NO BATH!" he screamed.
So I leaned into what he loves: CARS. "What cars need a car wash today?" I asked. Immediately, he grabbed his blue airplane (yes, t...
