I just did a toilet training workshop for 30 parents of 2-3 year olds. We had a lot of laughs since no matter how old you are potty humor is still pretty funny. But when we got down to business, it was clear that the idea of “pushing kids” as being psychologically damaging is still alive and well in the 21st century.

Parents are nervous to take the lead, be the teacher, and guide their children to understand how their body works and how to use the potty. In the effort not to “push,” parents don’t take action but rather the talk, talk, talk, cajole, reminding them that their friend Sally is in underpants, asking them if they want to use the potty. They hope against hope that these toddlers will just come to their senses and agree. Anyone who has toilet trained a kid knows – you can’t just talk them into it.

You need to put in the time. Naked time, reading stories on the potty time, hang around the house time. Explaining time, cleaning up accidents time. laughing about tushies and poop and penises time.

Your approach to potty training should be one of  guidance and comfort, but expectations as well. As one mom kept saying, “Oh, so you just keep teaching!?” Correct, teaching it is!

A friend/colleague and I were window shopping and strolling up Broadway. We were commiserating about how hard it is to stay centered in the parenting trenches. A veteran meditator and psychologist, she talked about a class she teaches in mindfulness and parenting. Mindfulness is a moment by moment practice of trying to stay present, grounded, strong and aware. Practicing mindfulness allows people to truly experience their life, avoiding the waste of time ruminating over the past or worrying about the future. The practice helps people make clear, kind and healthy decisions.

We happened to pass a great shoe store and laughed that we should go in and practice mindfulness in the service of buying shoes! So with a few boxes in front of us, we began.

Step 1: Take a comfortable seat and get grounded. Check.

Step 2: Breathe deeply in and out and find a calm, relaxed breathing pattern. Check.

Step 3:  Observe. Check.

Hmmmm. The brown high heels with the laces, or the black wedgies? Brown? Black?

Step 4: Scan your body for sensation.

I wobble in the dangerously high wedgies. I take a few steps in the laces. They feel a little tight. I ask for a 1/2 size bigger and my feet feel comfortable.

Step 5: Let your heart speak. I sit. I breathe. The awesomely fierce wedges or the perfectly fitted, brown, quirky heels. A deep breath in and out and my heart chooses… The brown with the laces!!!!!!

So if you are faced with a similarly serious dilemma, use these same steps as you consider your options. For example, you walk in on your two children crying and one has a truck held high in his hand. Observe, breathe, consider your options. Scream? Separate them? Yank the truck? Timeout for the truck yielder? Comfort to the crier? Don’t react until you find yourself  in a calm place. Let your heart speak. Comforting the crier wins!!!!! Mindfulness is so helpful, be it sandal shopping or disciplining your children. It’s a way of being that puts you in the driver’s seat of your life.

Your baby is always learning. Whether you are singing to your baby, shaking a rattle for them, or running errands, your baby is taking in the world and learning. When it comes to play, the trusted adults and the physical world are your baby’s best playmate. No need for fancy toys – simple rattles, balls, books and blocks will do. Playing peek-a-boo, singing, crawling around and tickling will do more for your baby than any organized class for infants.

Of course, the kind of play that you engage in with your baby depends greatly on his attention span and tolerance for stimulation. Parents can quickly learn the signs that a baby is enjoying the play or needs  a break and is becoming overstimulated.  Clearly a smiling and laughing baby is having a great time – keep it up!  A baby who diverts his gaze away from a parent or turns away is needing a break. Usually a baby will give one of these more subtle signs before crying.  Of course, if he begins to cry, then he is unequivocally saying “enough!”

And moms-pay attention! Research has shown that active play with kids, the kind most typical of dads, affords kids great advantages in terms of their social competence, emotional development, as well as verbal reasoning and problem solving.  So let their dads play away and don’t try to get them to play like you. They have their own style and it is just as important as more toned down play.

Let your baby explore the world on their own. Using their own senses and being the masters of their fun is important as well. If they are content and “doing their own thing” you are not being neglectful. Let them keep growing that ability to entertain themselves.

Children need clear limits and guidance. From the end of the first year of life on, setting parameters about what is, and what is not appropriate behavior is the bulk of your job. Setting limits and clear expectations is not a punitive action – it is teaching. The goal is to raise a person who uses good judgment.

Proactive discipline-telling your child what is expected of them up front, increases the likelihood of their following the rules. We often go into situations “hoping” our kids will behave instead of telling them what goals, expectations and consequences exist right off the bat.

For example, before you go into the playground with your four-year old, have a quick conversation:

“Ok, so remember the rules: No hitting, no pushing, no throwing sand. If you do that you will have to sit on the bench with me for a little while. If you do it again then we will have to leave the playground. So what are the rules?”

“No hitting, no throwing sand and no hurting!”

“Right! So let’s go in and have fun.”

Your child has a clear road map of what is to come. The rules, the expectations, and without anger, the consequences. Chances are, your child will not be able to follow those rules on many occasions–that’s part of childhood, they are learning. Your job as a parent is to teach them the rules and follow through on the consequences.

After the upset has died down and everyone is calm, talk about the experience. Hear their perspective and feelings. Let them know that even though they make mistakes, break the rules, have trouble controlling themselves, that there is an open forum to talk about their grievances. Clear rules coupled with deep conversation later helps to stay connected and allows children to understand and control their behavior.

So, worst case scenario you had to take your child from the park kicking and screaming. Next time you go say, “Remember what happened last time when you threw sand? We had to leave.” They will vividly remember. “Follow our rules and we won’t have to go home early!” You’ve got a better chance of follow through on their part this time. This example of limit setting can be applied to almost every situation and activity in your young child’s life. After repetition, you will begin to see their automatic recognition of what is acceptable behavior. Keep in mind – your children are counting on you to guide them.

The best way to help your child move from one situation to another is to teach them how to say goodbye. From playing with toys to going in the tub, leaving the park to getting in the stroller, small children have a hard time moving from activity to activity. They really know how to “be in the moment”. They are so involved in what they are doing that moving to a new place and stopping their play is hard and upsetting.

Modeling “saying bye bye” — to the truck, to the park, to the bath tub, gives them a sense of control and closure. It may feel silly to say “OK, Janie say goodbye to sand box, bye bye sandbox” while you are waving to a mound of sand — but parents attest to its magic. Transitions become a little less fraught and kids are more willing to let go of an activity because they themselves have bid a fond farewell.

Whether you feel silly or elated when you talk to your baby in “baby talk”, you should know that you are doing one of your most important jobs as a parent. The high pitched, drawn out, sing songy, repetitive “parent speak”, as it is now called in the field of infant research, is the perfect way to communicate with your baby. “Parent speak” is innate and cross cultural. It is a foundation of language development.

Often you hear parents say they want to talk to their child like they are more grown up so they will learn to speak more quickly, or with more sophistication. They fight the instinct to speak in baby talk. It’s helpful to know that it is precisely speaking this way that paves the way for complex conversation.

Ellen Galinsky, a seasoned professional in child development, lays out the most important research in the field of language acquisition in her new book “Mind in the Making”.  Some of  the best infant research show that parent speak also regulates the mood of the baby and helps children get into the quiet, alert state in which they learn best. So go ahead, make a fool of yourself with abandon- it’s educational!

This post from Straight Talk On Relationships helps you recognize whether alcohol is playing too big a role in your life.

DO YOU HAVE A DRINKING PROBLEM?

by Lisa Merlo Booth

Too many couples have a third party creating problems in their relationship. That third party is alcohol. When alcohol is a source of stress in a relationship, it is typically because one partner thinks the other partner either drinks too much or is no fun to be around when they drink. The other partner, of course, does not think this is the case.

For those of you who struggle with this issue in your own relationship, let me help you out. Below are several warning signs that your drinking is, minimally, a problem and possibly alcohol abuse or alcoholism.
• You’ve ever been worried about your drinking and tried to stop or cut back as a result.
• You’ve experienced blackouts due to drinking.
• You become mean-spirited and nasty when you drink.
• Your drinking has resulted in your missing work, losing your job or not being able to perform your job as expected.
• Your partner, friends, children or co-workers have commented on your drinking.
• Your drinking is a source of tension between you and your partner (and not because your partner is opposed to drinking).
• You “have to” have a drink to calm down or relax.
• You often drink to get buzzed or drunk.
• You seldom, if ever, stop at just one drink.
• You use alcohol to loosen up and give you social confidence.
• You drink alone or hide your alcohol use.

There are several signs that your drinking has moved beyond social drinking to problem drinking, but the best indicator I know is: if your drinking is creating problems in your relationship or your life—your drinking is a problem. The problem is not your partner’s thinking it’s a problem.

If you’re not sure whether or not you have a drinking problem — chances are you drink too much. If people in your life think you have a problem and you get defensive when they say this — chances are you drink too much. If either of these two circumstances is present and you have a family history of alcoholism — you’re playing with fire. If you don’t control it, you will get burned.

Alcoholism has an uncanny way of getting passed from one generation to the next. If there is any question that your drinking is a problem, then deal with the issue NOW. Stop the toxic legacy of addiction. You, your marriage and your children deserve to have a safe, sober environment in which to thrive.

Our New Orleans community has been directly impacted by the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil workers, shrimpers and their families who live in the development are coping with the loss of their livelihood.

Just as these families started to recover and heal from Hurricane Katrina, they are now hit again. In light of these recent events, we feel compelled to raise awareness and enlist your support. Laura and I will be traveling to New Orleans for a week in August to kick-off the much anticipated art classes. So far, we have raised $2,500 – enough to staff and supply the children’s art program for only 6 weeks.

We hope that you will join us in our commitment to this Louisiana community. Checks should be made payable to Start Corp and can be either mailed in or dropped off at Soho Parenting – 568 Broadway Suite 402, New York, NY 10012.

Well that was a long time ago. Almost 50 years. So many other snapshots have been taken, by the camera, in the mind:  the good, the bad, the ugly, as in all relationships with one’s father. But this is my favorite. It captures the best part of being my father’s daughter. There I was, just being me, looking out at the world, holding my ball, red Keds ready for jumping and dancing. There he is, just looking with love.

I am not whitewashing the complexity. I am just going for the essence. I am grateful beyond belief for that adoring look. It has immunized me from many of life’s trials. It has given me drive and confidence.

Hopefully, each of us can find one essential, wonderful thing about being our father’s child. Despite how many other parts of the relationship may be fraught or disappointing, or complicated– on Father’s Day let’s just honor and be grateful for that one thing.

“Get off the iPad! Come hang out with me!!”

Not me to my daughter, mind you–my daughter to me.

It’s true. I am in love with my iPad. It is hard for me to put it down. It calls to me. Even my adult children who are quite the techno-wizards themselves feel they sometimes have to pry me away from my iPad. They think I escaped a terrible fate by not having a cell phone or computer when I had small children. I cannot imagine I would have been good at setting it aside when bored at the park, or while bathing them or sorting Barbie clothes.

Thursday’s New York Times article “The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In” was upsetting. Not only because I meet with kids who by age 8 report that their parents love their blackberry more than them, but because I know full and well how hard it is to focus on relationships with children when the call of the responsive, neat and fast smart phone asks you to just take one more “hit”. The lures of technology are like quicksand–before you know it you are buried under cravings and habits and it feels impossible to get yourself out.

I feel for parents. It seems like an unavoidable addiction. Take out calls and texts while at the park and you too would shovel sand, push on the swing or pretend to be captain hook. I think my kids lucked out on having an unplugged mother and I hope parents can sometimes fight the urge to put it away.

Here is a challenge–for one entire day pretend it is 1987 and ban yourself from all modes of technology other than a land line. You will walk away with a clear understanding of the difference technology makes in the quantity and quality of time spent with children. It is unrealistic to cut everything out on a daily basis, but if you can follow any or all of these guidelines you are guaranteed to have a richer relationship with your child:

• No phone, computer, etc from the time you come home from work until the kids go to bed
• No phone/text usage during meals
• No talking or texting while you take your children to school

And for myself. When I have the gift of a daughter home from college who wants me to hang out with her, I better let go of my beloved iPad. I am going to make sure she holds me to it.