I’ve been writing quite a bit lately about little ones: babies and toddlers…for me it feels like yesterday when I had a baby and a toddler, but it’s quite a few years ago.  The joy of having been present for so many special little moments with my child is burned into my brain and I enjoy remembering them. I’m at a different stage in parenting now. It’s another precious stage (as they all have been….) My son is a senior in High School.  Our full time mother-son relationship is in its last few months so sometimes our time together feels particularly poignant.

Today I came home, looked through the mail, and there was an envelope from a University that clearly stated on the outside that he had been accepted and the school was welcoming him. He has already accepted someplace else but it was still wonderful to see his hard work pay off.  So far he has heard from 4 schools he applied to and he has made all 4.  I called his cell phone. He was with friends.  He paused in his time with them and we shared a few congratulatory and fun thoughts about him making this school.  Then it was time to let him to go back to his friends and continue with my evening…  The nicest part was, we had connected.  It can be those important few moments of true connection – talking, sharing, listening to each other, and respecting each others limits that make life worthwhile if you ask me.

Someone recently asked me to talk about when one parent wants a toddler to be able to explore around the house freely and the other wants the baby confined to a play pen more… So, here goes: Toddlers are such “heady creatures.”  They are so excited about the world. They want to learn. They see something and it sparks their imagination. It is a time their brains are firing off connections at an incredible rate.  To optimize your child’s development you want to encourage social interactions, your baby’s creativity, and your baby’s desires to learn and explore. The key is the environment needs to be safe, so you need to make sure your home is “child-proofed” so your child can’t get into things that could hurt her. You also need to make sure you have the energy to follow her and interact with her explaining things her feet take her to. There can be a balance of quieter exploration with toys in a smaller environment and exploring around the house in a safe way at other times.  You want to nurture your child’s natural curiosity so your child’s brain can develop to its fullest capacity.  Did you notice I didn’t say who was right and therefore who was wrong? That is not a useful paradigm here. Talk with your spouse about his ideas and yours, read this answer together and see how you two can use your creativity to come up with a solution that works for both of you.

Sometimes when a baby cries a lot parents can be scared that’s there’s something wrong.  Perhaps there is something wrong, I can’t be sure. What I can tell you is that a baby’s cries are her form of language and communication. There is so much new stimuli coming at a baby, sometimes they cry when it (life around your baby) feels too scary and your arms become a safe haven and cut the outside stimuli to an acceptable level.  Sometimes your baby is hungry and needs to eat.  Sometimes your baby is tired and needs some help falling asleep.  Sometimes your baby has a dirty diaper and needs changing. When you pick up your crying baby find out what that cry is for and respond to your baby’s basic needs. By doing that you’ll be helping your baby develop into a young child with a positive self esteem who can trust the world around her.  If you can’t seem to comfort your baby and your baby isn’t hungry, tired, having a dirty diaper, needing to be held, tired, then you need to look at the level of tension in the baby’s environment, in your arms as you hold her; babies thrive best in a calm or relatively calm environment   And then there are just some “high need” babies that do cry a lot and seem inconsolable at times. It usually is a phase they go through and if you continue to respond lovingly and calmly it will pass.  If you are still wondering or worried, definitely see your pediatrician who can check out the situation and make sure there is not something else affecting your baby.

When your mother-in-law tells you you’ll spoil the baby if you keep picking him up when he cries. I don’t agree.  In this particular case, I’d say the “words of experience” are outweighed by contemporary child development research. A few decades ago parents believed that if you held a child too much you’d “spoil the baby.”  We now know that just is not true.  Babies need to be held, nurtured, and comforted to feel secure and safe.  When you hold your baby when he cries you’re teaching him he is worthwhile, someone is there for him, he can trust the world, and he is safe.

New parents often go through a disappointing time after the initial glow post birth passes.  This is actually more common than you might think.  When each parent wants to be “right” and “know the answer,” with a new baby, there can be power struggles between them. It helps if you both take a deep breath, remember that you love and respect each other, and then sit down, when neither one of you is exhausted and talk about what each of you thinks and why. Listen with the intent of learning from each other and sharing information not with the intent of winning and being right.  Have some favorite parenting books you both read or one reads key paragraphs to the other. Discuss the author’s insights.  Come up with a parenting philosophy that you can both live with and that respects both your positions.  Got the Baby Where’s the Manual?!? has a chapter on making this transition from couple to family and the pitfalls to avoid.  The key is getting off your “position,” both of you, and being willing to really listen and try each other’s ideas and see how they affect your baby.

             I can’t believe the holidays are over.  Although I must say, it doesn’t quite feel like they are all over because my son is still home from school.  We have one more week of “vacation,” but he and I are still both working this week.            I seem to have followed my own advice about prioritizing and enjoying rather than enduring the holidays.  We had some relatives in form out of town which was such fun and they were here over my birthday which made it even sweeter.  This is an exciting time in our family’s life.  My son is a senior in High School and has already heard from 2 of the colleges he applied to that he was accepted.  Now we begin the difficult task of deciding which is right for him.  And that’s one of those things that I want to keep my hands largely out of. It’s difficult to take the back seat sometimes, but so necessary so he feels like it’s his decision, which it is. It’s his life and where he wants to start the next four years should be his choosing.  He may not stay at the school of his choosing but it needs to be his decision based on what he wants to learn, where he wants to be, and what we can all afford…            I can remember when he was an infant and we’d be in grocery store.  At that point five-year-olds looked like giants to me. Now he’s at least 6 feet tall and about to leave home in a few months.  He’s already doing that wonderful emotional dress rehearsal for leaving home – you know the - I don’t really need you anymore – I want to be treated like an adult stage - as they get ready to launch.  I remember the - I want my independence stage well - although it was quite a few moons ago it can feel like it was yesterday and I was pushing my parents away, needing room to launch.  It’s funny to be on the receiving side of it. Funny and wonderful because he is ready and he has a great head on his shoulders.  I have to remember of course he’ll make some mistakes along the way, don’t we all, even today. It’s how human beings learn – make mistakes and the hope is at least you learn from them.            I think just as a kid’s task in late adolescence is to “launch successfully” our task as parents is to “let go successfully” and that means different things to different people. I wonder what it means to you?If we can have faith that we’ve raised them well, we’ve taught them what we want them to learn, we’ve helped them develop good decision making skills, they can assess a situation and make a wise choice or at least what seems like a wise choice and if necessary they can re-think it and try again, then it’s easier to let go. Sometimes I still need reminders from him and then I apologize and say, “It’s just cause I love you and I’m being a mom – I want you to listen to what I’m saying and then make your own decision.”  We both smile and we move on…What’s that expression, “Love makes you do crazy things?”  Sometimes love as a parent makes you hang on too tightly and sometime too loosely – we’ve got to juggle our parental love and find the balance…