How can I make this sweeping statement, pushing aside all material choices in favor of a more primary, more fundamental choice? It is because your awareness of your own true nature and how you bring that to parenting is infinitely more significant than any material choice. When you embrace a willingness to relax and possibly not know what’s next, the opening of your mind and heart gives you access to wisdom beyond virtual reality. Moving beyond a limited point of view allows us, as parents, to expand our focus rather than narrow it. As we expand our personal selves, we begin to see the true nature of our baby. The harmonization that is possible within ourselves then carries over to our interaction with our baby.

Not many parenting guides encourage you to let go of all your concepts and scripts and welcome the mystery of your own being. It is, in fact, the ideal set up to experience your new baby in the most clear depth of awareness, free of conditioning. Our young children often draw us into the present moment very effectively. Responding to life in this powerfully spontaneous way is also a model for us to access something that is not mentally created. Wisdom, innocence, and love come with your new baby. Take the time to tune in and tap into it as you parent.

Pay attention to and appreciate the positive situations, events, and relationships in your life. Each time you do you’ll reduce the true source of your stress — negative emotions — and be more in the moment.

Become more aware of the situations, events, relationships and thoughts that evoke stressful feelings. Again, choose to be in the present.

As easy as it is to lose sight of this inherent well of knowing we all possess, it’s also simple to restore ourselves to that place and then draw upon it during the course of our day. Mom and Dad engaging in a ‘self hug’ means taking a few moments to let go of immediate stressors, finding a neutral space within, taking a few deep breaths, and visualizing something refreshing and revitalizing. It’s deceptively simple and effective, and also is easy to teach your toddler. I’ve seen 3 year old’s already proficient at using this technique on their own, after practicing with an adult a few times.

The sense of knowing one can modulate one’s own state is a powerful tool to give ourselves and our children. You can make a game out of it, personalize it for your child, and invoke it for yourself as needed. It’s contagious in the best possible meaning of the word! Try it today.

As with many aspects of parenting, there is opportunity to constantly add to your ‘toolbox’, refine your insights, and upgrade your skills. Raising kids is the ultimate growth experience. They are growing – you can, too! Seeing the inevitable challenges as opportunities for your own personal growth is an attitude worth exploring.

You may wonder how a baby’s sleep habits could be an opportunity for your growth. Well, there are a great many different ways of responding, reacting, and handling sleep patterns and habits. The behaviors of your infant may summon responses that are unique. Singing a particular lullaby may work better with one child than another. The variations and opportunities for creativity are huge. Have fun with it, explore, be flexible and open, and see you own potential expand. That’s the best start to trusting yourself as a parent.

Without getting into the highly private, intense, and controversial areas of parenting styles, I still see an enormous benefit to educating about the critical impact, for life, of what a baby and toddler experiences in the 0 – 3 age range. While we can focus on a variety of ‘superficial’ issues, one parenting method over another, choices that seem vital to the parenting style we want to endorse, we seldom hear or have an open discussion of the impact of subtle nuances on our baby’s wellness. Even amongst ‘experts’, the importance of clarity of our own values and priorities before we parent is seldom discussed.

Learning to recognize, love, and accept that which is difficult, unacceptable, and challenging within ourselves is a fundamental precept to parenting. Support for that process is vital and easily makes the difference between a parent who suceeds and one who is overwhelmed.

Please encourage all those you know who are comtemplating parenthood, are already parents of babies/toddlers, and who are caregivers to seek their most trustworthy parenting voice from their own essence. As always, I welcome your questions and comments.

While this obviates an entire segment of what is currently marketed to parents, it is true that you and your baby have everything you need to engage in this activity. Your faces, your voices, your touch, and your attention and interest are truly the best props you could have.

Rather than ‘plugging’ your very young child into an electronic entertainment device, please consider that your time and focus are very well spent interacting with your baby. If you have other tasks you are wanting to accomplish, I’ve found that talking to your baby while you wash dishes, file papers, or do some other task that does not require your complete attention enables you to stay connected. Then you can re-connect fully for another session of play!

All of my anecdotal experience says it it completely worth it to find a way to be available and make the effort to connect. The first few years of your child’s life are crucial to development of lifelong patterns.

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In order to parent well over time (and we all know that parenting doesn’t end when they leave for college), your best strategy is to learn and understand your own strategy. Then you have a base from which to be flexible, and that flexibility, combined with self-knowledge, will serve you well. It will enable you to seek out and use varying resources over the years.

Taking control of your own emotions provides a pathway to success in parenting. By control, I do not mean suppressing or repressing emotions. Control means understanding, coupled with effective resources for experiencing your own emotions when it is healthy and productive. For many adults today, this is not an easy task. We are all pretty much trained to seek self-gratification, and seek it soon. Parenthood will derail that usually for a while, but many parents become absorbed in having their child be a status symbol, a possession, an extension of themselves. These are all recipes for failure as a parent. Unless you can set aside your own agenda on a consistent basis, your parenting will suffer.

I call this approach ‘sustainable’ parenting because it works well, it works over time, it nurtures you and your child, and it has potential to evolve through all the stages and phases of parenting. When you see your parenting as it is, tell the truth, then see it as better than it is, you can raise the standard, and grow yourself as well as make yourself a better parent for your child.

Of course, we adults realize that we are making pretty much all the significant decisions in the toddler’s life. However, the many small, daily choices that are present are wonderful windows of learning, if you are aware of them and take advantage of them. The ability to discern preferences, beginning with tiny distinctions, like the degree of darkness in the child’s room for sleeping, can set the tone for including the child in decision-making. This grows into more and more participation and input as the child becomes older. Asking for feedback, listening to it, and incorporating it into the daily rhythms are important patterns for the toddler to experience.

Self-directed behavior requires checking in with self first. Toddlerhood is an optimum age at which to model and teach this skill. It has lifelong value, and can be built open at every stage of development. Self-directed behavior precedes other more sophisticated self-modulating techniques that are key to socialization. These skills are valuable for life.

Support for identifying where you are most skilled, as well as areas where you may need help is available to you in individual sessions or convenient packages now available at www.babyparentingcoach.com.

Don’t hesitate to explore the potential of your best possible parenting!

Where does this sensibility, ‘instinct’, or predisposition to be so caring, so interested in the well-being of another emanate from? How does one very young child already have a level of skill and inclusiveness, so that even when we go about another activity, she still checks back to see how her ‘animal’ friends are doing?

She has already learned ‘responsive parenting’, and is very good at it. It has, obviously, been modeled for her since the very beginning of her two years, and it is natural, fun, instinctive, and very beautiful to watch. Observing her ‘notice’ and accommodate the subtle nuances of a pretend friend wanting a little more water, or to go for a ride, truly gives me hope for our future.

Responsive parenting means viewing your role as parent as a constantly evolving, highly attuned endeavor. Knowing your baby’s smallest likes and dislikes, taking a moment to plan an experience so that it is comfortable and secure, and of course, the biggest challenge, learning to put your own ‘instant gratification’ on hold – these are all steps toward responsive (as well as responsible) parenting.

Unless you’re ready to look at yourself and your parenting objectively, you probably won’t like what you’re about to read. It is, in fact, your responses to and conditioning of your baby and toddler that lead her to exhibit certain behaviors at age 2. Developmentally for the child, there is individuation and the move toward some independence at this age. Of course, the need for connection and reassurance are also present, as strong as ever. Parents who expect a 2 year old to behave the same as she was behaving at 18 months, or the same as some other child (including sibs), are in for a rude awakening. However, labelling it “terrible twos” and buying into all the generalized misinformation that comes with those terms are sad substitutes for good parenting.

Creating an effective and evolving way to parent the 2 year old would be infinitely more beneficial to the child and parent. This need does not start at age 2, but it can be significantly improved upon at this age. Instead of attaching a worn-out and disempowering label, parents could look for new ways to connect with the emerging independence in their toddler. Creating simple, highly reassuring ways for the sometimes fiercely independent toddler to return to nurturing and supported babyhood would allow the 2 year old to go back and forth between dependence and independence. This, in fact, is what needs to happen in order for individuation to occur.

It’s amazing how many different ways this simple method can be employed in parenting. If you focus your energy on giving your child exactly what she needs in the present moment (by which I mean attention, not physical objects), you often expedite developmental stages. If you do not attach a dysfuntional label to the reaction you get from your child when you are not offering appropriate attention and care, you may end up getting a lot less challenging behaviors. It was infinitely more pleasant for all involved parenting my 3 now adult kids, who grew up as individuals with different temperaments, styles, and needs.