About

Maybe you do this too?

It’s the end of a long day. The kids have been wrangled into bed and now, finally, it’s your turn.

You drag yourself off to bed — too tired to move, but all you want to do is go to bed. The irony.

And now that it’s finally quiet and peaceful, you start going through every battle, struggle, and burst blood vessel from the day.

Then once you’ve given yourself a thorough telling-off for not resolving every interaction with the grace and serenity of an ethereal being, you think…

Things have to get better

I’ve got to be more patient

I’m going to do better tomorrow

Or, perhaps, worst of all, you don’t think that—

You don’t rally up renewed vigor for the next day, because you’re too exhausted by the constant onslaught of all the days, months, and years before.

So instead—

You’re waiting for this phase to be over.

Waiting for the years to pass, waiting for your children to get older, just waiting…

Wasn’t this what we always wanted? Is this how we imagined it would be?

That was me.

I’ve done that. I’ve laid there, staring up at the ceiling. Given myself a thorough talking to about how I must be more patient. More understanding. More compassionate. Then promptly done it all over again the next night.

I get it.

I get the frustration. The irritation. The impatience.

No one likes to talk about it, but the reality is we’re human too, and sometimes we lose it on the last people we’d ever want to ‘find it’.

I realised if I was ever going to be understanding with my children, I was going to have to actually understand them.

So I thought:

If I know why they behave in these battle-provoking ways, I would then know how to talk to them, problem solve with them, and prevent things escalating even further.

So I did what any good parent on a mission would do—

I read loads of research and used my eldest like a guinea pig.

I found ways to talk to her that averted tantrums, that restored peace to my once overly-irritable mind, and ways that created a problem-solving, compromise-finding little four-year-old.

And none of it was rocket science.

Some communication skills, a basic understanding of child development, and a few tricks is all it took.

Turning it all around

It takes just a few tools, some communication techniques, and an understanding of what makes toddlers tick to really turn things around.

Here you’ll get everything I learned and tried along the way.

There’s lots of practical advice with real life examples and scenarios – all backed by science, tried-and-tested by moms, and based on child development.

Here you’ll learn:

How to communicate with young children in a way they understand
How to adapt your communication to their age and development

Communication techniques for handling tantrums
Tools to handle typical toddler battles

And also:

Why your children behave the way they do
How their behavior links to their development
How your behavior and reactions affect your child’s behavior

There’ll be times when you shout, and times when you wish you’d handled things differently. There’s no illusion of the ‘perfect parent’ here.

But for the most part, you can create a happy and harmonious home. Those are the memories we want to give our children, and to ourselves.

A fun, firm & fair approach

I try to follow the fun, firm and fair approach to parenting.

We all know there’s times to be fun, times to be firm, and there’s always time to be fair. Finding a way to balance all three can be the tricky part.

But when we model this for our children, they learn how to be lighthearted and fun with others, how to be respectful and how to respect themselves, and they learn a sense of fairness in any given situation.

A few techniques, clear rules and boundaries, and an understanding of young children, and it’s easy to get that balance of being a fun, firm and fair parent.

Children learn what they live — Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.