We had a talk some time ago in my baby group entitled “Parenting styles.” I was like, ok, attachment parenting vs…CIO or something to that effect, but it was so different than what I expected. I’m really not doing justice to these ideas with my brevity, but here’s what I came away with – these approaches can be implemented much younger than you might think:

L A B E L  E M O T I O N S

Labeling emotions helps children process what they’re feeling in hopefully a positive way, and validating these emotions helps them develop sympathy and empathy. Something to help toddlers would be these cute little Kimochis – they look almost like little Mr. Men knock offs and the child places the emotion they feel inside a larger doll.

Board books that feature baby faces are something that can be started as infants to help understand emotions. Especially in those early months, babies don’t have any attraction to all the toys that are marketed toward them; they gravitate toward faces. You could even make your own board book featuring photos of familiar family members making expressive faces.

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Voicing your own emotions are important, too. Many moms describe in detail the things they do each day – “Now we’re walking to the kitchen. I’m opening the cupboard to get a pot. I’m filling it with water from the tap” – but perhaps we should be putting equal importance on voicing our own emotions. Stubbing our toe as we walk into a piece of furniture “Ouch, that hurt! That makes mommy feel embarrassed that she didn’t see the chair.” As they get older and they see us have maybe not so positive interactions with other people, we can explain to them, “The man who drove in front of us made me very upset and scared that we would be in danger.”

P R A I S E  E F F O R T S

We’re so used to giving out those words “good job” for such simple things – crawling, picking things up, eating. Perhaps this sets them up to not handle new tasks and the prospect of failing as they get older. A better alternative would be to give feedback instead of broad praise – praise the efforts. “You worked really hard to crawl to that toy,” or “Wow, that book on the table is so interesting to you that you picked it up even though it was difficult to do,” or “You ate the entire carrot so quickly with both hands.”

L E T  T H E M  F A I L

Let them try to deal with failure. This is hard as a parent, and even harder when there are other people in the room… like grandparents! And it can begin young. Getting upset during tummy time? Don’t swoop in for an immediate rescue. “Helicopter parents” deprive children of coping skills that are so valuable later in life. I want my child to learn resilience, to get a sense of responsibility for her actions, and to learn the value of perseverance. There’s a lot to be said about this, and a lot of writing and research into it, but suffice to say, unless it’s a real safety issue, I’m going to do my best to not intervene and allow my daughter to fail.

D I S C I P L I N E

We should verbalize what to do, not what not to do. If a baby puts soap in their mouth and I say, “Don’t eat the soap,” they pick up on the words “Eat” and “Soap,” so they think I’m in effect saying “Eat soap!” Instead, I should say “Soap is for washing our bodies.” As the babies get older, we’re constantly saying “No biting” or “Don’t pull mommy’s hair” when it should be “Gentle with mommy’s hair” and “Mommy’s boobs are for milk, gentle.” Easier said than done, I know. With their lack of higher reasoning we’ll be trying to prevent them from doing the same things hundreds of times over.

O F F E R  C H O I C E S

Decision making is something that even my husband and I struggle with. “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” Some of this stems from over-politeness, but being assertive and owning our choices is an important life skill. So it can be as simple as “Do you want to read this book or this book?” “Do you want to wear this shirt or this shirt?” I’m not going to say it’s going to help you avoid the tantrum days when they don’t want to wear either shirt, or any shirt at all, but it’s a step in a good direction.

Here are some books the speaker recommended – so far I’ve only picked up Nutureshock and the Wonder Weeks.

Baby Steps  |  The Wonder Weeks  |  Amazing minds  |  Brain Rules for Baby  |  Your [insert age here] Year Old  |  Nurtureshock  |  Teach Your Children Well  |  Parenting from Inside Out  |  Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child  |  Raising Resilient Children

Do you have any thoughts on these books and these ideas?