Your child isn’t listening to you. You can’t make her do as you tell her. And that can be wildly frustrating. There’s a choice here–do you enforce or do you yield? Enforcing is more of the same–power over, authoritarian parenting, hierarchies, right and wrong. But yielding, isn’t that giving up? Not if you take a […]
nurturing
Validation is a fertilizer
Timely validation helps our child master herself. When we notice that she can now safely handle a knife, we help her integrate this new skill. When we decide our child can now cross the street on his own, he gets to practice his increased capacity for autonomy. Validation is a timely fertilization of emergent growth […]
Too much support for the sapling topples the tree
A newly planted sapling needs stakes to support it against strong winds. If you leave the stakes in too long, though, the tree suffers. It grows taller, but its roots don’t spread. When the stakes are removed, the tree is thin and weak, and breaks or falls in the first storm. Too many stakes prevent […]