What are your children excited about doing all by themselves right now?  Tell me now!

In the Montessori classroom we always had an open and close activity that the kids would gravitate toward, so I knew my daughter would enjoy learning to open and close things. But I had no idea just how MUCH she would enjoy it! We currently have an Open/Close activity in my office and every time my office door is open, my daughter makes a bee-line to it, takes the objects out of the box and begins to open and close them again and again and again.

Here’s a video I took last week…

My 13mo. old daughter doing her open/close activity from Shelly on Vimeo.

One of the great things about this activity is that it can grow with your child. Right now I have a couple of small metal tins, a small jar with a lid, and a plastic container with an attached lid in the activity for my 13 month old. But when she’s 3 years old, we’ll have a coin purse with a zipper, a box with a latch, and some other more challenging items.

Even if your child is 7 or 8 years old, you can find fun things to put in an open/close activity. Most 8 year olds I know LOVE figuring out how to lock and unlock padlocks or even the front door of their house. Of course you’ll have to decide what you’re comfortable with.  Learning to open and close plastic baggies and food containers can be a fun challenge too.  Remember diaries with locks?

So, the next time you get annoyed that your little one is emptying your purse out on the floor of the restaurant, remember, he’s just trying to learn about opening, closing, and containment. Oh, and he’s probably also looking for a toy or a treat too and I’m guessing he’ll find one!

Consider creating an open/close activity to keep at home, or a portable one for when you’re out and about. You can offer a lunch box filled with containers or an old purse you’re willing to give to your child. Begin collecting small items that have unique and interesting closures.

Once you have a few items compiled, arrange them in a basket or box and display the activity in an accessible location. When your child shows interest in the new “work,” sit down together and demonstrate opening and closing each item before allowing her to explore the activity on her own.

For added interest for your older child, include a small car, animal, doll, or action figure inside each container. For your reader, label the containers and invite your child to put the appropriate item back into the container when he’s finished playing.

We are having so much fun at our house with our open and close activity. I would love to hear about your experience with this fun work! Please share a comment below. And have a great week! Warmly, Shelly

Transitions are almost always challenging for young people and that goes for both large and small transitions. Moving from bath time to bed can produce a lot of upset, so it makes sense that starting back to school (or starting school for the first time) would also cause some emotional ripples.

First, know that you are not alone. When I taught preschool there were always a few children in every class who had a difficult time separating at the beginning of the year. But after several weeks, everyone was transitioning joyfully.

Now, I’ll give you the same information and advice I gave the parents in the classroom that helped to resolve the upset quickly and fairly easily.

The most important thing about a morning school separation is that it is QUICK and that the parent is calm, comfortable, and relaxed. The more you can leave your own feelings of sadness, upset, and anxiety at home, the better your child will do.

I don’t mean to imply that you won’t HAVE upsetting feelings, just that you’ll do your best to experience and work through those feelings AWAY from the door of your child’s classroom. So, when you’re at the door, you’re projecting calm confidence, trust, and warmth. This is HUGE.

Why quick? The more time you spend helping your child get his things into his locker, making sure he has his lunch, asking the teacher about the schedule for the day, and giving him multiple hugs and kisses, the more time he has to recognize that you are uncomfortable (or that he is). Also, when your child sees you in and around his classroom, he begins to wonder why you can’t just spend your day at school with him. After all, you are one of his favorite people in the whole world, so why wouldn’t he want you to stick around?

What your child may fail to realize is that school is an opportunity for her to branch out socially and become more independent. It’s a growth opportunity and having a parent present could actually undermine her motivation to reach out to new friends.

But, when new friends and teachers are the only choice available, you’d be surprised how quickly children can acclimate and enjoy the new environment. Often, the kids who have the greatest separation anxiety are the same children who bond to the teachers and other kids quickly. The classroom becomes a new base of operations and they easily rely on their new community for the help and support they need. This is a very important skill.

Do you remember a time from your own childhood when you felt unsure, afraid, and you wanted to cling to someone or something familiar? Giving your child a keepsake, a slap bracelet, a hand stamp, or some other reminder of you can be a great way for your child to remain connected to you, even as she stretches her wings socially. But don’t go too crazy, leaving elaborate notes in her lunch every day. Take your cue from your child, what does she ask for and need?

Acknowledging your child’s feelings can help too, but again, be brief. Something like, “Honey, I know you’re feeling worried and that’s OK. I think some other kids are feeling the same way. If you need help, you can ask your teacher. I bet you’ll have a great day. I love you and I’ll see you at 3:00,” should be sufficient. And you can always talk more after school.

Next, if your child is having a difficult time separating, talk to his teacher and ask about their policy on separation anxiety. Some schools will call you if your child is inconsolable for longer than half an hour or so. Or it may be OK for you to call to check in. I always loved giving worried parents the news that their child was happily playing and working just minutes after they had left the room.

You’ve chosen to put your child in preschool, private, or public school for a host of reasons, so take a moment to ground yourself and feel into those reasons. You know what is best for your child, now it’s time to trust, let go, and enjoy the ride.

Have a wonderful week, Shelly

The first time I heard about elimination communication it sounded completely insane to me. I heard wild stories of families who NEVER used diapers and I pictured an entire house covered in plastic drop cloths with some pretty gross repercussions. Sure, if we were living outside and could just hold our babies away from our bodies like I read about in “The Continuum Concept,” I could imagine not using diapers. But I live in a house, and it really bothers me when my dogs or cats fail to go in their designated locations, so why would I allow my child to just pee and poop all over the place? At that moment I decided that EC was not for me.

But after my daughter was born, I read a really great article in Mothering magazine (Oh how I wish they were still publishing!) about elimination communication. In the article the author described lots of different ways that families could go about practicing EC to various degrees. Some families used diapers some of the time, and other used them most of the time but also watched for signals from their child that it was time to go. Through the article I was introduced to the idea of “catching” my child’s pee and poop and that’s when it happened. I became an EC mom.

A good friend of mine had given me TONS of great baby gear hand me downs, so I dug out the small Baby Bjorn potty you see in the photo. When my daughter was about a month old I took off her cloth diaper and sat her up on the potty. She didn’t seem to like the feeling of the cold plastic on her toosh, so I grabbed a pre-fold, cut a hole in it and put it between her butt and the potty. That one sacrificed cloth diaper made all the difference! After that, my little one was happy to sit on the potty whenever I thought to try. But, she didn’t actually go in the potty yet. That was OK with me though, I just wanted her to get used to sitting on the potty and wasn’t attached to achieving any specific goals yet. Looking back at my baby calendar I see that she had her first poop on the potty at 8wks and her first pee at 10wks old!

After my little one had some better muscle control and was able to sit in her Bumbo (around 4 months old) I put the potty in front of the mirror in her room and sat with her for up to 10min. at a time. She loved her potty time! We would make faces, look at books, and talk about increasing our intrathecal pressure, complete with grunting. and bearing down together. At that point she would occasionally go during potty time. We were making progress!

I still wasn’t able to see any signs from her or predict when she would need to go, but we just tried a little potty time here and there when the mood struck me. And then we introduced solid foods at 6mo. Whoa! Suddenly my daughter’s poops became solid and then I noticed that she seemed to go at around the same time, during the morning between wake up and her first nap. After some experimentation I narrowed it down and caught a poop! I was so happy not to have to scrub that cloth diaper that I became determined to catch more.

At some point during her sixth month, I realized that I always pee when I wake up in the morning, so she might need to as well. I tried putting her on the potty first thing after we woke up in the morning and magic happened. She peed AND pooped that first morning and has almost every morning since. I was elated! I had suddenly gone from soaking, scrubbing, sunning, washing and drying poopy diapers to simply dumping the poop in the toilet and getting on with our day!

Now we put her on the potty after she wakes from sleep and a couple more times throughout the day and she almost always pees. She clearly knows what the potty is for (and has since around that six month mark) and although she will hang out for up to thirty minutes if needed, she more often goes within five to ten minutes and then waits for me to wipe and re-diaper her. Yesterday, for the very first time, she finished her business and then stood up.

I know that a lot of EC parents talk about the importance of noticing the cues and the deep connection they feel with their child about these important bodily functions, but for us, EC is more about practicality and ease.

I also like the notion that I’ll never have to “potty train” my child. Sitting on the potty is just something we do every day already. And just for the record, I don’t think our version of EC is something we could only do because I’m a work from home mom. We’ve taken our potty to Grammy’s house and even on vacation with us! All of my daugher’s grandparents and babysitters have used the potty with her seamlessly.

The next step in our journey will be to teach my little one how to signal when she needs to go. So, I’ve begun signing “toilet” every time I say the word potty. No luck yet, but given our success so far, I’m not too worried. I’m pretty sure that she’ll put two and two together in no time.

So, how many of you have gone on your own EC journey? I would love to hear how it went or is going. Please share your stories with us!

And have a wonderful week, Shelly

And, by the time you’re actually getting a good night’s sleep (except for the occasional accident or vomiting in the bed), they’re running around like crazy people and screaming, “Play with me! Play with me!” and wanting to go to the park and the pool and everywhere else they can think of.  Whew!  I feel tired just thinking about it.

I’ve heard some divorced parents admit that they’re actually relieved when they’re kids go to their co-parent’s house.  And now that I’m a parent myself, I can see why!  It really does take a village, doesn’t it?  I think we should all have statues erected in our honor if we survive parenthood long enough to see our adult children become exhausted parents.

As a kid, one of the things I never understood was why my parents didn’t have the energy to play with me all the time or take me wherever I wanted.  The idea that resting would be more fun than constant activity was a completely foreign concept.  I think the only time I was still was when I was mesmerized by the television or forced to sleep.

One of the things I loved about being a nanny for twins was that at least they always had each other to play with.  But the truth is, you can’t always just pawn off the littler kids with the bigger kids.  In fact, sometimes that creates more of a hassle than a help.

So, what do we do when we’re tuckered out and our kids are raring to go?  Well, I like to set them up with a self-directed activity and then sit nearby and read a book or rest while they are engaged in playing and learning at the same time.  Here’s a post I wrote a while back about some things kids can do mostly on their own.

There are tons of things that kids would love to do themselves, but often it feels like more work to let them.  Take cooking for instance.  Everyone I know loves to eat cookies.  And kids love to mix and bake them too.  Sure, they’re likely to make more of a mess than you would, but amazingly, they also often ENJOY cleaning up too!  I wrote a post about how to get kids to help with clean up too.

But, once you have them set up with an activity, the really challenging part begins.  We as parents must choose to take care of ourselves and actually REST, rather than jumping up to do another load of laundry or cleaning up after our kids while they’re still making a mess.  We need to learn to stop and take a break!

So, what can you do to maximize the 5-10min. window you have when the kids are happily engaged?  Here’s a list of some of my favorites:

1)     Close my eyes and take deep breaths (or meditate)

2)    Read a novel

3)    Take a bath

4)   Sit outside and watch the wind blowing through the trees

5)    Yoga

6)    Take a cat nap

7)    Smell the roses (literally)

What are the things that you could do to maximize the few minutes of restful time you can squeeze out of the day?  And how else do you deal with the exhaustion of parenting?  Please let me know, I could really use some help on this one!

Have a great week, Shelly

And then it hit me; maybe I didn’t actually have to install all those latches!  Of course, I realize that I might need to add a few as my daughter grows and gets into things more, but I came up with a solution that is working well and has caused the least work for everyone.  I gave my daughter her very own drawer.

As soon as she opened the bottom drawer in the kitchen for the very first time, I grabbed a bag, threw its original contents inside, and then tossed a few of her toys in the drawer.  I included some kitchen items like a metal spoon, a set of measuring spoons, and a plastic cup.  And voila!  She took to it like a bee to honey.

Now, whenever I’m cooking or we’re hanging out in the kitchen, she crawls right over, opens up her drawer and plays with her “kitchen toys.” She hardly even seems to notice that there are other cabinets and drawers nearby!

Office shelf

But I didn’t stop there, I gave her a drawer in the master bathroom and she occupies herself masterfully while my husband and I take our morning showers.

We have also designated the bottom two shelves of the living room bookcase to the little one, and in true Montessori form, I leave new and exciting toys on those shelves to encourage her exploration. She even has two shelves in my office that will have her “work” on them for years to come.

Sure, we also have a basket of toys in the kitchen, living room, and her bedroom too.  But she seems to enjoy her drawers even more, and I don’t have to look at the stuff inside when she’s finished, I just close the drawer!  Of course, the next step will be to teach her to close the drawers herself.  And after that, we’ll begin putting toys into the drawer and closing it when we’re about to leave the room.

Living room shelf

If you have an older child who doesn’t yet have any designated kid’s activity areas in the common rooms, I highly recommend you clear some space for your younger family members.  Then, stock their shelves and drawers with interesting activities that you’ll rotate when they lose their appeal.  And if you also provide a rug and/or a child sized desk or table that they can work at, you’ll be helping your child set up great work habits and helping yourself get some peace and quiet.  Because, when kids know where to look for an activity that they can explore on their own, they’ll go back to it again and again, and you’ll actually get some adult work done!

I would love to hear about your own solutions to support your child’s freedom and independence at home.  Please leave me a comment!

Have a fantastic week, Shelly

But attunement is not simply empathy for another person’s emotional experience.  It’s an energetic matching game.  We may feel the sadness, but we’re not really attuning unless we’re matching the physical and non-physical energy of the person we’re with.  Attunement is the ultimate connection.  It’s a joining and sharing of an experience, an experience of oneness.

I often feel this oneness while nursing my daughter or in playful moments when she’s on the changing table or when we’re rocking in the rocking chair and she relaxes, resting her whole body against mine.  Connection through attunement is incredibly important for secure attachment to happen.  And, the oneness can’t happen all the time.  In fact, it would feel awfully strange to even attempt to experience attunement for an entire day.

We need connection, and we need separation too.  In fact, it’s the dance between connection and separation that makes our human experience so rich and dynamic.  We may experience a beautiful moment of attunement and later we’ll each go off by ourselves to have some solitude.  It’s an ebb and flow like so many other things in life.  And each part is just as important as the other.

Right now I’m reading a really interesting novel told from a five-year-old boy’s point of view.  The thing I find so fascinating about it is how accurate the author is about the details of the thoughts and emotions the little boy experiences.  The boy has a favorite spoon he calls “meltedy spoon” and when I read the words “meltedy spoon” I am instantly transported back into the classroom with 3-5 year olds.  What a perfect example of really attuning to the mind of a five year old.

This week, pay special attention to the moments of attunement that you share with your child and then consciously allow your child to separate from you when he’s ready.

Instead of hovering over him at the park, intruding on his playtime, bring a book and let him have his own experience.  Then, after an especially fun moment, he might just run over to you and excitedly share what happened.  That’s your opportunity to put the book down, make eye contact, feel the excitement in your own body and attune with him.  Maybe you’ll even be inspired to jump up and run around with him for a while.

But again, as soon as you notice him going off on his own, resist any urge you might have to follow, and go back to your book instead.  By allowing your child to determine the length of the cycle between attunement and separation, you’re reassuring him that you’re available when he needs you, but you’re not going to interrupt his flow.

If, on the other hand, your tendency is to encourage your child to play on her own more often so that you can do your adult activities, then your challenge this week is to really stop, drop what you’re doing, and attune to your child when she reaches out for connection.  Remember, that means matching her energy.  So, if she’s slow and methodical, you’ll practice slowing down too.  And if she’s giggling and gasping for breath, see how much you can feel what that must feel like.  Pay attention to any sensations in your body as you practice attuning with your children.  Often, we can find new levels of empathy when we’re willing to try to step into our children’s shoes more fully.

I would love to hear about your own experiences of attunement and separation.  Is the natural ebb and flow easy or difficult for you?  Does your timing match up with your child’s?  And how do you feel when you notice your child coming toward you or moving away from you?

I hope you’ll all have a fantastic week, Shelly

You might even already have a rug that will work well.  You want a rag rug, bathmat, or other rug that is about three feet by four feet in size and is easy to roll up.  To keep it out of the way when it’s not being  used, you can store your rug in a clean trash can, large vase, or other container when it’s rolled up.  And when your child is ready to get out her dinosaurs, remind her to get her rug first.

Children often enjoy taking care of their workspace and will take great pleasure in laying out their rug and then setting out their toys or other activities.  And, by keeping the space defined you will notice several benefits.

First, your child will feel his work and play are honored and important when you make it a point to walk around his rug and encourage other family members to respect his space.  Second, you’ll cut down of sibling conflict when each child has his own space and both practice respecting one another’s space.  In the Montessori classroom children are required to ask permission to touch anything on someone else’s rug.

Also, if you need to move your child’s activity, it’s fairly easy to pick up two ends of the rug and drag it over to another spot without disturbing what’s on the rug.  That means that even though she starts a puzzle on the living room floor, you can pull it over to the hallway, or even into her room, when the family needs the floor space again.

And, by keeping their work on a rug, it’s easy to see whether they’ve put away one thing before getting out something else.  “Oh, I see there’s still work on your rug.  Please clean that up first, and then we can bake some muffins.”

For older kids, especially those who like to play with leggos or other small pieces, I recommend you use a folded sheet BEFORE dumping the leggos out.  You can fold the sheet to a size that works for your child (about 5’x5’ works well).

Then, after she’s finished playing, she can set up her finished work on a desk or dresser for display and simply lift all four corners of the sheet to concentrate the small pieces in the center of the sheet.  Then she can either scoop them up into their bin or with your help, the two of you can pour the leggos into the bin!  It’s SO much easier than picking up individual pieces.  Trust me, this cuts leggo clean up time to a fraction of the time it used to take.

I’m curious, have you tried using a rug or sheet in this way?  Has it worked well for you?  I would love to hear about your experiences.  Please leave me a comment!  Warm hugs, Shelly

This sensitive period for order can be challenging, but there’s no fighting against human development, and if you think about it, you wouldn’t want to anyway.  This is actually the perfect time to teach your child how to put away toys, straighten her room, and help out in the kitchen.  But in order to capitalize on your child’s innate desire to learn and this sensitive period for order heed this advice:  Attention to detail is the key to getting the most cooperation from your child during this time.

Let me illustrate further; Paying attention to minute details and showing your child all the tiny steps involved in tidying, cleaning, and putting things away create more interest and better results.  For instance, if you would like to teach your three year old to fold and put away his socks follow these steps slowly, carefully, and methodically (and wait until you have your child’s attention before moving on to the next step):

1)     Take newly dried clothes out of the dryer while they’re still warm

2)    Put them in a pile on the bed and invite your child to feel the warmth and play in the pile a little bit.

3)    Ask your child if he would like to play a sock folding game.  If yes, continue, if no, try another time.

4)   Ask your child to help you find two matching socks.

5)    Put every ounce of your attention on the pair of socks, turning them, feeling them, noticing the details and the way they feel in your hands.

6)    Examine the toe of the socks and show your child the sewn ends of the socks.

7)    Examine the hole of the socks and show your child how you can put your fingers inside the hole.

8)    Determine whether the socks are inside out or not.

9)    Slowly right any sock that is inside out, showing your child exactly what you are doing.

10) Place one sock carefully on the bed in an area clear of other laundry and with the toe to the right.

11)    Place the matching sock on top of the first sock.

12)  Fold the stacked socks in half lifting the cuffs and laying them on top of the toes.

13)  Put your right hand inside the fold with your thumbs inside the top sock

14) Use your left hand to stretch the top of the sock over the top of the other sock.

15)  Regard your work.

16)  Repeat until all socks are folded (remember to remain slow and methodical in your movements).

17)  Place the folded socks in a neat pile.

18)  Carry the folded socks to the dresser and put them on top.

19)  Open the drawer and place the socks inside one pair at a time with care and deliberation.

20)  Carefully close the drawer and smile at a job well done

21)  Let your child try and offer no further guidance, just continue to demonstrate silently.

As you can see, the “simple” act of folding and putting away one’s socks can be a challenging muti-step process for a young person.  But if you are willing to take the time to teach your child these types of skills now, you will undoubtedly reap the rewards later.  Be careful not to expect your child to put away her socks every time from now on though.  The more freedom your child has to express her newfound love of order, the more it will emerge and grow.  On the other hand, if your child feels forced into a greater sense of order than has naturally developed, she is likely to rebel.

I hope this was helpful and I welcome your comments, stories, and questions.  Please leave me a comment!  And have a wonderful week, Shelly

The truth is, recent research shows that children can learn a new word after just ONE exposure and they’ll remember that word for weeks and even months, even if they haven’t heard the word since! The study itself was pretty interesting. I read about it in my new favorite book “The Scientist in the Crib” by Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl. In the study they brought 18-month-old children into the lab, showed them an apple corer and said, “Look! A dax.” Children remembered the name of the “dax” for several months even with no further exposure to apple corers in the mean time.

The process kids are going through at around 18 months when they enter their naming explosion is called “fast mapping” and that’s when your little one starts pointing to everything in sight and asking you to name it. “Whatsat?” they’ll ask repeatedly, as you well know. They also start naming everything they can and they want you to repeat things over and over again. It can be a little annoying. But when we dig in to what kids are actually doing during this time, it becomes fascinating and amazing. Children are learning to use language for the first time. They’ve understood the adults around them for quite some time, but at around 18 months, they begin to be able to produce language themselves. It’s a pretty exciting time for a young person.

Last time I wrote about the importance of autonomy for young people. Well, learning language is a huge leap toward autonomy for toddlers. They experience more connection, more cooperation, and more power than they’ve ever had before, and they like it. The “no” phase is quick to follow as they test their power even further.

This time in a child’s life can be extremely irritating and challenging for parents, but when we understand WHY our toddlers do the things they do, I think it makes it a little bit easier to bear. Somehow when I look into the eyes of a 20-month-old and I see how intense his desire really is to hear that story for the fifth time in a row, I’m able to take a deep breath and read it yet again.

And I’m not alone. Parents, grandparents, care-givers, siblings and mothers in particular are uniquely designed to help babies learn language. We all use what’s called “motherese” with babies. We talk to them in a higher pitch, we exaggerate our vowel sounds and we repeat ourselves and vary the way we say things. We do this unconsciously (most of the time), but these very things have been shown to help babies learn language.

Even siblings as young as four years old use motherese with babies, not because we taught them to, but presumably because there’s some innate desire in us to speak in a way that babies enjoy. And babies sure do enjoy it, and it helps them learn. So, if you have a baby in your life, this week, pay special attention to the way you speak to her and watch her respond. And if it’s a toddler you’re faced with, take a deep breath and read that story again and keep naming things. You really are your child’s greatest teacher.

Have a wonderful week, Shelly