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Not long ago, my friend Marni was playing tag at a local park with her 7-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. They finished the game with shouts of laughter and a three-way hug and as they started to leave, an older mom who’d been watching the family caught Marni’s eye. “Enjoy it now,” she said with a wry smile. “Pretty soon they’ll be teenagers and they won’t even talk to you.”
What is it about teenagers that gets us so panicked? Will our darling cherubs really become sneering beasts once their age hits two digits? This stereotype does a disservice to everyone, says Kenneth Ginsburg, M.D., a pediatrician and the codirector of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute. “If kids keep hearing that they’re going to turn into monsters when they hit adolescence, they’ll think they have to m
| Credit: Priscilla Gragg
A woman I counseled named Claire came to me because she was going through a hard time with her son, Daniel. Within minutes of entering a room, the 7-year-old would break or spill something. Claire trailed after him, warning him to slow down. When disaster struck, she yelled at him and sent him for a time-out, which he sometimes agreed to take. It seems like he s running rampant just to piss me off, she said. She registered only the disobedience. My son loves to give me a hard time. My worst fear is that he s always going to be like this.
Credit: Priscilla Gragg
Before Elena Vincent gave birth to her daughter, Audrey Natalia, last April, she and her husband, Matthew, both teachers, did their homework. Still, nothing could ve prepared them for the sleepless nights that awaited them when they brought their newborn home. It was hard to get her to fall asleep anywhere other than my chest, recalls Vincent, who lives in Fresno, California.
The new parents knew they had to figure out Audrey Natalia s sleep before they both returned to work. So once again, they threw themselves into research. It wasn t until we fine-tuned that bedtime routine that everything finally fell into place, she says.
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One Green Bean, Please: Decades ago, dietitian Ellyn Satter, R.D., developed her now-famous method for raising kids who have a healthy relationship with food: Caregivers decide what to serve and when to do it, and kids get to decide whether to eat and how much. | Credit: Priscilla Gragg
My kids spent their first couple of years eating anything we put in front of them. “What’s the big deal about getting kids to try new things?” I’d say as I roasted arctic char or stirred a chickpea stew. But then the jig was up. My 5-year-old daughter refused anything except mac ’n’ cheese. Her big brother pushed away his old favorites, from his grandma’s stuffed Lebanese meatballs to his dad’s lemony scallops.