Your Child's Journey

wisdom for the big steps little children take

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H.A.L.T.

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Your children are spinning out of control. He’s crying and yelling. She’s whining and dragging her feet. The noise level is rising to painful.

It’s time to H.A.L.T. This is an acronym used in recovery programs, but it fits parenting very well. Things are harder when we are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.

HALT and take a quick inventory. Is your child Hungry? Do you know why he’s Angry? Is Loneliness the problem? Is she Tired?

You cannot control every situation or always avoid your little one’s discomfort. But this little acronym, HALT, can give you a quick way to spot the problem and diffuse the emotions.

Hunger is probably the easiest one to fix. Start here and make sure everyone’s blood sugar level is up to normal. If not, a snack or meal is the next order of business.

Anger is usually quite easy to recognize. But it may take a little detective work to figure out what is the root of the anger and how to solve it. Giving a positive way to use up some of that steam can be a safety valve to prevent serious damage.

Children may not be able to tell you they are Lonely. They can be lonely even in a crowd, feeling left out or disconnected from you. Give some one-on-one time to ease this.

Tired children and tired adults get cranky. There is a reason that sleep deprivation is used as a torture strategy. As a basic biological need, human functioning quickly declines in the absence of sufficient sleep. Is it nap time? Has it been an exceptionally busy day or hot day? Some extra sleep can make all the difference.

Megan, in TheArtOfSimple.net said, “The best part of applying HALT to our parenting toolbox is knowing what is triggering undesirable behaviors in our children. Armed with that understanding, we are empowered to respond to them from a place of empathy and understanding, rather than from a place of confusion and frustration.”

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Tummy Time

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You’ve probably heard about tummy time for babies. The reason it is now an issue is that most parents place their baby on its back to sleep due to the decrease in SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) in this position. This trend has led to a great increase in children with delayed motor development. Now parents must make an effort to provide tummy time.

I hope to give you some compelling reasons to make tummy time happen and also some ways to make it more enjoyable for both you and your baby.

There are milestones in your baby’s development related to tummy time. Without tummy time, some of these milestones won’t be reached or will only develop much later. So it is worth making tummy time a priority.

Start tummy time in the first week of life. Babies who have tummy time from birth onwards, tolerate it much better later on. It is a very natural position for newborns and helps them begin to stretch out after months in the womb. (Don’t worry about the umbilical cord. In the first two weeks of life, the time before the umbilical cord falls off, babies pull the knees up and rest on their forearms. They won’t rub the umbilical cord.) Lying tummy down on Dad’s chest is a great for both Dad and baby. Dad gets a great boost of bonding hormones and baby gets time and attention from Dad as well as tummy time. You may also burp baby belly down across your knees.

What happens during the first two months? Baby bobs his head up briefly to about 45 degrees. He can turn his head to place the opposite cheek down. Arms and legs straighten out and press down and lift the top of the chest up a little. The most important development during this time is that baby lifts its head to turn from side to side. This is the first time the two sides of the body coordinate together to accomplish a task. To make tummy time more comfortable, use a pillow to support your baby’s chest and shoulders. To make it more fun, you can lie on the floor next to baby while talking and rubbing her. This can be an enjoyable rest for both of you.

At three months, she can hold her head up without bobbing. She will lift her head to look both directions. She can lift her shoulders and the top of her chest while pressing down with her forearms. She may roll from belly to side if she lifts her head too far. During this month her sense of balance and vision begin to coordinate. Your baby will enjoy having different things to look at when turning her head from side to side. Keep it interesting to look both ways. She will benefit by having 30-60 minutes of tummy time each day now. No need to make it all at one time, break it into enjoyable sessions.

At four months, he lifts his head steadily to 90 degrees. He not only lifts his upper chest while pressing down with his forearms, but he will stay like this to play with something interesting. Try squishy balls, stuffed animals and sensory bean bags. He will really enjoy ‘flying’ on your feet as you lie on your back and hold him up with your feet and by his chest. Babies who have more than an hour of tummy time at four months, have been shown to reach their milestones faster than those who spend less time on their tummy.

At five months, he will begin to push his chest off the surface with straight arms. In the next few months he will begin bearing his weight on his open hands to the floor. He may begin intentionally rolling from belly to side. Don’t worry if he has less and less tummy time, as long as you are giving him plenty of floor time to continue to develop his muscles for crawling and eventually walking.

 

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Want Teens Who Will Talk to You?

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If you want teens who will talk to you, you must learn to listen to them when they are little.

Little children want to tell you what they are thinking about. It may be hard to pay attention to one of their long stories. But setting aside something else to listen fully, shows them they are important to you. Many times, I found, if I paid attention when they wanted to talk, they would be content to play on their own for longer. If I was distracted or cut them off quickly, they would get my attention by getting into mischief. Your attention means the world to them.

Knowing you will listen, builds trust so they will tell you what they are thinking as they grow older. Listen for their response to what they are talking about. Take the time to ask some questions that give you a window into their world.

The table is where we become people in a relationship. Make your table a fun place to talk, as well as eat.

Watch for more tips on raising kids who will talk to you when they are teens.

 

 

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Understanding Asperger’s Syndrome

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Asperger’s syndrome, sometimes called nerd syndrome, is a neurological disorder categorized under the umbrella of autistic spectrum disorders.

Autism: An overview

by Marian Wilde , GreatSchools Staff

Asperger’s syndrome has become a controversial diagnosis to describe children exhibiting various difficulties with social behavior. Like autism it affects an individual’s ability to successfully interact with others.

Although children with Asperger’s syndrome (or AS) can have normal or above-normal intelligence, when they start school they often experience difficulty functioning in the social world of the classroom. In fact, it’s not unusual for these children to remain unidentified as having Asperger’s until starting school. The majority of AS children are diagnosed between the ages of 5 and 11.

“As we become more familiar with the variety of differences in our children, a growing number of school-aged children with impairments in complex social behaviors are being referred for assessments and treatment,” says Dr. Mariam King of the Pervasive Developmental Disorders Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco.

What are the symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome?

Children diagnosed with AS generally show normal development until age 4 in speech, self-help skills and curiosity about the world around them.

A concerned parent should look for many, but not necessarily all, of these signs:

Repetitive language
Impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors, such as making eye-to-eye contact
Conversation that centers around the self
A voice that can be emotionless
Eccentric vocal characteristics
Dyslexia or other writing problems
A tendency to think literally rather than abstractly
Clumsy or awkward motor skills
Inappropriate or insensitive social behaviors

How common is it?

Although scientists have been studying autism since the 1940s, Asperger’s syndrome has only been researched intensively in the past few decades. It was initially described by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger in 1944, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the disorder was widely recognized in the English-speaking world. As a result, there’s a lack of solid data on the prevalence of Asperger’s syndrome.

Our understanding of Asperger’s is still unfolding, with diagnostic criteria only recently being established in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1994.

For many years it was thought that one in 166 individuals has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, a range of disorders that includes Asperger’s syndrome and the more severe disability, classic autism. In February 2007, new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that in many areas of the United States the rate of autism in 8-year-olds is as high as one in 150.

What is the difference between autism and AS?

Read more from GreatSchools.org on Asperger’s Syndrome

 

Reading Baby’s Face

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Since Baby cannot talk, it can be very hard to figure out what they need or want.

For a little help in reading your baby’s face, take a look at these babies and see if you guess right about what they are trying to say.

See whether their eyebrows are raised or lowered or pinched together. Is their nose wrinkled or not? Is their mouth open or the corners turned down?

Have some fun and maybe learn a little bit more about what your baby is trying to tell you.