Trying to see things from your toddler’s point of view can help you be patient with them when introducing a new bundle of joy to the family: Imagine that your partner has just brought home a new lover and announced that you are all going to live together. It will be fun! You will be best friends! After hearing that your partner loves you and his new lover equally, you are asked to share all your things with this intruder. It also turns out that you won’t be getting as much attention as you used to because the new lover is a bit upset about something. Anyway, you are such a clever person, you can do lots of things by yourself now. Oh, and by the way, you must be gentle with the new lover! Wouldn’t go down too well, would it?

To help smooth the transition, and introduce the idea of having a sibling during pregnancy use dolls to discuss typical baby behaviour and take your toddler to visit a friend with a baby for a close-up look. After the birth buy a present for the new baby to give to your toddler. In hospital and at home, let your older child help while you feed, change, wash and hold the baby. Set up a corner for feeding times, with special things to occupy your toddler: snacks, drinks, storybooks, a scrapbook and crayons, a CD player with your toddler’s favourite songs. While you’re feeding the baby, tell her (loudly enough to be overheard!) how great it is to have a big brother or sister. When the baby is settled remember that your “big” kid needs mummy time too and enjoy cuddles and activities without the baby.

For more great strategies to help your toddler behave like an angel,  see ‘Toddler Tactics’ by Pinky McKay or check out Pinky’s website here.

If you are the parent of a crying baby, it may help to remind yourself that perhaps the stares your baby’s crying elicits from perfect strangers aren’t always glares of disapproval or judgement: it is natural to feel sensitive when your best efforts to protect and nurture your child seem less than perfect, but could it be possible that many of the stares and whispers that surround you and your crying baby are really voices of concern or even deeply felt empathy? After all, empathy (along with humility) can be one of the greatest lessons learned by parents who have a crying baby. You will also learn compassion, tolerance and flexibility as you meet your baby’s needs. These too are strengths to draw on as your child grows. As you attend to his cries, you will discover resources you may never have believed possible: even as you reach the pits of exhaustion, you will gather new reserves of energy. You will learn to recognise when your own reserves are low and when you need nurturing yourself – you will learn to ttake care of yourself as you take care of your child, because you will be forced to.

A crying baby will teach you to prioritise: you will learn that people matter much more than ‘things’. As you sit and rock your baby, instead of becoming restless about that unfinished ‘work’, look deeply into those trusting navy-blue eyes and ask yourself how much these things would matter if your child were taken from you tomorrow. Mostly, by responding to your crying baby you will have an opportunity to heal yourself: to overcome your own feelings that crying is unhealthy, and perhaps to make a connection with your child that you may have missed out on yourself if your own parents were discouraged from holding you close as you cried. And as you hold your baby close in the dark of night, remember too you are not alone: out there, in another home, in another street, across the world even, another mother will also be holding her own baby close. Through your baby’s cries, you are connected through time and space to mothers everywhere.

If you are the parent of a crying baby - why not check out  100 Ways to Calm the Crying by Pinky McKay , Check out Pinky’s website is www.pinky-mychild.com.

Your toddler’s delaying tactics at bedtime – needing a drink, one more kiss, a lost toy – are her way of saying, ‘I really want you to stay with me.’ From a toddler’s perspective, it may be difficult to relax and fall asleep if she feels stressed about being left in her room alone, especially if she can hear adults having fun (talking, watching television) in another part of the house. Consider, also, if this is the only time of her day that your little one has your undivided attention. If this is the case, try to spend more one-on-one time with her during the day so her needs aren’t so intense at bedtime. A consistent bedtime routine with specific rituals is important to enlist your toddler’s cooperation and help him feel secure. If your child seems especially clingy at bedtime, try telling him the story of his day so that he can process the emotional ups and downs and let them go.

Once your toddler is closer to three, you can begin setting limits at bedtime by telling him how many stories you will read before you start. To minimise delaying tactics and calling out, try to anticipate his needs: before he gets into bed, let him get his toys in order and perhaps choose a soft toy to sleep with; place a lidded cup of water within his reach; before you settle down to read, ask him, ‘What is the one last thing you need to do before stories?’ Help your child stay in bed until he is sleepy by sitting in his room with him.

For more tips on happy bedtimes (and sleep) check Pinky’s books ‘Toddler Tactics’ and ‘Sleeping Like a Baby’. Visit Pinky’s website www.pinkymckay.com.au

He wants it all. He wants it now. And he wants it all to himself! Your toddler can be affectionate one minute and obstinate the next. He runs away when you call him and yells when you want peace and quiet. He wants the blue cup, shirt or towel (whatever) when you offer him the yellow one. Now is the time to guide and protect your toddler with a new kind of parenting that includes setting appropriate limits.

Keep expectations realistic. Toddlers don’t understand concepts like hurry, tidy and wait, and taking turns or sharing depend on developmental readiness, not parental demands. Keep teaching, but be patient.

Notice the good things. Toddlers like to please the people they love, and they delight in attention. Comment positively and give hugs when you notice good behaviour and you will get more of it.

Give clear instructions. Telling children what you do want is more effective than telling them what not to do – ‘Hold my hand,’ is better than ‘Don’t run on the road.’ And ‘Use your spoon,’ works better than ‘Don’t eat with your fingers.’ For some reason, little ones only seem to hear the actual request, not the ‘don’t’ that comes first.

Create a diversion. Divert your toddler from potentially harmful or dangerous situations (or things that simply drive you bananas) by giving her something more acceptable to play with. For instance, if she likes to fiddle with TV knobs, remove her from the vicinity and try offering her a torch to switch off and on.

Limit choices. Offering choices helps your child to become a decision-maker and think for himself. This helps develop self-esteem and enlists cooperation. Don’t, however, offer open-ended choices and make sure the options you offer suit you! Instead of asking, ‘What do you want to wear?’ Say, ‘Would you like to wear your red shirt or the blue one.

Think ahead. It is better to prevent trouble than react angrily later. For instance, put folded washing out of sight if you don’t want it thrown out of the basket or tracked around the house, and prevent precious things being broken by banning ball-throwing inside and keeping the balls outside.

Think of ‘mistakes’ as opportunities to teach your

child to make amends. Instead of yelling or muttering under heavy breath as you clean up an accidental mess, try to problem-solve by saying, ‘‘Oops, the milk spilt. If I get the sponge, can you help me wipe it up, please?’

For more great strategies to help your toddler behave like an angel,  see ‘Toddler Tactics’ by Pinky McKay or check out Pinky’s interviews with experts recordings. Living loving Guidance, respectful ways to help your toddler behave.

If your baby sleeps for forty-five minutes or so at a stint, you may be advised to ‘resettle’ him. In my opinion, this can be a waste of time and energy and could simply create added stress as you spend all day trying to make your baby sleep instead of enjoying her. If your baby is happy when she wakes and seems ready to play, why not enjoy her company? After some time out and about walking in the fresh air, playing in the yard or at the park, she is sure to have another, perhaps longer, sleep as she becomes tired again.

If your baby is genuinely tired (and grumpy), one way to stretch his naps is to pre-empt his waking: forty-fi ve minutes is the length of one sleep cycle, so perhaps your little one is moving between sleep cycles and arousing but is unable to move back into the next sleep cycle. So, instead of waiting for him to wake and yell, go in and watch him when he has been asleep for half an hour and as he comes up into a lighter sleep, put your hand on him and gently rock or pat him to help him move through this arousal into his next sleep cycle. After doing this for a few days, you may change his pattern so that he gets used to taking a longer nap.

Other options  to encourage at least one longer sleep each day include either carrying your baby in a sling as he sleeps, or lying down with him and taking some much needed rest yourself. Then, as your baby stirs, you can either rock him or if you are breastfeeding nurse him back to sleep.

For more tips on baby sleep check Pinky’s books ‘Sleeping Like a Baby’ and 100 Ways to Calm the Crying. Check Pinky McKay’s website www.pinkymckay.com.au

Although many baby sleep trainers claim there is no evidence of harm from practices such as controlled crying, it is worth noting that there is a vast difference between ‘no evidence of harm’ and ‘evidence of no harm’.

A policy statement on controlled crying issued by the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health (AAIMHI) advises, ‘Controlled crying is not consistent with what infants need for their optimal emotional and psychological health, and may have unintended negative consequences.’ According to AAIMHI, ‘There have been no studies, such as sleep laboratory studies, to our knowledge, that assess the physiological stress levels of infants who undergo controlled crying, or its emotional or psychological impact on the developing child.’

Despite the popularity of controlled crying, it is not an evidence-based practice. In a talk at the International Association of Infant Mental Health 9th World Congress held in Melbourne in 2004, Professor James McKenna, director of the Mother–Baby Behavioural Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and acclaimed SIDS expert, described controlled crying as ‘social ideology masquerading as science’.What this means is that despite a plethora of opinions on how long you should leave your baby to cry in order to train her to sleep, nobody has studied exactly how long it is safe to leave a baby to cry, if at all.

Babies can indeed be ‘brand new and blue’ with an actual diagnosis of clinical depression. Often the predisposing conditions for depression in infants are beyond our control, such as trauma due to early hospitalisation and medical treatments. However, if we consider the baby’s perspective, it is easy to understand how extremely rigid regimes can also be associated with infant depression and why it isn’t worth risking, especially if your child has already experienced early separation. You too would withdraw and become sad if the people you loved avoided eye contact, as some sleep training techniques advise, and repeatedly ignored your cries.

Leaving a baby to cry evokes physiological responses that increase stress hormones. Crying infants experience an increase in heart rate, body temperature and blood pressure. These reactions are likely to result in overheating and, along with vomiting due to extreme distress, could pose a potential risk of SIDS in vulnerable infants. There may also be longer-term emotional effects. Babies need our help to learn how to regulate their emotions, meaning that when we respond to and soothe their cries, we help them understand that when they are upset, they can calm down. On the other hand, when infants are left alone to cry it out, they fail to develop the understanding that they can regulate their own emotions. There is also compelling evidence that increased levels of stress hormones may cause permanent changes in the stress responses of the infant’s developing brain. These changes then affect memory, attention, and emotion, and can trigger an elevated response to stress throughout life, including a predisposition to later anxiety and depressive disorders. English psychotherapist, Sue Gerhardt, author of Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain, explains that when a baby is upset, the hypothalamus produces cortisol. In normal amounts cortisol is fine, but if a baby is exposed for too long or too often to stressful situations (such as being left to cry) its brain becomes flooded with cortisol and it will then either over- or under-produce cortisol whenever the child is exposed to stress. Too much cortisol is linked to depression and fearfulness; too little to emotional detachment and aggression.

Stress levels in infancy may have implications for learning, too. While it seems fairly obvious that a calm baby will be available for learning, studies have shown that children with the lowest scores on mental and motor ability tests were those with the highest cortisol levels in their blood. There is also research showing that children with anxiety disorders have a higher level of sleep difficulties as infants. Although these studies weren’t about controlled crying and I am making no direct connection, my point is that perhaps some of the babies who are presenting with sleep difficulties are infants who need extra help to regulate their emotions or are more sensitive to stress, so it is possible that these little people would be more at risk if they were exposed to controlled crying.

One of the arguments for using controlled crying is that it ‘works’, but perhaps the definition of success needs to be examined more closely. In the small number of studies undertaken, while most babies will indeed stop waking when they are left to cry, ‘success’ varies from an extra hour’s sleep each night to little difference between babies who underwent sleep training and those who didn’t, eight weeks later. Some studies found that up to one-third of the babies who underwent controlled crying ‘failed sleep school’. A recent Australian baby magazine survey revealed that lthough 57 per cent of mothers who responded to the survey had tried controlled crying, 27 per cent reported no success, 27 per cent found it worked for one or two nights, and only 8 per cent found that controlled crying worked for longer than a week. To me, this suggests that even if harsher regimes work initially, babies are likely to start waking again as they reach new developmental stages or conversely, they may become more settled and sleep (without any intervention) as they reach appropriate developmental levels.

Controlled crying and other similar regimes may indeed work to produce a self-soothing, solitary sleeping infant. However, the trade-off could be an anxious, clingy or hyper-vigilant child or even worse, a child whose trust is broken. Unfortunately, we can’t measure attributes such as trust and empathy which are the basic skills for forming all relationships. We can’t, for instance, give a child a trust quotient like we can give him an intelligence quotient. One of the saddest emails I have received was from a mother who did controlled crying with her one-year-old toddler.

“After a week of controlled crying he slept, but he stopped talking (he was saying single words). For the past year, he has refused all physical contact from me. If he hurts himself, he goes to his older brother (a preschooler) for comfort. I feel devastated that I have betrayed my child.”

It is the very principle that makes controlled crying ‘work’ that is of greatest concern: when controlled crying ‘succeeds’ in teaching a baby to fall asleep alone, it is due to a process that neurobiologist Bruce Perry calls the ‘defeat response’. Normally, when humans feel threatened, our bodies flood with stress hormones and we go into ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. However, babies can’t fight and they can’t flee, so they communicate their distress by crying. When infant cries are ignored, this trauma elicits a ‘freeze’ or ‘defeat’ response. Babies eventually abandon their crying as the nervous system shuts down the emotional pain and the striving to reach out.

One explanation for the success of ‘crying it out’ is that when an infant’s defeat response is triggered often enough, the child will become habituated to this. That is, each time the child is left to cry, he ‘switches’ more quickly to this response. This is why babies may cry for say, an hour the first night, twenty minutes the following night and fall asleep almost immediately on the third night (if you are ‘lucky’). They are ‘switching off’ (and sleeping) more quickly, not learning a legitimate skill.

Whether sleep ‘success’ is due to behavioural principles (that is, a lack of ‘rewards’ when baby wakes) or whether the baby is overwhelmed by a stress reaction, the saddest risk of all is that as he tries to communicate in the only way available to him, the baby who is left to cry in order to teach him to sleep will learn a much crueler lesson – that he cannot make a difference, so what is the point of reaching out. This is learned helplessness.

This is an edited extract from “Sleeping Like a Baby” by Pinky McKay (Penguin). Pinky is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Certified Infant Massage Instructor and mother of five. For more tips to help your baby (and you!) sleep, read Pinky’s best-selling book Sleeping Like a Baby.   Pinky’s website is www.pinky-mychild.com.

by Pinky

If your baby is a newborn, she may settle more easily if she is more contained as you bath her: on the ‘inside’ your baby was confined and not floating all stretched out and her womb world was gently bathed in filtered light. By dimming the lights or bathing by candlelight with your newborn, you will help her recall the safety of her womb world and you will be able to hold her close and support her as she gradually relaxes and ‘uncurls’ her limbs. Bathing together is especially helpful if bonding has been interrpted by early seperation or a difficult birth experience. It can also be lovely bonding time for the father and baby.

Newborns can lose body heat very quickly after a birth and cold baby will be more difficult to settle. Also, if you lay your baby flat to dry her, this can trigger her startle reflex and she may start to scream- which, of course, defeats the purpose of a relaxation bath. So, rather than exposing your baby to cool air and risking more crying, wrap her in two warm towels and cuddle her. The heat trapped in the towels will dry most of your baby’s body as the warmth relaxes her. Then you can remove the damp towel next to her body and with the outer, dryer towel dry the crevices (neck, underarms, groin, between fingers and toes) and dress her.

To bathe safely with your baby, it is best to have somebody else to help you get in and out of the bath but if you are on your own, place your baby on a towel that is spread over a baby seat or bouncinette next to the bath. When you are comfortably in the bath, reach over and life the baby in with you. When you need to get out, place the baby back in the bouncer, wrap her in a towel to keep her warm while you get dried and pop on your dressing gown, then dress your baby and snuggle together- bliss!

For more great tips about soothing your baby, see Pinky’s book ‘100 Ways to Calm the Crying’, or visit Pinky’s website www.pinky-mychild.com/

To move wind, encourage tummy troubles resulting from gas or constipation, try this massage sequence about 20 minutes after a breastfeed or 40 minutes after a formula feed (if you don’t feel confident- or if you would like to learn how to do a complete baby massage to help relax your baby, grab a copy of Pinky’s baby massage DVD):

• Begin by resting your hands on your baby’s tummy and connecting with him then, with the palms of your hand following the other ‘paddling’ downward like a waterwheel (massaging upward could make your baby vomit). Repeat six times.
• Gently bend your baby’s knees up against his stomach and hold his legs for as he is comfortable, up to thirty seconds- this usually helps release trapped wind.
• Release baby’s legs and stroke them from hip to ankle, coaxing your baby to “relax relax”.
• Next, with the palms of your hand following the other, stroke firmly around the tummy incontinous clockwise circles. Repeat these strokes six times.
• Again, hold baby’s legs up and hold them, then release and stroke.
• Repeat this sequence three times.

You will find if your pre-empt baby’s crying times and massage before the onset of tummy troubles (if he has a regular witching hour, or several), you may be able to avert the crying and practicing this massage sequence twice daily will help babies with upset tummies.

Check out Baby Massage DVD by Pinky McKay for more great massage ideas. About the author - Pinky McKay is an Internationally Certified Lactation Consultant, a Certified Infant Massage Instructor with Infant Massage Australia and respected parenting author.   For more information about Pinky please visit www.pinkymckay.com.au.

By Pinky

There is evidence that allowing babies to feed according to their own appetite, rather than imposing rigid feeding schedules, is more compatible with the biology of mothers and babies. Although breastfeeding according to schedule may seem to work at first, many women who use strict feeding schedules in the early weeks find that their milk supply dwindles and their baby may be weaned by about three months. By restricting feeds or repeatedly spacing them out with dummies, you will not only reduce stimulation that signals your breasts to make milk, but you may limit the development of the hormonal process that enhances ongoing milk production. This translates to: early and frequent breastfeeding will promote a continuing milk supply, which means that your baby will gets lots of milk so he is less likely to cry because he is hungry.

Another reason for watching your baby, rather than the clock, is that mothers have varying breast milk storage capacities: ultrasound studies by biochemist Dr Peter Hartmann and colleagues at the University of Western Australia have shown that the breast milk storage capacity can vary up to three times as much between individual women (this is not necessarily related to breast size and doesn’t influence milk production ability). This means that while some women who have a large storage capacity will be able to feed their babies enough milk to go three to four hours between feeds (providing their baby has a big enough stomach), other women will need to feed their babies more often. For women with a smaller milk capacity, a three- to four-hourly feeding schedule could result in a hungry, unsettled baby and a mother who questions her ability to produce more milk when really, it is the schedule that is inappropriate, not the mother’s feeding ability. Instead of becoming stressed about how much milk your breasts are making or storing, think in terms of drinking out of a cup- you can still drink a litre of water whether you drink it from a large cup or several small cupfuls. If you allow your baby to nurse whenever he lets you know he is hungry, you will never have to worry about your milk storage capacity.

For more information about soothing babies cries, see ‘100 Ways to Calm the Crying’ or Pinky’s ebook Breastfeeding Simply 

About the author - Pinky McKay is an Internationally Certified Lactation Consultant, a Certified Infant Massage Instructor with Infant Massage Australia and respected parenting author.   For more information about Pinky please visit www.pinkymckay.com.au.

Do you remember going to the park and climbing on the jungle gym? Or climbing trees in the backyard? Although most toddlers start their climbing careers with a jaunt up onto the dining room table, possibly even before they can walk (and try not to shriek out loud in shock the first time that it happens!), there seems to be less and less time and freedom for most children to climb safely outdoors.

This is a pity because all that tree climbing, along with swinging and hanging from monkey bars and trees, helps children develop upper body, arm and shoulder strength that precede the fine motor skills required for writing, painting and sorting blocks into shape sorters. Climbing also helps develop hand-eye and eye-foot coordination, body control, muscle tone and cross patterning (opposite arm and leg movement), as well as spatial awareness and concepts such as up, down, low and high.

As your toddler begins to climb- up and down stairs, up into chairs and sofas or even onto tables (for safety’s sake, you may have to remove the chairs when you can’t supervise), teach him to turn around and climb down backwards feet first- use a single word such as ’safe safe’ as you turn his body around. With lots of consistent repetition, he will eventually be able toclimb safely- up and down!

Although you may feel your heart in your mouth and a sense of panic as your little one climbs, it is really important not to transmit your own fears, so mind your language and resist the urge to tell him ‘be careful, you will fall!’, This could distract him and may even cause him to fall or he could lose confidence. If he is free to concentrate with you nearby to break his fall if necessary, he will attempt just what he is reasonable capable of and he will develop so much confidence you will soon be wondering if he has monkey glands.

As well as (or in preparation for) climbing, you can help develop upper body coordination by playing ‘wheel barrows’ with your toddler supporting your child’s body horizontally as she ’stands’ or ‘walks’ on her hands - and letting her hang and swing from bars (or safe, smooth branches). Even a one year old can swing from a horizontal bar (preferably safer alternatives than the door or towel rails!) or a trapeze with support (hold him around his hips), but do teach your child to grip with his thumbs underneath this bar as this is a stronger, safer grip.  Incidentally, it is also the correct grip to hold a pencil later on.

About the author - Pinky McKay is an Internationally Certified Lactation Consultant, a Certified Infant Massage Instructor with Infant Massage Australia and respected parenting author.  Check out Toddler Tactics by Pinky McKay  and Pinky’s Melbourne Toddler Tactic Seminars here.  For more information about Pinky please visit www.pinkymckay.com.au.