Marisa, have you had any luck with this? My daughter is 18 months old and I bring her into bed with me after she wakes up (this helps me to get more sleep). But she is waking up and wanting to breastfeed a lot and we are thinking about trying for another baby soon, so I’m thinking about night weaning, but am worried it’s going to be a nightmare!

I’ve been following your techniques for years when I first started out as a nanny and wanting more advice on handling tough situations. Now as a mother of an almost 3 yo and 7 month old I’m finding myself handling new situations. We talk about emotions a lot in our household and always validate when anyone is expressing themselves. The issue we have been having lately is with our 3yo pushing, kicking, and hurting the 7month old. When I see this behavior starting to occur, I help stop my 3yo body and tell him what I’m doing so that he doesn’t hurt his brother. But I don’t always catch it. And when it does happen and the baby is crying because he was pushed over, I notice my 3yo often running away or laughing at what he did. I know kids have like zero impulse control and we’re here to help. But I’m at a loss of what to do in these situations. Do I try and calmly talk to the toddler about what happened? Attend to the baby and ignore the toddler? Nothing feels right and it feels like nothing is getting better no matter what my husband and I do. Please, we could really use some advice.

My son has 3 and half year old triplet girls. Bedtime is a nightmare their mum does the counting 1,2,3 of course take no notice threats screams this can go on for a couple of hours. They wake during the night mum finishes up sleeping in their room no quality sleep for anyone. The tantrums are sonething else. When my son put them to bed ges firm no nonsense asleep in no time. Mother thinks what son does can damage psychological .Help whats the answer

I find my daughter of 2yrs 2 months finds it hard to transition from one thing to another so I now plan to limit how many transitions out of play we do, eg. End play, then do drink, snack, getting shoes on, going out. It is so much harder if these things are interrupting play. We get some momentum going to do these necessary things. So I might make sure I’m ready to go out first while she is playing, so that I can focus on all the tasks she needs to do in one go. The other thing that’s really helped with ending play or moving on is letting her bring a toy with her into the next activity. It means we can talk about the toy and what she’s just been playing with so that it doesn’t feel so much of a wrench for her with ending the game. Saying ‘bye bye’ to her game does help to move on as I’d tried with timing (2 more minutes…) but it was impossible as she couldn’t understand how long or short that was. So now I am with her ending her game, it might be that we help say bye bye or night night and lay the trains on their side to go to sleep or pack the jigsaw into the box with, ‘bye bye, see you soon’. We have so many fewer issues with the everyday things like changing nappies or getting shoes on (tantrums, scratching, crying) now I am more conscious of how to manage this. Not perfect, but it has helped!

Hi, not sure it’s still relevant, but you could get a fairly cheap secondhand double buggy and just strap her in when she gets off the bus. Perhaps she just can’t face the walk home after a really long day. We have the bugaboo bee and the ride along seat which my 3 year old loves.

Is tooth-brushing really a voluntary act? Don’t we need our children to brush their teeth? And what do you do if you CANNOT physically do these things? I find the advice in these situations is often to physically take charge, but what if you have a strong child and a your body is not strong enough to physically make them dress or stop hitting or whatever the behavior is?

Hi, I’m in a similar situation as my daughter is four. She has begun digging in hard at bedtime and loses control quite quickly. I’m at a loss of what to do here though because picking her up or physically moving her is something she hates to her core. How do you reach them in this case where all you have available is words.

Start by breathing out! Heave a big out breath, and then breathe into the empty space in the middle of your chest, that space which gets massaged every time the lungs inflate with a new breath. This is a fun thing to practice in non stressed times as well.

Hi Sarah – the consequence you are describing sounds fair and reasonable to me because it is an expression of your personal boundaries. “When you treat me rudely, I don’t feel like doing you that favor.” That’s perfectly valid and I agree that children need to learn this kind of cause and effect.

If you’re interested, I covered my thoughts on consequences in this post:https://www.janetlansbury.com/2013/07/truths-about-consequences/

Thanks for your question.