The Mule

The question of whether or not babies can learn to 'self-soothe' continues to divide parenting writers and experts. Does a baby left to cry alone in their cot eventually find ways to comfort themselves, to make themselves feel better? Or do they simply stop crying after a while because they realise that nobody will come and that there is nothing they can do about it - they learn that they are helpless? Let's look at this from a fresh angle. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, let me ask you a question: How do YOU 'self-soothe'? Think for a moment. The shit is hitting the fan. You are distressed. You have lost your job. Your relationship flounders. Someone close to you is sick. The usual suspects. You feel 'emotional'; you are upset, jangled, stirred. What do you do? How do you try to regulate yourself, to bring yourself back into balance? You might sit with your difficult feelings for a while, aware that they are part of life's patte...

The UK news this week has been dominated by the story of Jimmy Savile, the television presenter and media personality currently under investigation for a string of sex offences. It's emerging that Savile, who died in October 2011, abused a series of young people - the exact number is yet to be established - over a showbiz career that spanned several decades. Our reaction: shock, horror, sadness even, but surprise? Not really, because, we sort of knew, didn't we? We sort of know. We have uneasy feelings, gut reactions, hunches, intuitions, sixth senses. The hairs stand up, very slightly, on the backs of our necks. We don't know how we know. But we do. No one could capture this better than poet Simon Armitage , a former social worker, in his poem, The Guilty : They look us dead in the eye and deny it. They turn out their pockets - nothing but biscuits and shreds of a tissue. They will undress their children this very minute. Suggest their names, they are astonished. ...

People make different parenting choices, and that's fine. We don't all want to sleep with our baby in our bed, carry them in a sling, or nurse them until they're three. We might not like the idea of routines, we might despise the thought of spoon feeding a baby purees. But whilst these issues are often a source of interesting and sometimes heated debate, none of them really matter, or at least, they pale into insignificance compared to the bottom line, which is this: Parents need to be Responsive . No matter what other choices you make, as long as you try your best to be consistently and lovingly responsive to your child, you are 'getting it right'. Tantrums - which mostly happen at the toddler age - are a difficult area for all parents and it's sometimes hard to know what to do. But how we respond to our children in these testing moments is very important. I've written a detailed post about responding to distress in general here: Everybody Hurts: Ten Ways...

Attachment - the invisible threads that connect us to our children - woven from elements no lab could ever replicate: Love, Time, Connection, Closeness, Understanding...to name just a few. A healthy, strong and positive attachment means happier, calmer children who grow into adults who are better able to cope with life and make happy and healthy attachments with others. Through you they are learning about the joy of 'relationship', about how wonderful life can be when you connect deeply with another person, when your eyes meet in laughter, when you love freely and without constraint. For some, attachment comes naturally from the moment of birth, but for others, the weaving of the threads can take longer, perhaps because of a traumatic labour, unsuccessful breastfeeding, difficult life circumstances, or even spectres from our own childhood that can suddenly rear up and haunt us when we become mothers and fathers ourselves. Still others miss the first days or even months or y...

Often we really want to help our children express how they are feeling, but find that our questions are met with silence or a change of subject. In this situation, we might feel that they are not opening up to us, that the lines of communication are broken, that they are keeping their feelings bottled up. We might find ourselves asking,"Why won't you TALK to me?!". But there is something we can do. We can play with them. Through play, we can connect and communicate with our children at an emotional level, in a way that feels safe, natural to them, and fun. Why? Play is a Child's Natural Language Play is the way that a child makes sense of their world. Children use play to process and explore events that they experience, from the day to day, such as shopping and 'mummies and daddies', to the traumatic. Children who have witnessed or been involved in a frightening situation will rarely, if ever, choose to process this by talking about it. Instead, they re-...