Toddlers
Age 15-36 months
So your precious infant has somehow grown into a walking (or at least toddling), talking (or at least trying to string three words together) human being, who enchants you with his big heart and drives you crazy with his mule-headedness. Toddlers can be a handful, but if you can see things from his perspective, and support him as he takes his first steps into autonomy, toddlerhood can be terrific!
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Toddlers: Your Game Plan for the Terrific Twos
This can be a maddening time for parents, or it can be a wonderful time, watching your child blossom.
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Taming Toddler Tantrums
Temper tantrums are normal for toddlers, even legendary. Toddlers feel so passionately about everything, and they simply don't have enough frontal cortex capacity yet to control their strong emotions when they're upset.
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Easing the Transition to the Toddler Bed
So your toddler is giving up the crib? Or moving out of the family bed? You’ve been to the store and picked out the cutest toddler bed? All of you are totally excited?
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Feeding Your Toddler
Want to help your toddler develop healthy eating habits? Then offer him only healthy food. There's no reason your toddler needs sweets or junk food at all. But even more important than what your toddler eats is his relationship with food. You want him to be in charge of how much he eats, and of getting it into his own mouth.
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Discipline: Managing Your Toddler so you can enjoy him
How to manage a toddler? And stay positive?! Believe it or not, Yes you can!
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Child-Led Potty Learning Without a Power Struggle
Moving from diapers to being self-sufficiently able to use the toilet is a natural process. Humans have been doing it for a long time. They all get out of diapers sooner or later.
So you don't actually need to "toilet train" your child. Instead, set up conditions so your child can learn. Your goal is to make it as easy and effortless as possible. Think of this as a process of learning that unfolds over time, like all other learning and mastery.
Your Toddler or Preschooler and TV
How much screen time should your Toddler or Preschooler have? Are you ready? The latest research on the effects of TV on the developing brain indicates that young children's brains are irrevocably changed, for the worse, by screen exposure.
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Help Your Toddler Learn to Put Himself to Sleep
Toddlers don't seem to have an off switch. Often, when they're tired, they just reverberate faster, like an over-wound toy, until they crash.
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Helping Your Toddler with Separation Anxiety
Dreading leaving your toddler with the babysitter or at daycare and want to prepare him?
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Routines that Toddlers Can Understand
Young children function best with structured schedules. Toddlers and preschoolers, especially, feel small in the world. Most things happen TO them. They crave predictability, knowing what will happen, because it gives them some sense of control. A predictable routine allows children to feel safe, and to develop a sense of mastery in handling their lives.
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Why Every Home Needs a Calm-Down Corner
Sometimes, despite your best efforts to express understanding, your child gets emotionally dysregulated. When you realize that your child is getting to that dangerously over-wrought place, suggest that the two of you take some “cozy time”—snuggle up and read a book. Often the connection and the shift to his “thinking brain” will help your child re-regulate.
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14 Tips for Gentle Weaning
The verb "To Wean" comes from a Hebrew word meaning to ripen. So when the time is ripe (or maybe when the child is ripe?!) the baby becomes a child who no longer needs to nurse. That process is designed by Mother Nature to be an organic, natural one, like any other kind of ripening.
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Discipline for Young Toddlers
How do you discipline a toddler? You understand that their job description is exploration and set limits with that in mind!
How To Get Toddler To Brush teeth
Dr. Laura,
My toddler hates it when I brush her teeth. Brushing teeth is one of the last things we do after the bath and before bed, when she is tired --
she is crazy then, throwing a fit. I really don't want her to get cavities. Should I just hold her down and brush?
"I read your Toddler tips yesterday and tried each suggestion, and LO! My daughter has not been fighting me! Like some kind of magic it just works!"
Karina
Dr. Laura is a parent whisperer! - Liz McIntosh
Liz McIntosh
Dr. Laura's parenting advice completely changed my relationship with my daughter, improved her self-esteem, and transformed our lives. Providing my daughter with acknowledgement of her feelings and point of view reduced her oppositional behaviors and emotional meltdowns to nearly none. - Jodie Tokatlian
Dr. Laura, you have created miracles, large and small, in so many lives and our children thank you.
Folks, she's brilliant. It's wonderful to have parenting experts who don't see the child as the enemy in a locked combat, for one thing. I recommend it.
"I'd really recommend Laura Markham's Aha! parenting books and website for brilliantly practical ways to parent with kindness instead of punishment." - Makchoon
Makchoon
I have seen amazing improvement in my *very* angry 17 year-old son after acknowledging that there was a reason he was so angry and acting out. We have had several heartfelt conversations and I have seen a real change in how he treats his younger brother, and how he treats me.
I know that I am a better parent thanks to Dr. Laura's inspirational words and suggestions.
I love AhaParenting because there is always a "pick yourself up and try again" to it. - Chantal Harrison
Chantal Harrison
It's like these emails were meant for me. - Caroline Henry
"Just wanted to say how much I appreciate receiving your regular emails. They've improved my parenting (and me as a person!) and made my children's lives better. Thank you!" - Andrei
Andrei
My daughter reacts so much better when I empathize and stay patient. And now I get to model that behavior instead of letting my frustration get the better of me.
Thank YOU so much for your encouraging weekly newsletters and your Facebook posts. Since I began following your approach, I have noticed a difference in the compassion I show to myself, and how much more that helps me connect with my kids. We are all feeling a lot more overall peace!
Thank you for your weekly emails and your books. They're a life line for me when I really need support during a rough patch. - Lisa Fernandez
Lisa Fernandez
Today I say thank you, tears streaming from my face, so proud of my little boy and all he will become. Thank you. - Jennifer B.
Jennifer B
Yes. It works. And the more rest I get, the more patience I have. It makes a difference.
Dear Dr. Laura Markham! I am a mother of 2 boys - 16 and 7 years old. I am extremely grateful for all the emotional and relational education that you provide us and also for your incredible loving energy to support our evolution as parents, as human beings. I took your course 3 years ago. Although the challenges of the parent-child relationship change almost every year, your parenting principles are equally valuable and effective. It's hard to reprogram the emotional-behavioral pattern learned in my own childhood... so I find it very helpful to go back to your teachings to regain trust and patience as a parent every time new challenges trigger my anxiety. To have more clarity, to reset my energy. Thank you!!
Janina-Madalina Dobrescu
Your philosophies are the only tools we've come across which offer practical advice grounded in clearly laid out lay terminology. Our family life day-to-day is nothing short of a miracle, thanks to you! - Dana Questad
Dana Questad
