I (Kirby) was a very emotional and tenderhearted child. My dad was the opposite. He was a great guy, and a real person of integrity, but he wasn’t emotional and didn’t really understand emotions, and as a result, he didn’t really know how to deal with his heart-on-her-sleeve daughter. That was a painful way to grow up even though he was trying his best.

Maybe you have some areas where you and your child are so different it’s hard to comprehend each other. Energy level, emotionality, self-control, introversion, and impulsivity are just some of the areas where there can be problems with what psychologists term “goodness of fit” between parent and child.

Maybe you’re an exhausted mom, and you have a three-year-old that goes, goes, goes from morning til night, and all night if he could. Or maybe you need alone time to recharge, but your preschooler seems to need playdates every day. Or you’re an organized, controlled person, and your child has ADHD.

Learning disabilities are nobody’s fault. Your kids may have their gene pool stacked against them. The problem is, if you wait until those learning disabilities show up in school, you may have missed your window to rewire the brain so that those learning disabilities don’t impede your child’s progress.

I (Kirby) was trained as a Montessori teacher. In my training, I learned that Maria Montessori was the first female doctor in Italy. In her work, she came across individuals with intellectual disabilities. Her theory was that if she worked with these children young enough, and in the right ways, they would be able to pass the tests needed to go to school; they wouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to be educated. She developed systems of breaking tasks down into steps and teaching the steps. Much of my work developing learning games for children is based on Montessori’s principles.

I would never advocate that you sit your small child in a desk and try to do “school” with them. But incorporating delightful learning games target the early skills that become building blocks of later important skills. Children should be learning without having any idea that you are teaching them.

Did you know that the secret to a happy marriage is the same as the secret to happy kids? It's a simple ratio. John Gottman, a marriage researcher, found that a ratio of 5 positive interactions to each one negative interaction tipped the balance from a troubled relationship to a happy, healthy relationship. He called this the Magic Ratio.

You can apply this principle today with your child. Start by noticing your positive and negative interactions. Keep a chart on the fridge and make tally marks to help you keep track. Andrew Armstrong researched this ratio between parents and small children and found that his control group generally had a 1:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions with their young children.

Good parents often are more negative with their kids than they realize. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? So the behaviors that need to be "fixed" are the ones that get the attention from us. It comes much less naturally to continually notice the good.

Is grocery shopping a nightmare for you? Fussy kids, grumpy mom, whining for Lucky Charms, strangers staring, coming home with the wrong items because you couldn't concentrate. Sound familiar?

We used three simple rules that made grocery trips a whole lot smoother. We recited both the rules and the consequences together in the car before every shopping trip, because little ones can't always remember the rules from week to week. Kids also need to say the rules themselves, not just hear them.

Rule 1: Don't touch. For the safety of the children and the merchandise, kids are only allowed to touch what mom hands them. Let them help with anything they can't damage. They can put items in a child-sized basket or in the big basket.

​'Tis the season…to try desperately to keep your children quiet during religious services, concerts, plays, and the like. But let's face it, they are kids! They're not exactly hardwired to sit still and look angelic. Except, of course, when no one is looking. I mean, there is Murphy's Law to contend with. So whether you are looking to survive a one-time event or to make weekly services more enjoyable, how do you help your child stay quiet?

To start off with, we are assuming that you are going to an event where children are welcome, but need to be relatively quiet and calm. Let's just acknowledge that this is not always possible with little ones, and taking them out of the service if they are not handling it well is not a punishment; it's just acceptance of the limits of preschoolerhood.

Staying quiet requires a set of skills that can be worked on over time, but that we can't expect of preschoolers who have not had a chance to practice. Among other things, it requires:

​Few things can grate on a mom's nerves like constant fighting. You want your kids to be best friends with each other, to play well together, and to love each other, but you may be at a loss as to how to deal with the inevitable bickering.

The first step to dealing with a fight is to help your kids calm down. When emotions are running high, kids are not capable of problem solving. You may need to separate the children, not as a punishment, but as a break to help each one regain some equilibrium. Do you know what calms your children down? Is it being alone or cuddling with you? Do they feel better when they sit down with a book or doll or when they listen to music? Does it help them to have a comfort item? If you ask your children to take a break in their rooms, tell them what they can do ("You may sit in your beanbag and talk to your doll," or "You may play with your legos.")

When the emotions have settled, talk to each child individually about what happened. Have them put their feelings and the events into words, and help them notice what upset them. Reflect and affirm their emotions. ("That must have been really frustrating when your little brother knocked down the tower you worked so hard on.")

Colors are one of the first things that parents think about teaching their children. Teaching your preschooler colors can be a lot of fun.

You should wait to introduce colors until your child has a solid vocabulary of nouns. A preschooler's brain is wired to learn the names of objects before learning to describe those objects. Kids have what is called the "language explosion" between 18 and 24 months of age, during which they will be learning lots and lots of nouns. Work with their brains during this time by naming everything, and by not confusing things by adding adjectives.

After about the age of two, your child may be getting ready to learn colors. The best way to kick off this process is by having a "red day." (Really, it can be any color you want.) Pick a color, like red, and focus on it. Have everyone wear red. Pick red foods to eat. Pull out red blocks or red toys. Finger paint with red paint. Put up red streamers and balloons and hang red tissue paper over the window. Get as much red in your day as you can. Every time you see something red, point it out.

​Structured activities and classes for preschoolers abound these days. Amid the dazzling array of opportunities, how do we know what choices are beneficial for our kids, and how much is too much?

A good rule of thumb for preschoolers is to use their age as a guideline for the number of group activities a week. A two-year-old probably can't handle more than two classes a week (this includes religious services/Sunday school), and a three-year-old shouldn't have more than three a week. It's also important to know your child's personality here. Are they energized by being around people? Do they do better in smaller classes or just doing activities with one other friend? Follow your child's lead.

Art, music, and sports can all be fabulous for preschoolers. The important thing is that they be physically engaging, age appropriate, and focused on experience rather than outcome. Look for activities that provide tactile learning experiences and opportunities to explore and experiment. Choose sports that don't focus on competition, but rather on learning skills, teamwork, and having fun. Swimming is a lifesaving skill to have, and it can be a great physical activity to start early. Gymnastics teaches kids balance and coordination, resulting in fewer injuries.

​This is a little different from our usual posts, but I want to talk about something that is a familiar face to parents—fear.

A friend of mine just had her second baby; her first son is a toddler. This week, she wrote about her worries that all the attention she is giving her baby will damage her older son. Will he feel unloved? Neglected? Will he start to resent the baby? Will this hurt him for life? Can she be a good mother to both kids? What if she's not doing enough?

Does any of that sound familiar? I bet it does, even if the thoughts are not about the same issue. From pregnancy through having adult children, we have fears about whether we've chosen the "right" approach or philosophy, about how our own personality, limitations, mistakes, and choices will affect our kids, and how in the world to handle all the curve balls our children throw at us. We often feel like we are groping our way through a dark, booby-trapped room, and it can be terrifying. And perhaps deepest of all, we fear that we are not good parents.

As we enter again into the rhythm and routine of autumn, let’s visit the ever popular topic of the morning routine. What this is depends very much on the age of the child. All ages of children leading up to school age in general find security in a routine and don’t do well with surprises or sudden changes taking them out of their normal rhythm. Your preference may be to make a chart or a list or use a big calendar. There are many ways to communicate with your pre-reading child what will be done today. Regardless of your preferred manner, here are some principles to keep in mind:

KEEPING IT SIMPLE KEEPS IT CALM     When preparing a routine for your little one, simplicity is helpful. It’s tempting to get swept up in the whirlwind of organized scheduling. Before you know it the day is packed out with wonderful activities to tick off. This can quickly become overwhelming to a small person. It can easily result in “acting out” (what we fondly call a tantrum).

REVIEW THE NIGHT BEFORE     These little ones don’t have long memories. So take them through their routine verbally the night before and again when they’re ready to start their day the next morning.

Parents of preschoolers are tired people. Caring for little ones is exhausting work. We have the best intentions of providing enriching activities for our kids, but when exhaustion sets in, good intentions go out the window. To help you plan for those times when you need something your child can do while you are lying down or sitting, here's a list of 20 activities.

1. Finger paint in shaving cream spread on a cookie sheet.
2. Play with play dough.
3. Read. If you're reading a well-known book, try changing some of the words or sentences and let your child have fun catching your "mistakes."
4. Play Chutes and Ladders or Candyland.
5. Put on music and let your child dance. Try giving her a bean bag and challenge her to dance with the beanbag on her head, between her knees, or on her elbow.
6. Play "red light, green light."
7. Play a following directions game. Give your child silly things to do.
8. Put out two or three items on a plate, then cover them up and see if your child can remember what he saw. Let him do the same for you.
9. Throw a sheet over a card table to make a fort. Let your child take toys inside.
10. Put a little tub of water on the kitchen floor. Gather up a bunch of objects and let your child test if they sink or float.
11. String big beads on shoelaces.

There are a number of helpful rhymes that Kirby, our resident expert, has come up with to aid us in remembering key concepts of child-rearing and development. We’ll be covering a few of them in the weeks ahead and will start off with this clever ditty:

After a recent move from the United Kingdom to the United States, my eight year old has taken to labeling herself as a “tomboy”. I’m not really sure what she means by it. I observe that she doesn’t enjoy sports as much as I did when I was a child. However, she has switched out her skirts for shorts or pants to fit in more with the culture around her. When does a stereotype become a type of who we are and what we do? When does a certain pattern of choices or certain actions begin to define our identity?

These are important questions for parenting, for the very way we talk to our children. Are we speaking to their choice of action or to who or what they are? By doing the latter, we begin to label them in some way, to define their identity. It may be second nature for us to label someone as good or bad: “Those are the good guys in the movie and those are the baddies.” However, it is really significant to our little people that they hear us speak to what their actions are and the outcome of those actions. Instead of saying “What a bad boy!” – thus defining the boy’s whole identity as “bad” – we could describe the choice as bad or the outcome of his actions as hurtful.

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein

This is our task: To simplify the rules of living down to an age-appropriate level.

Keep things very simple. But not only for six year olds, Dr. Einstein; we’re reaching an even younger group here.

Three-year-old Jonathan would not go anywhere without wearing a hat. He called it his "helmet." One day, Kirby and Jonathan were out walking in the woods, and Jonathan realized that he had forgotten his helmet. He started to get panicky. Kirby quickly offered him the knit hat she was wearing because of the cold, and he calmed down.

After a while, Kirby asked him, "How do you like wearing my helmet?"

Jonathan replied, "I like it. It keeps me from falling down."

Do you have trouble getting your preschooler to cooperate? (That was a joke…of course you do—they're preschoolers!)

One simple change you can make--without much effort, without discussing parenting philosophy with your spouse, without brainstorming rewards or meting out punishments— can make a significant change in how cooperative your preschooler becomes.

And don't tell, but it will probably work on the adults in your life, too.

The development of the ability for delayed gratification can be done from an early age. Increasing one's attention span will eventually affect many aspects of life from saving money to controlling a temper or facing temptation to do the wrong thing. It is important to start at the beginning.

The fact is the younger the age, the shorter the attention span. Infants have needs that should be met immediately. They need to know that their needs will be taken care of and this is exactly where they should be at developmentally. Toddlers have enough ability to wait with distraction or accept help to accomplish the thing for which they're waiting. Preschoolers can be stretched to increase their ability to wait with some help.

If you're curious where your child's attention span is at, try this little test... Place a raisin or M&M under a cup making sure your child sees what you're doing. Then explain that they can pick up the cup and eat it AFTER you ring the bell. (You can do this with lunch food or anything you approve of but keep it small so they don't fill up too quickly.) For the first ringing of the bell, ring right away. On the second attempt, ring the bell after a few seconds' delay. With each subsequent ringing, lengthen the time by a little longer each turn to try to stretch them. Some children will be able to wait and some won't. If they cannot wait for the bell, still watch the clock and ring the bell anyway as they will have to wait for it on the next round. Don't get upset. This is just an area to work on. Sidenote: don't play this when they're really hungry but when they still want a little food, like at snack time.

One of the main tasks of the toddler and preschool years is developing autonomy. This can be a great inconvenience to parents, who know that, for example, getting out the door would happen much faster if three-year-old Trevor didn't insist on dressing himself when he can\'t do the buttons, tying his own shoes when he doesn't know how, or struggling into his jacket without help…backwards.

One of your jobs, as a parent, is to facilitate the emerging autonomy of your children. This doesn't mean suddenly abandoning your child to the mercy of his shoelaces, but it does mean supporting your child\'s drive to learn to do things himself.

You can survive your child's growing autonomy by:

"My nine-month-old has found his voice…in the form of an ear-piercing shriek! Do I just try to wait it out until he learns words, or are there ways I can teach him more mom-friendly sounds?"

There are three main reasons for children loudly screeching in their communication, and the reason your child is screeching will determine the best course of action.

He may be experimenting with his voice. Babies are just learning how to control what comes out of their mouths. They learn by experimentation with mouth shape, throat constriction, air flow, and vocal cords. And, yep, some of that experimentation will be loud!