Welcome to the second week of the Ohdeedoh Book Club as we continue with the book The Emotional Life of the Toddler.
Lieberman cheerily starts out the chapter by informing us that "moderate conflicts [with your child] take place once every 3 minutes, and major conflicts occur at the rate of 3 per hour." How's that little nugget for a lovely way to start your day?
She continues by stating that the chapter is based on the premise that not every problem has an immediate solution and that she will not give us immediate solutions and quick fixes, but rather she will give us the information needed to have an "attitude" for understanding out child's actions and reasoning.
As in previous chapters, Lieberman goes on to emphasize the partnership that must be created between parent and child as she discusses how children put their feelings into words and the importance of parent and child to make up after a fight, "No matter how righteous a parent's anger, it is always frightening to the child. This fear cane be made more manageable by explaining how mommy or daddy felt, asking the child how he felt, and reassuring him that he is loved even when the parent is angry at him." She ends the chapter with more tips to encourage parent/child partnership.
Chapter 4 is very interesting in that Lieberman described the various temperaments children can have: easy, slow to warm up, difficult and active. She goes on to elaborate on how those temperaments tend to socialize.
These two chapters were definitely chock full. What do you make of Lieberman's labels in chapter 4? Do you think your child fits into one of these categories and do you agree with what she had to say about the category?
Chapters three and four grew on me. Chapter three is pretty good, I have to say. It doesn't teach you how to handle tantrums practically, but understanding them and your toddler helps you create your own coping mechanisms. For tantrums and general discipline I would still recommend Elizabeth Pantley's The No-Cry Discipline Solution or even Dr. Karp's Happiest Toddler on the Block book and DVD together.
Chapter four is OK. No different from other books that describe personality/temperament types. Some good insight on the mispairing of parent-child temperaments, but then again, no real practical advice or lessons on how to make those compromises work better for all the types involved. I mean, she just glossed over one part about active toddlers not needing intervention and less active ones benefitting from more active parents.
So yeah, I've taken the MB (Jung-based) personality test through work ages ago, and maybe there should be one for toddlers. I think my new assignment will be to take one for my kiddo and see what the result is for laughs.
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Unfortunately, I haven't been able to start reading the book yet (so sorry!!!!), but I really appreciate the reminder that parents should always remember to tell the child "I'm angry with you for x and y reasons, but I love you no matter what." I imagine that this will have a later benefit when your child is a teenager and storms off from some fight that your child will mutter to themselves "I'm angry with my mother/father, but I still love them."
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I also found Ch. 3 to be very useful. Ch. 4 was interesting (I haven't read any other behavior books, thanks for the recommendations, genxmom) but I found that my toddler doesn't quite fit any of the categories. I imagine this is the case for a majority of parents...or maybe not?
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