Joyful Toddlers and Preschoolers: Create a Life that You and Your Child Both Love

by Faith Collins

Overview

Imagine a life where your toddler or preschooler is happy to do what you ask, and is able to recover and move on, easily, when disappointed.
Imagine getting all of your housework done while your child plays, or happily helps alongside you.
And imagine feeling confident in your skills to help young children navigate the waters of social interactions with one another.
"These things are possible for both parent and child," asserts Faith Collins, author of Joyful Toddlers and Preschoolers, even if a child is extra sensitive, demanding, needy, belligerent, or all at the same time.
Collins is a preschooler teacher, parent coach and mother, who has witnessed such results repeatedly over many years. Her book is a treasury that provides readers with powerful, easy and positive tools to achieve profound harmony in their own families.
The focus and unique contribution of this book is the principle of a mutually-responsive relationship. Mutually responsive means that both people respond quickly and positively to each other, even–and especially–when they cannot do what the other person wants. In a warm and easygoing style, the author guides parents and caregivers in establishing and maintaining such relationship with their young ones, creating the basis for discipline, education, socialization and a happier life together. Helping our children to develop the skills of mutually-responsive relationship becomes a game-changer in all parent-child dynamics.
A growing population of parents are hungry for specific advice that works and meshes with their values—that is, practical books on conscious parenting. Many books with this focus claim to be applicable to "all ages," but in reality deal almost exclusively with children ages four and older who are able to remember and discuss past and future actions. The Joyful Toddler fills a gaping hole in this market—it is a values' based approach that specifically addresses the needs of both child and parent in the toddler and preschool years.
Additional topics include:
- Supporting our children as they learn to control their impulses
- Learning to be responsive to our children's deeper needs, rather than their whims
- Fun, gentle training toward participation in household tasks
- Helping them deal with their frustrations and meltdowns in ways that work for everyone
- Creating a life that works for kids and parents

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942493280
Publisher:	Hohm Press
Publication date:	10/01/2017
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Faith Collins (M.A. in Early Childhood Studies from Roehampton Univ., London) is a parenting coach and classroom teacher dedicated to supporting relationships with the young children in our lives. Her work is inspired by the pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner and the experience of Waldorf education. She lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband and young daughter, where she is Pedagogical Director for the Rocky Mountain LifeWays Training. Her blog and popular online classes are available at (http://joyfultoddlers.com).

Read an Excerpt

Although it seems like we're virtually swimming in a sea of parenting advice today, those who are attracted to positive, relationship-based parenting often find a strange black hole when it comes to practical advice for parenting toddlers. Before our children become toddlers, we can access a wealth of material about establishing secure relationships with them, even in the womb. By the time they reach kindergarten age, we have lots of resources, too. But, while many relationship-based parenting books claim to be for "all ages," the vast majority focus almost exclusively on children ages five and up, with the occasional example featuring a four year old.
When it comes to toddlers and preschoolers, we get all sorts of conflicting instructions: we're told about the importance of staying connected to our children on the one hand, and we're told about the importance of establishing and maintaining boundaries on the other, but we aren't given many tools to do both at the same time. In fact, these two directives often seem to be at odds with one another. At any given moment, do we choose to be connected, or do we choose to set that boundary? And how exactly do we go about setting boundaries with toddlers, if we don't want to use punishments or time-outs? Once we've tried to explain and convince them, and that doesn't work, then what's left?
This book aims to fill that black hole. It looks at why explaining and convincing doesn't tend to get buy-in from children under five, and what we can do instead to get that "yes" in a way that strengthens our relationship, rather than undermining it or getting stuck in power struggles. When we know what makes parent-toddler (or nanny-toddler, teacher-toddler, or grandparent-toddler) relationships strong and healthy, we can develop a new set of tools and set our own internal compasses so we're able to help children be their best selves more and more often, today and every day, not just at some point in the future.

Table of Contents

Foreword Rahima Baldwin Dancy, author of You Are Your Child's First Teacher ix

Part I Transforming "No" into "Yes": The Link Between Connection and Cooperation

Chapter 1 Parent-Toddler Relationships at Their Best 3

Chapter 2 Being Responsive to Children: Don't Forget to S*M*I*L*E 24

Chapter 3 Teaching Children to Be Responsive: Cultivating a Habit of Yes 55

Part II Maintaining Connection Through Tantrums and Meltdowns (Theirs and Yours)

Chapter 4 When We Can't Figure Out How to Connect 81

Chapter 5 Regular Tantrums, Meltdowns, and Defiance 101

Chapter 6 Keeping Your Cool: Dealing With Frustration and Anger 129

Part III Raising Children You Enjoy Being Around: The Competence of Self-Regulation

Chapter 7 Your Polite and Patient Child 151

Part IV Creating a Life That Meets Everyone's Needs

Chapter 8 Your Helpful, Confident Child 179

Chapter 9 Promoting Independent Play 206

Chapter 10 Create a Life That You Love-With Children 238

Appendix: The Big Ideas 251

Further Reading and Resources 258

Index 261

Contact Information 278