Emotional Reactions

Dear WholeFamily Counselor, I am a 27 year old mother, worker and full-time student. I have a little girl who is three. My question is: How do you balance all of these things without one area lacking? (Especially my daughter and school work?) Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Yesterday I was at a nursery school party. The children were sitting in a circle singing, and a woman I know called out to her daughter: Smile, Lila. The mother said to me: "She doesn't look happy. She's frowning." I thought back to all of the times I was dressed in my finest clothes, going somewhere special, and my mother had said to me: "Smile." Or all of those birthday parties my mother made for me where I felt like crying from all the overexcitment and was told: "Smile." The next time your child is unhappy, don't assume there's something wrong with him. Connect to him. Understand him. But don't deny his feelings.

My five-year-old son is like a thoroughbred: bright, quick, talented -- and explosive. He has always been this way, since birth. He can be the most charming, mature, and productive human being within a few miles. Rubbed wrong, however, he can go off like a rocket. We have been working on controlling his temper for a few years now, and it's coming along. Slowly. When he was three, I taught him the nursery rhyme about the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. (When she was good, she was very, very good. And when she was bad, she was horrid.) After I recited the poem, I turned to him and asked if it reminded him of anyone.

Are there certain ages when kids start needing more involvement from their fathers? Lately, my five-year-old has been expressing anger when his father works late or goes out. How can we handle this? Guest Expert Yocheved Berlowitz, MD, answers: A: There is no specific age at which a child starts to need to his father. Even during infancy, if the mother is the primary caretaker, the father can be a familiar and contributing presence. Certainly by toddler age, the child appreciates that his father is different from his mother. For instance, fathers may encourage more active rough-and-tumble play than mothers. The role of each parent varies in individual families and in different cultures.

As any parent who has lived through the terrible two's knows, crying is a big part of a two-year-old's life. One day, I kept a log of my two-year-old's crying behavior. In the course of a typical day, he cries because: 8:05 a.m. - A rubber band with which he had been playing snaps against his hand. 9:25 a.m. - He bangs his bare foot into a kitchen chair. 11:50 a.m. - I have to take him away from a sink-full of bubbles and plastic dishes where he has been busily playing. 3:30 p.m - His older brother takes away a toy car that he threw at him. 4:14 p.m - He takes a straw out of big brother's soda can.

When our son, Yosef, was four, we were having a very hard time getting him to sleep at night. He would get out of bed repeatedly with numerous requests or demand that one of us stay with him until he fell asleep -- which would usually take an hour or two. After several months of dedicating my entire evening to putting this child to sleep, I decided to try problem-solving -- one of the many fine ideas in How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. This wonderful, useful book is a popularization of the ideas of the well-known child psychologist Haim Ginott.