Great Beginnings, Newborn. Tips For Parents About Newborns: Fill & Download for Free

We had this situation occur. My second child, when he was three, was brilliant, logical, clever, intuitive, and insanely stubborn. And he was absolutely uninterested in potty training. He didn't mind his diapers. He didn't mind his pullups. He didn't really mind being wet or dirty, though he'd eventually come find me if I didn't find him first. He wasn't super interested in using the potty, he wasn't the kind of child to watch his big brother go and wish he could too. Meh. He was really busy saving the world in his three year old way, one duplo at a time.Here's the answer, which is at once insanely simple and infinitely complex: You have to find his buy-in.Some kids will do this just great with one of those cute little potty charts complete with star stickers or happy poo piles.Not my child, and probably not yours either, if you're asking this, since potty charting is like the #1 offered "best practice!" that everyone gleefully doles out, right up there with MAKE SURE YOU SLEEP WHEN YOUR NEWBORN IS SLEEPING! :D:D:D:D (which *is* great advice, but let's face it, for your first kid, you just *can't* - you're so amped on adrenaline for that entire first month, plus omg you have to keep watching that sweet face sleep and admire those itsy bitsy eyelashes and, of course, make sure baby is breathing just about every thirty seconds...).Here's the thing - my son *did* want, desperately, to go to preschool (and I can't blame him, his brother's school is awesome, and he knew that preschool came equipped with just about the most fabulous playground I have ever seen). And unless you're in special ed preschool (which I am not mocking, as I do have a son in SEP), you cannot go to preschool not potty trained. You can't even fudge it a little with pullups. No way, no how.But still, my second son was stubborn. He wanted to go, but he tried to logic all over me about it. "I just yon't goes potty at school, I yill yait til home" and "I cover up my pullup SO GOOD nobody cans see it." Nope, too bad, kiddo, rules is rules.He turned 3 in the beginning of June, making him old enough to start summer school preschool, and he desperately wanted to do it. Because the school knew us and is awesome (and okay, they wanted our tuition), they let him go for a week (in pullups - I had to be on call to pickup if there *was* a mess) to test it out. He loved it. But he wasn't budging on the potty training "I don't yant to." Monday morning of week two of summer school, he pulled on his little shoes and waited by the door. No dice. Sorry, buddy, school let you try it out, but you can't go back until you wear big boy underwear and go potty in the toilet.He was sad. He whined and tried to bargain.No dice.Stubborn the kid is, though, so he accepted it and sadly gave up on it for summer.We kept checking, but didn't push it. However, come August, we talked again. Our first son would be starting school again soon (same school). Didn't he want to go too? He did, he "yeally yeally yeally" did.A bargain was struck - he would show us for two weeks he could go potty in the potty chair, and he could go to school. A trip was made to buy new underwear. Toilet paper was stocked as if for the apocalypse.And, it took him 24 hours, and he did it. With minimal fuss - we just reminded him to "try" every so often (at first, every 30 minutes, then longer intervals so he'd start to learn the "pull" himself).Nighttime was a little tougher as this slugger loved to down all his day's liquids right before bedtime, so it took some adjustment, some nighttime bed-prepping (waterproof liner, sheet, liner, sheet, liner for easy "changing" at night if need be, and towels to throw down in a pinch), but that happened too, with time.Now, my third son will be a whole different ballgame, given his circumstances, and our fourth child, our daughter, will probably be trained before she hits 21 months, as that's just the way she's progressing here.But for your circumstances, with an intelligent three year old who just isn't "about" it, your best bet is to find his buy-in and work that angle.Sorry, wish I could give you some happy poo stickers and a little chart and say, BOOM, that's it! but we've never had any success with stickers or charts thus far.

I spent nearly 25 years managing an intensive family preservation services program working with familes with children at risk of placement usually due to parental abuse and neglect. I’ve heard horror stories, worked with many sad (and some truly hopeless cases) cases and seen and even felt the consequences of bad parenting. I’ve used just about evey popular parent education program you can imagine, including Active Parenting, STEP, Total Transformations, Succesz Parenting, Nurturing Parenting, and Love and Logic (my favorite program for many reason), but the best parenting advice I ever heard came from Mac Bledsoes Parenting with Dignity.Mac tells the story of the birth of his first child, on a cold, winters night in rural Washington state. Handing their newborn to mom seconds after the birth, the old family doctor who delivered the baby quietly said, “This is not your baby.” “What a curious thing to say,” Mac thought, but he was too caught up in the excitement of the moment to question it, and Mac’s wife was still under the influence of the epidural and it didnt even register.When they returned for the baby’s first well visit. Doc asked if they remembered what he had said to them. Mac remembered, but neither new parent knew what he meant. Doc continued with a series of questions:“When you dressed him today, who chose what he would wear?” “We did,” came the reply.“When you put him in the car, who decided which side he would be on?” Again, “We did,” was the reply.“Who chose the crib he sleeps in?” “We did.”Doc asked a half-dozen more similar questions, and each produced the same response. “And that’s exactly how it should be, for now,” Doc said, then went on to explain.“Having a baby is like buying a house. In the beginning, the bank owns the house, but little by little you pay the mortgage one day you own the house. When they’re newborns, you’re going to make all of the choices in your babies lives, but as they grow, they make more and more choices until they turn 18. Then they get to make 100% of the choices in their lives.”In addition to all the great wisdom in this thread, it’s important to recognize that our task as parents - especially in a democratic society - is to prepare our children to think and make choices for themselves. And the important princple to follow is what Kahlil Gibran summed up best, when he wrote “your children are not your children, they are life’s longing for itself…”

• Buy one of those devices that emits a hearbeat-from-inside-the-uterus sound. Soothes the baby to sleep, especially if you start using it within a few weeks of birth. The earlier the better. My oldest was one of those babies who didn't want to sleep except when I held her (more about that later). We finally got one of those devices (which were brand new in 1982), and it helped a lot. We used it from birth with our son, and he slept like a baby! It also helps as a bit of white noise to filter out household and street noises.• Put several layers of crib protectors and crib sheets on the bed. So if the baby spits up or the diaper leaks in the middle of the night, you can just whisk the top layer off and have a clean, dry sheet underneath! Nobody likes having to change crib sheets, especially in the middle of the night!• The other thing we learned with our daughter (first kids are great for learning on -- the 2nd kids benefit!) is to make sure the newborn is warm enough at all times. Their little temperature regulators don't work well for the first few weeks. She was born in June, so we figured a t-shirt and diaper should keep her warm enough. Okay, we were kind of dumb, especially since she was born in ALASKA! She WASN'T warm enough. The reason she'd only sleep in my arms was because that's the only place she was WARM! Babies, as a rule, need one more layer than adults would be comfortable with. Remember -- they're not moving around to generate heat. Also, she hated going from my warm arms to a cold bed -- it would wake her right up -- which leads to my BEST TIP FOR PARENTS:• Put a heating pad set on low in the baby's bed when he/she is not in it. Then remove it just before you put the baby in. The bed will be wonderfully warm and they will snuggle right down and go to sleep. (Wouldn't YOU love for your bed to be pre-warmed when you get in?) Obviously, don’t leave the heating pad anywhere near the bed while they’re in it.• Kids, even babies, love to have a “lovey” to hold to comfort them. They almost all WILL choose something, so choosing it for them -- and having a duplicate -- makes a lot of sense. Inevitably, if left to their own infant devices, they will choose something unique, so when it is lost or dirty or falls apart, they’ll be inconsolable! My solution was to buy two (or three wouldn’t hurt) IDENTICAL waffle-style receiving blankets (but it could be anything easily washable). I would keep one in the bed with the kids as they were falling asleep. It not only would smell familiar to them, but they got used to seeing it and knew that wherever their blankie was, that’s where they could sleep. Came in especially handy while traveling. Having duplicates meant if one was dirty or got left behind at grandma’s, we weren’t out of luck with a screaming child. My kids (now adults) still have their blankies tucked away in a box.• After the first week or two, put the baby into bed while STILL SLIGHTLY AWAKE!! This little tip will save you HOURS AND HOURS of effort down the line. If you don't do it with your first kid, you WILL do it with your second, because by then you'll know you should have with your first. We didn't with the first. Imagine every time you went to sleep you were in your bed, but when you woke up you were someplace completely different -- like your front porch! A little disorienting, isn't it? Babies who learn to fall asleep for themselves in their own warm bed (with that heartbeat device soothing them) are babies who will not have to be rocked to sleep for the next TWO YEARS or until you can't stand it any longer. And when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night and sees she's in her own bed, where she expected to be, she'll be much quicker to learn to just go back to sleep. If she requires rocking or walking to go to sleep, that's what you'll be doing in the middle of the night FOR A LONG, LONG TIME!• When the newborn wakes in the middle of the night to eat, don't bother changing her diaper right away. You'll just have to change it twice. Feed her half her meal, then stop and change it, because by then she'll have pooped and need it changed. (This may only last for a few weeks.)• My kids were not ones who needed to be nursed to sleep (a dangerous precedent after the first few weeks) because they always wanted to eat as soon as they woke up, rather than wait until they were starting to get tired and then eating as they fell asleep. I'm sure you've heard never to give a baby a bottle of anything other than water to go to sleep with -- it rots their teeth.• No matter how small your apartment or house, get a baby swing! Although newborns don't do too well in them as a rule, once the baby is a couple of months old it will give you a chance to actually sit down and eat dinner WITH your spouse, instead of in shifts! It's not called the "dinner saver" for nothing!• ENJOY, ENJOY, ENJOY! As incredibly long as the first few months will feel, when you look back, you'll realize they went very quickly. The most fundamental fact about babies is they never stay the same. If one stage is particularly trying, remember -- IT WON'T LAST! Successful parenting is the ability to cheerfully survive until your child's next stage. My mantra has always been: This too shall pass. It’s as true for adolescents as it is for infants and toddlers.• Sleep when the baby sleeps! At least until his nighttime ritual gets fairly regular (which, as you learned in the last tip, won't last!). A good day in the first few weeks is one in which you get ONE thing accomplished -- i.e., a load of laundry, OR the bills paid, OR some dishes washed, etc.• Take the baby out as much as you can. Our daughter craved the stimulation of looking at something other than my face or our ceiling! If we didn't go out somewhere every day -- even if it was just for a walk around the block or to my husband's office or to the library or grocery store -- she was cranky. If we did go out, she was much happier. Everyone we saw thought she was the happiest baby -- they didn't hear her crying and cranky at night since she was wonderful whenever we went out! (Because she was born in Alaska in the summer, it never got dark and she had her days and nights backwards for a long time -- not unusual for any baby anywhere. We learned to put aluminum foil on her windows to completely block the light -- another good tip!)• Find other mothers of kids the same age to get together and commiserate with! Either from your yoga class or childbirth classes or even someone you meet on the street! I met one of my closest friends in NH in the grocery store when my son was a baby and she had a baby the same age. We eyed each other's children and then started up a conversation. She was just as desperate to meet another mother as I was. Eventually I started a playgroup of kids, mostly with moms I'd met in a toddler "exercise" class. Its real purpose was for the moms to get together!• When my son got old enough to begin wearing shoes, we ALWAYS put his right shoe on first (this was totally arbitrary). When he began to want to put his shoes on himself, or I wanted him to, we drew or stuck a star to his right shoe. He knew to put the “star” shoe on first and knew which foot it went on, just from muscle memory. I don’t know if he still puts his right shoe on first, but he never got his shoes on the wrong feet as a kid. And he is completely ambidextrous, so having that little reminder of which foot/hand was right (he could just look for the star) came in very handy with him.