Liam caught his finger in a lid of a Tupperware, and started to whine. Rather than dismissing him, I asked him lots of questions about the pain, one of which was whether it felt like a crab had pinched him.  The tears stopped instantly, as he was very intrigued by what a crab pinch felt like and he happily carried on a conversation about crabs, and their pinches and when they would pinch etc. Although I know that this isn’t really acknowledging his emotions, I still did something different and it was better than what I was doing before! Liam caught his finger in a lid of a Tupperware, and started to whine. Rather than dismissing him, I asked him lots of questions about the pain, one of which was whether it felt like a crab had pinched him.  The tears stopped instantly, as he was very intrigued by what…

Jason had been sick for a couple of days and had been off school. I told him that he was returning to school the next day, and he said that he didn’t want to go to school. I humoured him, and the conversation went like this: Me: “but you wouldn’t want to miss playball tomorrow would you?” Jason “ Oh No – I love playball.” Me: “ Okay, we will tell your teacher that you are just coming to school for playball, and then you will come home again. But what about show and tell, are you happy to miss that?” Jason “ Oh no, I want to go to show and tell – and playball, but come home for the other things.” Me: “ Okay, just for playball, and show and tell, but what about story time?” And so the conversation continued, until he wanted to be there for everything…

My four-year-old son has got into the habit of throwing a golf ball against our garage door. We have told him many times not to do so as it may come back and hit him in the face. As I was about to leave to come to the workshop, I heard the knock-knock of the ball against the door and soon a loud howl from my son. I ran out to see him, fearing the worst as he was holding his eye. I caught myself before I said “I told you you would hurt yourself but you didn’t listen.” This time I said, “Ouch, that must be really sore. The ball gave you a big fright.” He nodded his head and he calmed down amazingly quickly. My husband came out to see what had happened and was just about to say “How many times did I tell you…” when I…

I want to share a little story with you that made me laugh yesterday. Margaret and I were outside for the first time in a week, it has been so cold and wet on the beach front! On the ground outside the house there is a patch where grass struggles to grow but clover does well. For the second year Margaret has called this her Radish patch. She pretends to grow and produce radishes and we play games involving harvesting her crop and taking it to sell at market. Yesterday as she was harvesting she said "Oh I to pee NOW". I said "OK take off your leggings and pee on the grass", knowing that she wasn't going to make it to the loo. As she stood half naked with bent knees she called back "But not on my radishes!", as she pulled back onto the pathway. I was again…