This book has revolutionized my life - H

I've had to nearly wrestle J down for diaper changes recently. I thought it was just a phase little ones go through, but she is now laying down for every single one - no exaggeration! She even came to me once when I held a diaper up and practically laid down herself. I learned this secret called loving my child.

So, I got this parenting book from AP called How to Really Love Your Child, and it talks about how to convey love in a way that is understood by your child saying that most parents love their children dearly but many children doubt whether their parents really, unconditionally love them. That resonates with me. I understand what that means. Anyway, I started to apply some of the things in the book and saw changes in J's response to me immediately. The author makes the point that children are highly emotional and so are very emotionally sensitive. Therefore, our communication of love to them also needs to be on that plane. He talks about ways to do that, and the first point he talks about is giving loving eye-contact. Eye contact can mean all kinds of things. It can be a cold stare. It can convey displeasure. It can convey love and acceptance, and the author says we need to do more of the loving kind.

So, I tried it, and I noticed that J often looks me straight in the eye to gauge my response toward what she's doing. She probably does it more than I notice, b/c I'm distracted and not paying attention to her. She wants to know what I think, and she assesses that by looking in my eyes, which by the way I've been told is the window to our souls. That's something my youth pastor used to say. Anyway, yesterday I practiced giving her loving eye contact and physical contact, the second mode of showing love the author talks about, and it made a world of difference. Today, I added focused attention, and it has revolutionized my life. J has been less demanding and needy as a result. I think we may have been neglecting her a bit b/c of some of the house related things that were taking up our time over the last couple of weeks. I'm glad to have read this book and to have caught myself in a bad habit that I can easily break and that has had little consequence so far. I'd recommend it to everyone that is raising children.

So, E washed out some yogurt containers for J b/c she likes the picture on the container, so he thought she could play with them as toys. This afternoon she picked up one of her spoons and the empty yogurt container and kept putting the spoon in the container as if to stir. She likes doing that these days. I think she's trying to imitate what we do when we eat or are feeding her. So, she dips the spoon in and out of the empty yogurt container and then into my mouth. She was pretending to feed me yogurt! After putting the spoon in my mouth, she'd walk around, dip the spoon in the container and then in my mouth again. She must have done that for 20 minutes. Then, I actually gave her some yogurt as an afternoon snack, and she would pretend to feed me as I was feeding her. I put a spoonful into her mouth, and she put the spoon in my mouth. She cracks me up!