Some days, I feel like I do a pretty good job of balancing my career, my family, and myself. Other days, it feels like I'm falling desperately behind and failing on all three counts.
Some days, I feel like I do a pretty good job of balancing my career, my family, and myself. Other days, it feels like I'm falling desperately behind and failing on all three counts. |
I thought I kept my car clean and tidy. |
One of the many reasons parents find their way to Nurturings is that they're seeking a community and Nurturings can connect them to local parenting groups. |
Love opens us up, wide open: no armor, no defenses. We're naked and vulnerable when we're in love. Love is powerful. It's not just cupids and chocolates and diamonds. |
|
Exciting news! Our best-selling parenting book is now available in Spanish! |
"Babies' biology has not changed dramatically over hundreds or thousands of years," says Ball. |
Or in English: Putting the baby to sleep – one of the biggest challenges of parents At least that of small babies’ parents. Other challenges will come later of course… |
... read more |
"You're going to spoil him." "You'll make a dependent child." "You'll never be able to get him to sleep alone." We have all heard these statements, as well as other fears and ... read more |
Infants with night-wakings were more likely to be boys, be breastfed, have a difficult temperament, come from a large family, have a depressed mother, be in a single-parent home, and/or attend fewer hours of non-parental child care; however, this tendency for more night-wakings tended to resolve by 18 months. |
Child sleep problems are based more on culturally-influenced parental perceptions than actual biological reasons, and nighttime sleep issues tended to be perceived more problematic than daytime naps. |
More research is needed to identify normal sleep patterns in breastfed versus bottle-fed infants, in toddlers, on weekdays versus weekends, and as related to gender and ethnic differences. What is known is that children sleep longer at night and experience fewer night-wakings and daytime naps as they develop. |
Exclusively breastfed infants had less colic and fussiness, and slept longer. Melatonin, which promotes sleep, available only in breastmilk, showed a clear relationship to infant sleep patterns. |
More research is needed to identify what is normal when it comes to child sleep. Some of what is known is that children need longer nighttime sleep until about 9 years old. By school age, most children sleep through the night, but children up to 3 1/2 years old continue to wake at least once. Low birth-weight and pre-term infants sleep more. Infants of younger mother sleep more. All infants sleep longer at night, wake multiple times at night, and sleep longer daytime naps than young children who mostly stop taking naps by 5 years old. Girls sleep longer than boys. Children with siblings sleep less. |
Touch is needed for social-emotional and physical development and well-being. In addition, there are therapeutic benefits of massage. |
While maternal touch predicts mother-infant reciprocity, which is linked to positive child cognitive, language, and social-emotional development, the incidence of all forms of nurturing touch decrease through the infant’s first year, especially after six months. |
Oxytocin levels rise in both mothers and fathers who provide high levels of affectionate touch but not in parents who provide less nurturing touch. |