Here's the best tantrum tip I can offer you, totally free.Don't spend 40 bucks on toys to distract your child from a normal, healthy part of their development.  Period.

If, or rather, when, they leave us, it doesn't mean they love us any less. And perhaps it means we come to love them even more.

Sometimes, appreciating a tasty meal or some fantastic glue is enough to make us feel a little less alone, and to remind us of the time when we were once cared for, sheltered, and held by the very gods themselves. 

The message is clear: unless her health or safety are at stake, she and she alone gets to decide who touches her body.  Period.

It's often hard to know how close to be to our children. Case in point, once I nearly let my own child fall down the stairs.

Don't have a plan. Put away your phone.  Heck, don't even take off your pajamas.  And if you run out of stuff to do, may I recommend an expedition to your local drugstore?

Stop cooking for your toddler. I mean it.

Difficult conversations are, well, difficult. Well, when intense feelings abound and are calling at us, daring us to steer toward the rocks, the first thing we must do is hold on tight!

This is heartbreaking for me too, and sometimes I have no idea what I'm doing either.

"Lately my son has been really preferring daddy and it's been hard on me."  

I believe that whenever we set a limit, we must do so with the following three principles in mind (and in heart, while we're at it): consistency, transparency, and empathy.

I won't always be there when she falls, but right now, sometimes, I can be.And hopefully, she will learn from me not that she will never fall, but rather that she will definitely fall, and after she does, eventually, she will be okay once again.

As a parent (or, indeed, as a therapist, friend, or partner), we have two hands. These two hands remind us of our two main tasks in approaching our loved ones and their many complex needs. With one hand, we hold the feelings. With the other, we hold the line.

Your child loves you more than anything else in the entire world. Love just doesn't always look like it does in stock photos. Real love is a lot messier. Embrace the mess, or at the very least, don't take it personally.