Special Time
“In my family, I had never thought of tickling as hard on my child. I have a 5-year-old son, and I’ve tickled him often in play since he was quite young. When I joined a Hand in Hand class, I learned how to do Special Time. When he started Kindergarten, I wanted him to be more independent about going to sleep. He would stay in his bed only if I cuddled with him until he fell asleep. So I told him that we would do Special Time for 5 minutes every night before he went to sleep. I thought that if he could notice the attention I was giving him, he might be able to relax enough to fall asleep by himself. We began that tradition, and because I’d always tickled him when we got physically close, that’s what he would ask for every night.
When I learned that tickling might be hard on him, I stopped. He would ask to be tickled, and I would say no, and he was disappointed. It was as if we couldn’t find a good way to play any more. Then, I heard the idea that I could pretend to tickle him, and when he asked for it, I wiggled my fingers above his tummy over and over, and he laughed a lot, and then tried to tickle me. We were laughing again! This was what we did in Special Time for several nights.
At one point, he asked me, “Mommy, why don’t you tickle me any more?” And I said, “Because I don’t think it’s good for you–you might not be able to tell me to stop when you want me to stop.” He said, “If I want it, will you tickle me?” and I said, “If you want it, I’ll look like I’m going to tickle you, OK?” and he agreed that this was OK. Then I asked him, “Why do you like me to tickle you?” He said, “Because it’s the only way you play with me, Mommy.” With that, I knew that I was getting on the right track by stopping the tickling so we could both struggle to think of how to laugh together in other ways.
I think that when I stopped tickling my son, he began to feel a lot safer with me. After another few weeks, he came home from school and said, “Mommy, are we going to have Special Time tonight?” I said, “Yes, we are, for sure.” And he said, “Good. I didn’t like what happened at school today, and I am going to tell you when it’s Special Time.” That evening, we got on the bed together, and he wanted me to lie next to him. He told me about how one of the children at school had been mean to him, and he had a good cry. When he was done, he thanked me, and went to sleep peacefully. He was bright and ready for school the next day, even though what he had told me was an incident that was very hard on him. Lately, he has been having a 5- or 10-minute cry every night during Special Time, while he tells me about the hard things at school or his brother’s jealousy. He always finishes and is peaceful in the end. This Special Time has turned into the best time for him to feel safe enough to share what was hard for him at school and at home, and it sometimes does go over the five minutes. It is worth the extra time to see him managing his challenges so well.”
— a mother in Watsonville, CA
The lemon tree in our backyard has had lemons on it every day since we moved in. The other day my daughter dragged one of the patio chairs under the tree and started reaching carefully between the thorns to pick them. She filled an old Easter basket with bright yellow fruit and ran inside calling to me to come make lemonade. Several cups of sugar later, the house smelled like heaven and my daughter proudly announced, “I’m making a lemonade stand!”
At a carnival, my 2-year-old daughter went on a kiddie ride that consisted of cars going around and around on a track. She had been enthusiastic about requesting to go on the ride, but once she was on it, it was clearly too bumpy and too fast for her and she started to get upset, crying and saying she wanted to get off. 
My 7 year old, Jerry, has been struggling with not wanting to write or spell at home or at school. This is fairly new this year in first grade. It looks to me like the expectations of the first graders are significantly higher than those of kindergarteners.
This week in my listening partnership I worked on my anger and frustration that was triggered when my daughter (3 1/2) did not give me space to talk on the phone. Whenever I took a call, she would whine and start to draw on furniture and throw things off the tables. Normally, I would move in and address this sort of behavior immediately, however, I really wanted to talk on the phone and I didn’t want to stop my conversation to parent! 
My son had been really anxious about going to school. He was having a tough time getting along with the kids in his kindergarten class. One morning, in the car on the way to school, he was telling me that his stomach hurt and he couldn’t go to school and I put on my very best warm and confident voice and I told him, “You’re a good person and I know you can get along with the other kids. You can do it.”
When my son had finally learnt to ride a bike, he was very excited. Then he realized he needed to learn to steer and turn corners–it was a pretty rude shock!
We went to see a movie with some friends and then were going to go to lunch afterwards with them. We don’t eat out often and didn’t know the area well so they chose a place to eat. My youngest daughter, who is four, was not happy about going to this place and when we got to the parking lot she began to refuse to go and cried and went off track.
A father in one of our groups tried Staylistening when his 3rd grade daughter ran into a tough patch with math homework. She had left her math homework for last, it was late in the evening, and she was in for a nasty surprise. Her math homework was a whole page of 30 math questions!
