You can 'prime the pump' by talking with them about their favorite foods, toys, movies, video games, etc.

Parents are constantly making the error of educating their child when their child expresses pain. "I hate my nose" is often responded to with, "you have a perfectly good nose" and the child is left to feel all alone with what could become an enormous problem for them in years to come.

One technique is to teach your children to lightly touch your arm and to wait peacefully and quietly to be acknowledged by you. Children who interrupt miss a chance to learn to control their impulses and can upset the flow of an adult's conversation.

For example, you could put something such as a coin in a hand behind your back and ask the child to guess which hand it is in. This is a way to build a strong connection with a child and make a child feel honored.

It may have been months since any adult has joined the child on their own level.

Play is the language of a child. If you stop for even thirty seconds to draw a picture alongside of a child who is coloring, you could become one of their heroes.

Make the stories up or pull them from your own childhood. Stories can be used to build a connection, to teach a lesson, or just to leave a child feeling better than when the conversation began.

Children are usually more hurt than adults by broken promises. Ironically, many people treat their promises to children as less important than their promises to adults.

Most adults do not interact with children who are present because the children are not able to meet their needs the way that an adult can. Five minutes invested in the life of a child will pay dividends that an hour invested in the life of an adult may not.

This means that instead of expressing facts or lecturing that you ask a question to stimulate the child's own reasoning process. Socratic questioning opens up a place in a person's mind for the answer to be remembered. For example, you could ask, "How do you think we could take better care of the puppy?" instead of telling your child what to do.

About The Author

This piece was written by Dr. Clare Albright, Psychologist and Parenting Coach, and author of "100 Tips for Parents of Two Year Olds", which can be downloaded for only $5.77 from http://www.ParentsOfTwoYearOlds.com

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