Parenting Differently

    Having already parented 3 biological children for 10+ years prior to Chloe's arrival, Greg and I thought we had a pretty good idea of what worked and didn't work when it came to parenting.  Chloe as an 8 month old of course didn't need much discipline, etc.  She was learning to feed herself, roll over, and sit up well.  As time went on, however, and Chloe caught up in her physical development, some of her emotional struggles began to make themselves more apparent.  We gave it time and assumed that showing this little one love would be enough to get her through the difficult beginning that she had.  By age 2, I started to look into parenting book for the strong-willed child.  None of the basic time-out and swat on the bottom methods were having any positive impact.  In fact, if anything they were making things worse.  In the mean time, our family dynamic was escalating too.  With a major lack of sleep, Greg and I were not only struggling in our marriage, but also in parenting our older children and especially Chloe.  Little did we realize that all of these things were having such a negative impact on Chloe's brain and heart healing.  The following article explains why we struggled so much to reach our daughter.

Parenting "Deerly"