No-Cry Solution Series Author
Elizabeth Pantley is a parent educator, mother of four, and the author of the now-classic baby sleep book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution, as well as six other books in the series, including The No-Cry Separation Anxiety Solution, The No-Cry Potty Training Solution, The No-Cry Discipline Solution, The No-Cry Picky Eater Solution, plus other successful parenting books. She is known worldwide as the practical, reasonable voice of respectful parenting.
Have realistic expectations.
Children can be both excited and bored when at a restaurant. They can find it difficult to sit in one place for the length of time necessary to order, wait, eat, and pay for the meal. This improves with age, development and practice. With a good game plan, you can get through the training period and even enjoy the experience.
If you ask parents to list the most frustrating discipline problems during early childhood, you would find that these three items appear on every list. They are so common that I call them The Big Three. All children master their own version of these behaviors – every parent has to deal with them!
Controlling their emotions
Our children bring us incredible joy. They can make us laugh in ways we haven’t laughed since we were kids, ourselves. They fill our hearts with a deep and uncompromising love. Yet, those very same children can bring out anger in us. They can get us lose our tempers and make us say things we don’t really mean. It’s never a time we look back on with pride – and we’re often regretful and ashamed after the fact. But getting angry at your children is a perfectly human and normal response to the complicated, often stress-filled job of parenting.
