It’s such an honour to have this conversation with you Hilary. Thank you for asking these questions. I love having chats like this!
Before I start answering, I’d like to tell you a bit about myself, so you know where I’m coming from.
For 28 years, I’ve been involved in wanting to understand more about how our babyhood and childhood affects us as adults, and how we can be with our babies and children to help them grow up able to be connected adults who can fulfil their potential.
In my twenties, I went both the academic and therapeutic routes – I did a degree, Ph.D, and post-doctoral research about babies’ abilities and their relationships with their mothers. I taught at M.A. level.
I also trained and worked as a psychospiritual psychotherapist, so I learnt all about the emotional needs of babies and children. And most of all, as part of my training, I spent the whole of my twenties in weekly therapy.
In my thirties, I focussed on birth – I trained in various modalities including HypnoBirthing and then calm birth, and used them in the birth of my babies.
I became an Aware Parenting Instructor amongst other things.
Most of all, I learnt through being a mother.
In my forties, I have been combining all the modalities I’ve trained in, to focus on supporting, encouraging and inspiring mothers.
I see that in order for us to be able to give to our children, we really need to engage in our own psychospiritual path – to help us shift old beliefs and old ways of seeing things; to heal from past experiences, and to grow alongside our children.
Now, with that said, let’s chat!
H: What’s the deal with witching hour?
M: Funny isn’t it, the term witching hour! I went and looked it up on Wikipedia and it says, “the term witching hour refers to the time of night (3:00-4:00 am is commonly speculated) when creatures such as witches, demons, and ghosts are thought to appear and to be at their most powerful and black magic to be most effective. It may be used to refer to any arbitrary time of bad luck or in which something bad has a greater likelihood to occur (e.g., a baby crying, or a computer crashing, or stock market volatility, crimes, supernatural, etc.) The witching hour from medieval times is the time believed that witches came out to do their “unholy” practices. The time ascribed to the witching hour was generally viewed after midnight. Women caught out late at night could have been suspected of witchcraft if they did not have a legitimate reason to be out.“
Just as I am passionate about transforming our core beliefs as women and mothers, and to honour and celebrate all that we do, so I’d like to offer a reframe of witching hour.
For me, that time of the evening when babies and children get fussy, agitated, or cry, is actually not a sign that something is ‘wrong’, just as witches were not doing harm, but were actually the wise women and midwives who knew about herbs and healing.
Babies come into the world with two amazing capacities – the ability to fit into the family and culture that they were born into, AND the capacity to stay deeply connected with their true self.
The way that they stay connected with their true self is to release anything from their bodies that does not help them or serve them.
This mechanism is designed to work through letting out feelings and experiences from their bodies.
One way that they do that is to cry, WITH loving support.
Have a think about this for yourself. Have you ever felt so overwhelmed with all that you have on your plate as a mother, that at the end of the day, something small happens and it’s the last straw, and you burst into tears?
Tears, as long as we feel connected when we are crying, release the feelings of overwhelm from our bodies, so that we can continue with our day.
Babies are just the same. This amazing mechanism is there to help them release the feelings of the day from their bodies. And for babies, as well as for us, the feelings aren’t just feelings from that day.
They also express accumulated feelings from the past that they haven’t been able to express. (The accumulation of feelings helps us understand why it often seems that sleep gets harder and harder, as feelings accumulate over time).
Babies and children, just like us, often have unexpressed feelings from their time in utero, their birth, and their early experiences after birth, as well as developmental frustrations, and frightening events such as us arguing or being in painful emotional places.
In this way, we can reclaim for our baby that sense of ‘rightness’ – that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with her when she is crying in the early evening; in fact she is doing something incredibly important and useful for her.
It’s just that as a culture, we haven’t understood this – just as we have forgotten the power and beauty of women and mothers and feminine power and needs and feelings.
So, when our baby gets unsettled or agitated in the evening, we have another option, instead of jiggling her, feeding her, and distracting her, and that option is to simply be with her. Instead of trying to stop her feelings, we can get really present with ourselves, so we can be really present with her, and simply hold her in our arms, offer eye contact, and tell her that we are there and listening.
And again, we are very similar to babies. Imagine, as a busy mothers at the end of another long day, having a dear friend, or the Divine Mother, simply being with us, loving us, and asking us to tell her all about our day, and all about how the birth was, and how it has been for us since we became mothers, and listening with supreme compassion. That is what we give to our baby when we listen to her feelings.
The beauty of this approach is that we are trusting our baby’s innate wisdom. We listen to those feelings that are getting in the way of her true self shining through. And like a storm that washes things clean, after she has had a big cry with us, we will see her true self shining through. We’ll often see her making really present eye contact. Her muscles will be more relaxed. She will mould into our arms more. We will notice all the ways in which those feelings that were sitting on the top and preventing her from feeling deeply connected with herself, have now left her body.
H: How can we support good sleep habits from early on?
I like reframing things, and I’m going to offer a reframe here! The amount and ease with which our babies and children sleep is to do with how relaxed they feel, and relaxation depends on connection and release, as I talked about above.
So one of the ways we can help our babies sleep more restfully is to focus less on trying to get them to sleep, and focus more on connection and helping them release the feelings that get in the way of them going to sleep and that wake them up at night.
And what I love about that is that it means that each family can find their own way to enjoy sleep, through focussing on profound connection and the expression of feelings.
The more connected your baby feels, and the more she gets to release her uncomfortable feelings through crying in your arms when all her needs are met, the more effortless sleep will be.
Babies are designed to sleep. They want to sleep when they are tired, and sleep for as long as they need. There would be something strange going on if babies were not designed to do something that is so essential for their growth and development.
Just like the reframing above, I’d love to offer a reframe for babies and sleep. In our culture, we have this perception that babies don’t want to sleep, and that they fight sleep. But as I mentioned above, I like to see that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with babies.
Babies are designed to get their needs met, and to release feelings so that they can sleep easily.
It is simply that as a culture, we don’t understand that, and so we fight against that natural mechanism that they have, and then it becomes hard for them and us.
Looked at in that way, the challenge isn’t our babies; the challenge is with our cultural beliefs.
How would it be to see that our baby crying when all her needs are met in the early evening is her doing what she knows how to do – to return to her relaxed, aware, present state through releasing the feelings of the day (and any unexpressed feelings from the past)?
The next question that often comes is, “but I carry my baby all day and meet her needs. Surely she doesn’t have any uncomfortable feelings?” I so understand this. As parents doing things consciously, we want to think that we are protecting our baby from every uncomfortable experience, so that she never needs to feel uncomfortable feelings.
But again I want to offer a reframe. What if we are only afraid of those uncomfortable feelings because we were left alone from them and distracted from them when we were babies and children?
What if we are afraid of them because we very rarely had someone just be deeply present with us whilst we were feeling those feelings, and so we never learnt that they are our friends?
What if we never got to experience the relief that comes from having a beautiful cry every night in the arms of our mum or dad, as we washed away the feelings of the day, so we were ready to have the sleep that our body needed?
I believe that when we are with our baby’s feelings, holding her, being deeply present with her, loving her, letting her know that she is safe and that we can hold her within those big feelings, that she grows up not afraid of any feeling. She learns that she can feel her sadness, overwhelm, disappointment, confusion, and loss, as well as her joy, delight, wonder, excitement and curiosity, and that they are all her friends. We were with her in those feelings, and she learnt to be with herself in those feelings.
There was never anything wrong. Flowing feelings are our birthright. Flowing feelings are actually beautiful. This means reframing the word ‘negative’ that is still applied to feelings like sadness. Some feelings may be more uncomfortable than others, but when we remove the ‘negative’ label and actually look at our baby or child when she is crying with us, we see that she has not learnt to judge her feelings. She is simply being with the sadness. It is us, with our cultural overlay that sadness is ‘bad’, that disconnects us from those feelings in her. Again, this is reclaiming the beauty of feelings.
The thing is, this asks of us to also reclaim our relationship to our feelings. We didn’t have someone with us when we cried, so we tend to have a sense of fear and aloneness with our feelings.
What we often need is to also have someone listen to our feelings, and be with us, so we also can internalise that the way our baby is internalising our presence, and eventually we become able to be with our own feelings with loving compassion and presence, rather than to do to us whatever was done to us – whether that be distraction, punishment, or trying to fix things.
H: How can we compassionately support a child through their sleep struggles? What is the significance of attuning to our child, remaining empathetic and regulating our own emotions?
I think the first way that we can support a child is to reframe things. Instead of seeing things as their sleep struggles, we could see that they actually came into the world with this amazing way to help them release before sleep.
It’s because we live in a culture that doesn’t understand that, that the struggles came about.
The main way we can help sleep be easier is to reclaim that inner knowing – that crying, and laughing, before sleep, with deep deep connection, is what helps our children know how to sleep.
I haven’t mentioned laughter yet. Just as crying, and later, tantrums, release feelings like overwhelm, sadness, disappointment, and loss, so laughter releases feelings like frustration, fear and powerlessness, from their bodies.
If your little one is a toddler or young child, you may notice that he gets playful around sleep time. Perhaps he gets very exuberant and wants to run around the house, or jump on the bed.
And yet again, because of our out-dated cultural beliefs, we tend to think that we know more than they do, and that we need to get them to calm down in order to go to sleep.
But they are actually using a far more powerful and effective way to feel deeply and truly calm; a way that doesn’t bypass their feelings but actually moves through them in a way that allows them to be released from their bodies.
When those feelings have been released, their bodies feel calm and relaxed and so of course they can sleep without those feelings waking them up.
There are particular kinds of play that we can use – I call it high octane connection – with attachment play. Attachment play is a term coined by Aletha Solter; she has a book of the same name.
These games are designed to create a really deep sense of connection alongside the opportunity to release those feelings of frustration, powerlessness and fear that are generally what make it hard for children to sleep, and what wake them up.
You ask about attuning to our child, remaining empathic and regulating our own emotions. I tend to avoid the word ‘regulation’, because it is used in many ways, and is sometimes used to mean repressing feelings.
This approach, based on Aware Parenting, isn’t about repressing the feelings of our children, or ourselves. Our natural healing mechanism, just like our child’s, is to heal from past painful experiences through talking, playing, laughing and crying.
But yes, I so agree with you that being deeply attuned and empathic is so important. The more our baby or child feels deeply met, deeply seen, and deeply understood, the more they can feel that sense of connection in themselves. And of course, that is vital to being able to sleep.
Sleep is a kind of separation – we leave our everyday consciousness in order to return within. And the more our children feel deeply connected with us, the more they can allow that separation of consciousness that happens with sleep, to happen.
H: How can we compassionately and respectfully set boundaries around sleep?
I think that often, the boundaries we need to set are with ourselves. How can we stop ourselves from getting distracted, from judging ourselves, from doing things that don’t feel right to us, and instead really listen to ourselves and what feels true to us around sleep.
The more deeply connected we are with ourselves, the more deeply we can listen to our baby or child before sleep.
There are times that what I call “loving limits” are important with children before sleep.
For example, perhaps your child has been running around the house and you have been letting her chase you, and catch you over and over again. You see her laughing, and you know that she is releasing painful feelings around powerlessness and fear. You’ve been playing WITH her with really high octane connection. You’ve both been laughing and you feel really connected with her. And then, suddenly, she starts to get a bit ‘pinchy’ whenever she catches you.
Again, I like to liken that with us as adults – because we are actually really similar, and often the easiest way to compassionately understand our children is to connect with how we feel in a similar situation.
Have you ever had an evening out with your partner, or a past partner, and you were really looking forward to feeling really connected? And then you ended up having a big argument?
When we feel deeply connected with another, that amazing healing mechanism starts operating – and we start to feel and express painful feelings from the past, so that those feelings can be released from our bodies.
But again, because we don’t understand that mechanism culturally, we usually work against it. We get into an argument with our partner rather than letting out the past hurt, and we may stop our child without seeing that as an opportunity for her to show us some of her deeper and more uncomfortable feelings.
So, it’s here that loving limits can help.
And loving limits for me have none of the qualities of old-fashioned limits.
They are done without any of the old paradigm of punishment, disconnection, or something being wrong.
Their whole purpose is to help our child sink into those deeper feelings that lie underneath the pinching (or hitting, or biting, or throwing things), so that she can release them from her body and return to her natural state of compassion.
So, we can say something like, “I won’t let you pinch me sweetheart, and I’m here with you and listening.” I recommend avoiding words like, “It’s not okay to” – because it’s easy for our children to hear that as meaning there is something ‘wrong’ with them, and “We don’t pinch,” because if they have just pinched, where does that place them in their family?
Both of these methods also tend to miss the magic ingredient – CONNECTION.
When we say, “I”, we are creating connection with our child.
Connection is the magic ingredient because she needs to feel connected with us in order to show us her painful feelings.
When we set a loving limit that way, we also need to relearn ourselves that, just as the witching hour was actually nothing ‘wrong’ with our child, so the behaviours that we find challenging come, not from some innate ‘badness’, but actually because her innate ‘goodness’ has been covered up with hurts that need to be expressed.
This is a big reframe, and is at the core of Aware Parenting.
Whenever anyone of any age, including ourselves as parents, does something that hurts another, it isn’t that we are ‘bad’ and that we need punishment in order to help us to be ‘good’, it’s actually because unmet needs and painful feelings are disconnecting us from our true self, which is inherently compassionate, cooperative and contributing.
So, when we effectively set that loving limit, and our child is feeling deeply connected, often that will take her into her tears. She’ll have a big cry, or a tantrum, which is, in essence, her sharing hurts and frustrations with us, knowing that we are there and we are listening with loving compassion. So, that saying, “It’ll all end in tears”, often applied to play before bedtime, can often be true. But again, with this reframe, we can see that as a beautiful and amazing thing, rather than something to avoid.
H: Why does traditional ‘sleep training’ not work for so many babies and toddlers, and in many cases actually backfire?
Before I say anything about this, I want to preface it with my passion for compassion for all mothers.
This way of seeing babies and children is a way that I include all adults in too.
Whatever choices we are making, we are doing them to meet our needs, based on our beliefs and our own experiences as children.
I am passionate about helping mothers free themselves from guilt, shame and self-judgment, and also co-creating a new sense of community for mothers, where we stop judging other mothers when they make different choices to us.
How would it be if we all knew that we were being compassionately supported by other mothers all over the world? That change in itself would change everything about being a mother. So, if you have used sleep training, please read my words with compassion.
I am sharing my way of thinking, and I support each and every one of you of doing what most resonates with your heart. That is really all that we can do as mothers – to listen to the information out there, and then trust ourselves – what resonates with us is what we choose – and we keep on learning and growing throughout our mothering journey.
Having read what I’ve written about above, you will probably see why sleep training doesn’t work for many babies and toddlers.
The approach I am talking about is helping babies stay connected with, or reconnect with, their own innate mechanisms. And key to that is connection and release, so that they come to their own natural peaceful state, which is their birthright.
Most sleep training methods focus more on separation and repression. From an Aware Parenting perspective, this means that an additional layer of feelings gets added on to the top of the feelings they already have. They repress the feelings that are there that are preventing them from sleeping, and then they have some more feelings about being separated.
What I always ask of every mother is to observe her baby or child. Our babies and children constantly show us their emotional state. If they are happy to make eye contact, are relaxed in their bodies, able to connect and concentrate, and freely smile, then they are connected with themselves. And I know that you feel it yourself. When you feel deeply connected with your child, it is highly likely that she feels deeply connected with you.
When she is avoiding eye contact, her muscles are tense, moves from one thing to another without stopping, has an agitated tone in her voice, and avoids connection, then it is likely that she is disconnected from herself. And again, I imagine that you notice that too – you probably feel a sense of agitation or frustration. Your feelings are the way in to connection with your child.
You can tell what is really going on for your baby or child, and what helps her to be more connected with herself and you, and what leads her to be more disconnected from herself or you.
H: Talk to us about crying. Is it ok to let your baby cry. There seems to be two types of parents – let them cry it out or comfort them when they cry. Is there another way to think about crying?
After reading the above, you will probably have the gist of my answer!
What I am offering here is a particular set of beliefs about crying, and I ask each parent to listen to what resonates most with them.
If you have had experiences of crying with someone else and afterwards feeling a deep sense of relief and clarity, of literally seeing more clearly and being more open and loving, it is more likely that this way of seeing things will resonate with you.
And again, I have deep compassion for whatever beliefs you have about crying.
We all have important reasons for believing what we believe, based on our own life experiences.
The beauty of parenting is that we get to really listen to ourselves, and to what feels really true for us, and to be with our children in that way.
H: Can you please explain to us the difference between toxic stress and the stress of learning a new skill?
I’m not sure if I understand your question accurately. Perhaps you are talking about, how when a baby or child is learning something new, whether it be sitting up, crawling, or learning to speak, that frustration is an inherent part of this?
Frustration is part of what inspires us to grow and develop.
Really wanting to do something inspires us to learn to do that thing.
And when babies and children (and us!) are on the cusp of a new developmental skill, we are likely to cry and tantrum more, and laugh more too!
This is part of releasing the feelings so that we can be clear again.
I remember clearly when my children were younger, and they were trying to do something, and they got really frustrated, and they had a big cry about it, and even just after that cry, they were clear and calm enough to actually do that new thing!
And perhaps you are talking about toxic stress as things that happen to babies and children where they feel scared or sad? Perhaps when there is arguing, or divorce, or trauma?
The thing is, that both of these types of feelings can be released from their bodies. They can release frustration, and they can heal from past painful experiences. We can help our babies and children navigate the seas of life and heal from whatever they need to heal from.
H: How can we become an emotional ‘anchor’ for our children as they move through their sleep journey?
I think the way that we become an emotional anchor is making sure of two things:
One; that we get our needs for emotional and practical support met;
Two; that we stay deeply connected with our own feelings, and help ourselves heal from our own past painful experiences.
The more we do these, the more we have a sense of our own emotional ground – being able to be with the big feelings of our baby and child, being deeply connected with them, especially before sleep.
It is that which helps them stay deeply connected with their own selves, which means their own needs for sleep, and being able to sleep when they need sleep, and to wake when they have had enough sleep. It really is as simple as that.
Connection with ourselves, and healing from our own past hurts, means we can be deeply connected with our children, and help them heal from their past hurts, which in turn means them being deeply connected with themselves and their feelings.
The keys to restful sleep are tiredness, relaxation and connection.
The more we listen to our own selves, and honour our own tiredness, natural relaxation mechanisms, and need for connection, the more we can offer these to our babies and children.
The more they feel connected before sleep, and feel naturally relaxed, with releasing through play, laughter, tears and tantrums, the more easily they connect with their own natural capacity to sleep.
I find it really helpful to remember that as human beings, we are born naturally knowing what we need.
We are designed to sleep when we are tired, eat when we are hungry, connect when we need connection, learn whatever we need to learn, and release whatever our bodies don’t need, whether that be through weeing and pooing, or laughing and crying.
When our natural knowings are understood and responded to, all those things are natural.
Sleep is natural.
H: What is the ideal bedroom/ sleep setup for children, if there is one?
Again, I really value compassion for every parent on this one.
Our own feelings and core beliefs come up strongly in our choices here.
I ask each parent to imagine what it would be like to be the age of their child, and what would be most helpful for them.
And then there are the parent’s needs to consider.
I believe that each family needs to listen to the child’s needs and the parent’s needs and find a way that is the biggest fit for both.
I find it really helpful to bring in some developmental theory here. Newborn babies have no concept of time. So when they are alone, they do not have a sense that being alone will end – from the knowledge we have at the moment, it appears that to them, time alone seems infinite.
So, having connection at night time can really help meet their attachment needs and needs for closeness and reassurance, and help them sleep.
But if you have feelings or beliefs that do not resonate with co-sleeping, then I would recommend your baby being close enough so that she can hear you – even just hearing your breathing at night will give her a sense of not being alone.
So you could consider where on the closeness axis you stand – with co-sleeping being the closest, then to sleeping in the same room, then to sleeping very close with the door open so that some sound might be heard.
As babies get older, if they have closeness, they will internalise that sense of closeness.
They also learn about a sense of time and continuity.
So, the older a baby or child is, the more she will understand that when her parents are gone, they will come back. This is a developmental capacity.
So, yet again, given this information, I invite each parent to listen to her heart and do what most resonates with her. Sometimes that might involve self-exploration about our own feelings around closeness and separation.
If you do choose to be separate from your baby at night, I highly recommend having a lot of closeness and connection during the day, and particularly on going to sleep.
Filling up her connection cup will help her internalise that sense of connection; of having you close inside her even when you aren’t there.
H: What are some of the common early sleep traps we as parents can fall into and how do we avoid those?
I suppose I could say that traps might be doing what doesn’t feel right to us, what doesn’t resonate with us, but doing it anyway because we think we “should” or we “have to” or because our friend is doing it, or our mum told us to, or we read it in a book. I think the most important thing is to be guided by what resonates with us.
And of course, that asks us to differentiate in ourselves between what is our intuitive knowing, and what are things that we learnt from others that aren’t actually true for us.
How we help our baby sleep has a profound effect on her – so it is such a gift to her if we listen to ourselves and do what most resonates with us.
And then to observe our baby, and let her tell us how that is for her.
H: Why do you think sleep is such an emotionally charged, contentious issue?
I think that there are at least two reasons:
The first is that our core beliefs about human beings, closeness, connection and separation are shown up around our sleep choices.
The second is that our feelings from how we were helped to sleep when we were babies often comes up when we think about babies and sleep. These feelings can be big.
That’s why I have a passion for compassion.
Each of us is on our own unique parenting journey, and each of us is doing what we think is the most helpful for our baby or child.
Each of us loves our child and wants them to grow up emotionally healthy.
But we have very different ideas about the most helpful ways of doing that, based on our own life experiences and learnings.
What I most enjoy is aiming to have the same degree of compassion for other parents as I aim to have for my own children.
So, in conclusion, what I hope you’ve seen from this conversation is that this approach – the Aware Parenting approach – really invites a totally different paradigm to understand babies and children, feelings and sleep.
Sleep really is just a symptom or a flag for how connected a baby feels, and how many feelings she is holding inside her.
When we focus on deep connection, and cooperate with her natural release mechanisms, we can listen to her tears, join in with her play and laughter, and help her reclaim her innate knowledge of sleep, whilst also creating a beautiful and deep connection.
I’ve so loved having this conversation, Hilary. I really appreciate your questions – they help spark my thoughts in a slightly different way. Isn’t it wonderful how rich conversations are!
P.S.
I get many emails from parents about how their baby or child’s sleep has profoundly changed since listening in these ways. Here is one – the mum gave me her permission to share it. She said,
“Dearest Marion,
My little boy has rarely had a peaceful night’s sleep since he was a newborn. Now, 8 months later, he wakes up an average of 8-15 times a night. Nap times only last half and hour, and a total of 2 hours a day. Bedtimes are a frantic affair, with desperate nursing, shushing and bouncing to put him to sleep. It felt all wrong. And everything I ever read about baby sleep felt even wrong-er. I couldn’t figure out what the root of the problem was until I came across your website this morning at 5am. I read many of your articles before my last night time sleep.
At 7am we woke up and I got ready for work. As I walked around getting ready, Terry started to cry. This time, instead of trying to soothe him, I sat down, looked deeply into his eyes with love, held him and simply listened. He let loose all his pent up rage, frustration and emotion, I imagine there was a lot of it after 8 months. When he finally calmed, I nursed him and left for work.
He slept 4 hours for naps today.
When I got home from work, we spent the evening together and got ready for bed. Right before bedtime he started crying again, and again I held him as he stormed. Already i could feel a difference between us. It was trust, love and respect developing.
10 minutes ago he woke up. Instead of desperately nursing him like I always do I just picked him up and held him. He put his head on my shoulder and went back to sleep.
I am in tears. I cannot tell you how healing this has been, and the enormous change that has taken place from just this morning. I have searched high and low for a parenting resource that approaches things with presence. Yours has been the only one I have found so far.
I haven’t finished reading all your articles but am looking forward to it. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. There is still so much work to be done, but you have helped plant this precious new seed of love and nourishment.
Thank you.
With deep gratitude,
With deep gratitude,
Elly
Dearest Marion,
A small update on my little boy. Last night, he did wake up a few times (but far less than 15 times) to cry some more, and my husband and I were there for him. And I am willing to keep doing this until his trauma has been released. He slept deeply, hardly moving at all. This morning, his eyes were free of purple shadows.
I feel I have connected with him as a human being. I know there will be more challenges ahead, but I am glad there is a dependable resource I can turn to now.Thank you.Warmest regards,
Elena“
I have a few children’s stories on my website, and I’ve written one about playing before sleep. I thought you might like it. You can read it here: – https://marionrose.net/?page_id=1011
If you want to find out more about the work I do, you can find out more at www.marionrose.net.
I have articles, videos, children’s stories, free online courses, and paid online courses. I have one on sleep, but it is designed for people who are already familiar with Aware Parenting.
If you are new to this approach, you might like my attachment play course – http://www.attachmentplaycourses.com/join-in
Much love,
Marion