Excerpt from RAISING YOUR SPIRITED BABY by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D. Copyright © 2020 by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. Used with permission by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 3

What Do I Need to Stay Calm So I Can Calm My Baby?

Untangling Our Emotions, Reframing Our Experiences, and Getting Support

“If you start thinking negatively, like, ‘She’s driving me crazy,’ you’ll get frustrated. But if you think, ‘She isn’t settling because she’s smart and her mind is working very fast,’ it’s easier to stay calm. Well, maybe not in the middle of the night when she’s screaming and your partner is sleeping, but most of the time it helps.”—Teri, mother of three

It is not a figment of your imagination: You are working harder as the parent of a spirited infant. German researchers Mechthild Papousek, Michael Schieche, and Harald Wurmser document that the cues of spirited babies are more subtle and difficult to read. These babies truly can shift from fine to furious like an atom shooting through space. It is not easy to provide the warm, sensitive responses they need. In my experience with thousands of parents and babies, … Continue reading..