You know your toddler best (even if it doesn't feel like it!)

As a parent or primary carer, you know your own small child better than anyone else. You are the one who is listening to and responding as best you can to your toddler, day and night!

Parents do a lot of experimenting. This is a great strength. You are likely to find yourself trying out something that has been suggested, to see if it works for you and your own unique child. If it doesn't seem to work, you'll give that a miss after a while and try something else.

That's how I suggest you use The Possums Sleep Program. Some ideas you find in here might not seem relevant to you and your family, and you'll decide not to try them. Other things you'll experiment with for a time. Sometimes, certain strategies seem to work for a while, but then they stop working and you try something else.

Parents might have been told that consistency is a parenting strength. As our children grow older, there can be some truth in this. But overall, the research shows that flexibility and a willingness to experiment and see what actually works, adapting over time, is a source of great strength and resilience not only in life, but in parenting.

Even with older children, decisions that are right for your child at one age might be quite inappropriate as your child prepares to finish school or leave home, for instance. Staying emotionally connected and listening to your child, even as you set boundaries, really matters.

Strong relationships require flexibility, respect, trust and communication. We begin building this with our little one by experimenting to see what works. It's not that everything goes well in strong relationships: on the contrary, there is often misunderstanding or confusion or worse.

What matters is that you know how to rebuild trust, by continuing to listen, by continuing to respond, and by staying emotionally connected with this mysterious little person who has landed right in the middle of your world.

Selected references

Gottman JM, Katz IF, Hooven C. Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology. 1996;10:243-268.

Havighurst SS, Kehoe CE, Harley AE. Tuning in to Toddlers: Research protocol and recruitment for evaluation of an emotion socialization program for parents of toddlers. Frontiers in Psychology. 2019;10(1054):doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01054.

Havighurst SS, Kehoe CE, Harley AE, Thomas R. A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program and its impact on parenting, children’s behavior and parent and child stress cortisol: Tuning in to Toddlers. Behavior Research and Therapy. 2022;149:104016.

Johnson AM, Hawes DJ, Eisenberg N. Emotion socialization and child conduct problems: a comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review. 2017;54:65-80.