I have a soon to be 3yr. old daughter and ever since she was about 3mos old she has been sleeping in my bed with me. I just bought her a toddler bed and finished up her new room. Now I have no idea how to get her to want to sleep in her own bed and not mine. I need some advice on how to get my little one out of my bed and into her own!!

A: New things are always terrifying to little ones, especially after dark. What looks really nice to an adult, in the mind of a toddler could have any number of monsters hidden in it. I personally don’t object to young children sleeping with their parents. I think it provides security and increases the bonding between parents and their children. However, should a child reach school age without gaining the independence to sleep in his/her own room, problems may surface.  Your little one is only 3 so you have plenty of time to work with her. Take a gradual approach with her. Hopefully she has a bedtime considerably earlier than yours. Tell her she needs to sleep in her own new pretty bed until you come to bed. She has her bed and you have yours. You will gladly share but she must wait for you to come. She may desperately try to stay awake for a few nights until you come to bed but eventually, exhaustion will get her and she will start falling asleep in her own bed. Let her know the night light is on and your door is unlocked if she needs to come in. Once she has slept in her own bed a few nights, she’ll be fairly sure no monsters got in with the new bed. Then it’s just a matter of making new habits and helping her gain independence. Gradually let her know that tonight you want to sleep alone. Then week-nights you want to sleep alone. Until you’ve reached a point where sleeping with Mom is a special occasion for popcorn and movies and late nights on the sleeping bag in Mom’s room.

i want to lose my voice coz i want to get out of an event thing that i don’t want to go to.i know it sounds stupid but please i need help.also how long will it last for?how long will it take to take effect on my voice? i know screaming into the pillow and just screaming and singing is one.i’m gonna try that too but any other suggestions please? also i don’t want to fake it coz i don’t really think i can. thank you in advance.

A: You don’t mention why losing your voice is the only way you can get out of going to this event. Deliberately trying to lose your voice is really hard to do. Screaming into a pillow will take quite some time and can damage your vocal cords. As for how long the effects will last - I can’t say. I suppose it depends on how much damage you’ve managed to inflict on yourself. Are there alternatives to hurting yourself? What is it about this event that makes you so determined to avoid it? Apparently your voice is required at this event so I’m guessing you either have to sing or speak and you are experiencing some major stage fright. The fear of making a major fool of yourself is everyone’s biggest nightmare. But I can assure you from personal experience that - once you have the microphone in your hand and the first few words come out - that you will relax and gain the confidence to finish the presentation. Be as prepared as you can ahead of time. Practice your speech or song until you can do it in your sleep. If you’ve done that, then your brain knows the words and they will automatically come out when required. Why don’t you go ahead and attend the event? I bet you’ll be glad you did.

Hey can I use some of the insight here in this entry if I reference you with a link back to your site?

 A:  Yes.  If this site can be helpful to you, please feel free to use it.

it is my first post on this blog and to start with I would like to thank for the great quality information, which I found in this and all previous topics , it really helped me a lot. I will definitely put this blog on my rss reader Also, I would like to ask - don’t you mind if I will quate some information from your blog because I am writing articles for the Bukisa, Ezine and other articles directories (this is my part time job)? It would really help me with some of mine articles. Of course, I will mention your website name or URL (not all articles directories allows URL’s , so I can’t 100% promise that you will get a direct backlink to your website).

 A:  I don’t mind at all.  This blog is to be helpful to anyone anywhere.  I’m flattered you like it well enough to use it elsewhere.

A couple months ago, I bought the cutest little dog. She is adorable. The breeder says she is a Chorkie (half yorkie, half Chihuahua). I love her. I can hardly wait to get home from work and hold her. She sleeps in my bed and shares my dinner with me. She’s the best roommate ever! She gives me wonderful companionship and never wants the remote. She has started biting though. If she gets angry with me for anything she actually nips at me. I’m not sure what that is about. I saw you had a yorkie. Do they nip like that?

A: I’m no vet or dog trainer but I do know that little dogs can get small dog syndrome. I’m not sure exactly what that is. It has something to do with being tiny and spoiled. Which may be your dog’s problem. I have several dogs so the other thing that comes to my mind is the alpha male attitude. Dogs historically ran in packs with one dog giving the orders. If you don’t establish yourself as the ‘alpha male’ - or the dog giving the orders - your dog will try to take that role. It sounds to me like your little one has decided that she is the boss in your home and is nipping at you when you step out of line. If I were you, I’d nip that behavior in the bud - no pun intended . I like to use the tube at the end of a paper towel roll instead of the traditional rolled up newspaper. I’m always afraid the newspaper will actually hurt the dogs but I know the paper towel tube won’t. I gently smack their little bottom when they try something like that just so they know I am in charge. I also use the spray bottle of water for discipline, usually when mine are barking. (When you have more than one dog, barking can be a problem if you don’t control it). So, basically, my dogs know I’m the boss or the ‘alpha male’ in the group. As soon as your little one accepts that you love her but you are the boss, I think your trouble with nipping will end.

Our 4-year-old granddaughter is one who should never be considered a candidate for movie theater attendance. Each movie is given a running commentary from our little munchkin along with a verbal tornado of questions. One of the first things she needs to know is ‘who is the bad guy?’ It’s important to her to be able to identify which side each cast member is on. So yesterday when she and her grandfather were watching a movie, I wasn’t surprised to hear her ask this question. But I did find it surprising when she wouldn’t take his word for it. He had to justify his decision. “But, Grandpa, why is he the bad guy?” I had to smile listening to Grandpa explain that you could tell he was a bad guy because he was taking the little dog. That wasn’t good enough for her. “But, Grandpa, does he say bad words? Does he do bad things?” Grandpa fumbled on that one while I laughed. But even as I laughed I thought ‘You go, Little One. Don’t ever take someone’s word for it when they tell you ‘that’s the bad guy‘. You hang on to that concept!’

And I sincerely hope she does. As she gets old enough to go out in the neighborhood, I hope she thinks twice before excluding that neighbor girl the others won’t play with because she doesn’t have the right toys. And I hope that if she joins the ‘in’ crowd in school that she doesn’t exclude the one who has no money or who doesn’t wear the right clothes. And I hope, as she reaches adulthood, that she discriminates rightly. That she can recognize that a certain religion, a certain race, a certain way of thinking doesn’t necessarily make them the bad guy. It just make them different. I hope she shows the love and acceptance that is so needed in our world today. I DON’T want her to be politically correct or to be so unsure of herself that she can’t stand up for what she believes is right. I just want her to know and to recognize that God made us all a little different. If we were all the same, the world would be a boring place. It is the differences that make this world a truly beautiful place. And if we love and accept others and their differences, we will have made the world we live in a little more beautiful just by being in it.

Of course, having her in our world now has already made it a little more beautiful for us.

Perfection is, unfortunately, not a state I have managed to attain yet. I just keep learning new things and realizing when I was wrong in others. Mostly I just keep realizing that I am going to have to learn to compromise more. For example, years ago, I chose to walk away from attending church services. I had not chosen to walk away from my belief in Christ. But I felt that churches, pastors, and people who congregated together in the church building made fantastic claims that they based on the Bible but couldn’t be verified in real life. I felt that churches often made sweeping judgments against those whose lifestyles didn’t conform 100% with their requirements. There were rules that had to be followed to be a ‘true’ christian. Deviating from those rules made you less than worthy. So I walked. I continued to want to know what the truth was so I kept studying various teachings including those in the Bible to see if I could separate the truth from the claims of the churches and the regulations laid down by them. In my studies, I recently came across this passage in the Bible that told of Jesus on the Sabbath in the synagogue. A sick woman was there and He healed her. This, of course, annoyed the leaders. Jesus was breaking a rule and working on the Sabbath. The leader didn’t complain to Jesus about this. I don’t know if he was in awe of Jesus or if he had just given up trying to get Jesus to conform to the rules. This leader went to the woman and scolded her for being healed on the Sabbath. So Jesus turned around and scolded him. Called him a hypocrite. Said he would have fed his donkey on the Sabbath, wasn’t this woman more important?

There were several little things that occurred to me when I read this. First, Jesus wasn’t always all that fond of the teaching of the elders. Second, rules weren’t His primary consideration - people were. And thirdly, he was in the synagogue. In spite of the fact that He didn’t always follow the rules, and He didn’t always like the elders, and He didn’t always believe they were teaching the actual truths God wanted the people to hear, where would you see Him on the Sabbath? He would be in the synagogue. He didn’t have to agree with them. He just kept doing what He thought was right. If He saw them hurting others, He spoke up. Obviously He didn’t make Himself real popular with the elders.

Anyway, it came to me there were some things I needed to learn from this. One, I should just keep on doing what I think is right. Two, if I see someone being hurt by the rules imposed by the church, I should speak up. And, three, I need to rethink my stand on church attendance.

So - I keep learning. I hope you do too.

Love

Mom

I have been trying to acces this website for a while. I was using Chrome then when I tried Firefox, it worked just great? Just wanted to bring this to your attention. This is really a greatwebsite. I have a few myself. I really admire your layout. I know this is off topic but,did you make this theme yourself,or purchase from somewhere?

 A:  This is a theme I made up myself.  As the mother of 6 and grandmother of 12, I have all kinds of people asking questions and decided maybe I could help online as well.  Sometimes I get questions through the comments and sometimes through the ‘ask mom’ icon.  I’ve been enjoying this and hope I have been helpful.

with ?we leave it to you to decide?.

A: Yes. You send me a question and I give you my opinion. You can take it or leave it. It’s up to you.

One of the joys of having adult sons who are smarter than you is that you can ask them questions and get really good answers.  If I ever make it on the  ’Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ show, they will definately be on my ‘phone a friend’ list.  One of my sons informs me that my information on the RSS feed is all wrong.  Not only did I not know what it was but I actually have an RSS feed.  Apparently some of my readers know what this is and know how to use it.  For the reader who had asked me for my RSS feed, I now have it.  It is http://advicefrommom.net/?feed=rss2.  I hope this is helpful to you.  I am sorry I had my information wrong earlier.