Context is key.

Knowing our baby’s needs gives us crucial information about what he’s feeling and how he’s communicating that need. Context is important in the toddler years as well when parents can be swift to interpret “the terrible two’s” instead of understanding the necessary and normal phase of exploration of self and the world. And as a child grows, context is critical to helping our children resolve conflict and understand the intensity of their own reactions and emotions.

When we parent with fear and reactivity, we are literally disconnected from our right-brain intuition, connectedness and insight. We convince ourselves that our perceptions are reality. We develop ‘myth-perceptions’ about children, parents and the “right” way to raise human beings. Some examples of our popular ‘myth-perceptions’ are: