Happy Days » Behavioural issues

When you have difficult sleeper you search for any reason why your baby is waking! Is he teething? Is he hungry? Could he be lonely? These are the thoughts that may cross your mind! Working as an Occupational Therapist I see a number of cases of sleep problems in my practice. I thought I would share a few that were clearly related to separation anxiety and the solutions I gave. Jack was 8 months old and had been a good sleeper. Although he had never slept through the night, his night wakings were limited to one at 1am and one at 4am. His diet had been good and he had a good day sleep routine. He fell...

Q: Hello I have attended your workshop and read through quite a lot of your website and have your book, Toddler Sense but don't see much on separation anxiety. I have a 2 and a half year old girl and am battling with what I think is separation anxiety. It started in July this year (2.2months old) which coincided with getting a new nanny. My daughter  no longer wanted me to leave her at home and performed each time I left the house. I work part-time from home but have to go out to meetings ad hoc. Perhaps adding fat to the fire, my husband and I had to go away for 2 weeks at the beginning of October...

Q:Our baby girl was born 12 weeks premature. She is now 16 months old and enjoys a good health, it’s just that sleeping and eating remains a problem. We bought the Sleep Sense book and following the sleep couching technique the best we can. We really try not for her to cry when going to sleep in the evenings as she will vomit in a split second – and it’s really not pleasant to re-clean everything and everybody each night. Even when I stay in the room with her, she starts crying and will vomit.Apart from vomiting, when she wakes in the night, usually by 00:20, she insists that I attend...

Q: Dear Baby SenseI need your advice please. My 3 year old daughter has been potty trained to make a wee-wee for more than a year already, she also doesn’t wear a nappy at night or when she sleeps during the day anymore, but she still refuses to make a pooh in the toilet. I would like to sketch the situation to you and would really appreciate some help or advice. Around her second birthday, we started potty training her. She didn’t really ever have a problem indicating to me when she needed to make a wee-wee. She had one or two incidents of wetting her pants only and that really went...

Q: Hallo there. I am 23 year old mom with a beautiful baby girl of 14 months. From the age of 12 months she started to throw tantrums and I don't know why. If she is in my arms she is happy but when I put her down she starts crying again. She goes on her tummy and kicks her feet on the ground. What worries me also is if I drop her off at the day-care she cries when I leave her there and when I fetch her she is very happy to see me but I am not allowed to put her down. She wants to be in my arms 24 hours. I am starting to get worried about it because I do not know if it is healthy for her. In the...