04

As I predicted in my last blog post, the Gaza war thread is back as the most active thread over the weekend after having dropped from that spot for a day. The second most active is another one that I've already covered, the thread about "The Golden Bachelor". That means that the first thread that I will discuss today was titled, "Discipline for excessive crying" and posted in the "Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers" forum. The original poster has a two-year-old daughter who is constantly crying. Almost anything that the original poster does can cause the girl to cry for long periods of time. Moreover, the girl is only like this around the original poster and not her husband or nanny. The original poster knows that experts advise not punishing a child for crying, but she is at the end of her patience and desparate to find a solution. She wonders what others who have had a child like this have done. In response, the original poster gets a range of advice. Nobody is in favor of literal punishment, but some counsel ignoring the child. That advice is generally accompanied by other strategies aimed at encouraging an end to the crying. For instance, telling the girl that her mother can't help her while she is crying, teaching breathing or counting exercises to help her calm down, or creating a "time out" room to where she can be sent to cry alone and calm down. One poster recounts using "kiddie yoga" videos to help her child learn emotional regulation skills. Posters also suggest that the the child may be feeling the stress the original poster experiences from the crying and that actually causes her to cry more. To reduce this vicious circle, posters suggest that the original poster address her own emotional state. Another angle that many posters took was to propose that the original poster contact a developmental pediatrician and have her daughter evaluated for potential special needs. About halfway through the thread, the original poster responded to thank everyone for the helpful responses. But, she pointed out that the wide variety of responses shows why this is a difficult situation for her to know how to address. She still isn't sure what to do because there are so many contradictory schools of thought. Shortly after that response, the original poster responded again to say that she was planning to contact her local pediatric developmental behavioral center today. Previously, she was unaware that diagnoses or evaluations could be done at such a young age. She seemed to have dropped out of the thread at that point, but it continued for another 7 pages without her. Many of those posts simply repeated or reinforced advice that was previously offered.