Read The No-Cry Separation Anxiety Solution: Gentle Ways to Make Good-bye Easy from Six Months to Six Years for Free Online Page A

your situation, talk to your child about
    his concerns. Explain all the steps you take to keep yourself safe.
    Allow him to call you or send a text message when possible. If you
    stay calm and reassuring, this phase should pass.
    • Embarrassment. Your previously happy kindergartener sud-
    denly begs to stay home from school. Your preschooler won’t leave
    your side to ask the librarian she’s talked to many times before to
    help her fi nd a book. Your grade-schooler refuses to answer a simple
    “How are you?” from a neighbor. In these cases, embarrassment or
    awkwardness may be to blame.
    Ask a few “why” questions to determine if something has hap-
    pened to make your child feel uncomfortable. Perhaps someone
    laughed at a question she asked, or she got lost on the way back from
    the school library to her classroom. If you can learn what is causing
    the embarrassment, you can bring it out into the open. When you
    provide reassurance that her experience is normal and help her with
    tips on how she can overcome her feelings, you can move her past
    the discomforting incident.
    Is Your Child’s Separation Anxiety Really
    a Problem?
    There are times when children must separate from their parents, but
    there are also times when separation is optional. I have never seen any All About Separation Anxiety in Early Childhood 17
    Mother-Speak
    “I’m a teacher and on a school holiday break I wanted to
    spend the extra time with my son, but due to advice from oth-
    ers, I decided to leave him in daycare. Friends told me how
    lucky I was to have this ‘time to myself.’ I really struggled with
    dropping Luke off and was nearly overwhelmed with feelings
    of sadness—and some guilt too. I felt like all the things that I’d
    planned to do seemed a bit pointless. I didn’t really enjoy the
    ‘time off’ at all, so I ended up changing plans and keeping him
    with me. It was a glorious week for both of us. Now I’ll be
    much more careful about automatically taking others’ advice
    about what’s right for us.”
    —Mother of three-year-old Luke
    studies that support pushing a parent-child partnership to separate just
    for the sake of personal growth. Every child is unique, and every family
    is the only one of its kind. The treatment of separation anxiety should
    require an individual decision for each child and for each situation.
    This book, like all my No-Cry parenting books, is about solving
    those problems that you feel are problems. Every family views separa-
    tion anxiety issues differently. Just because there is a chapter about
    how to help your baby accept a babysitter, it doesn’t mean you have
    to hire one. If you are happy taking your baby along with you on
    your night out—then go right ahead and do that. Just because there
    is a chapter about how to help your child adjust to daycare, it doesn’t
    mean that every child should attend daycare; it means that if your
    child is struggling in this area and you’d like to help him adjust and
    become happy in the situation, then I will provide you with ideas to
    help you make that change. On the other hand, if you decide that
    it’s best to pass on daycare for now and simply keep your child at
    home with you, then that may be your best solution. Many children
    bypass the daycare experience—and some even bypass the preschool
    experience—yet go on to be perfectly well-adjusted and happy kids
    with lots of friends once they begin kindergarten. I know because I
    had one of those children!

    18 The No-Cry Separation Anxiety Solution
    Braedon, six months old
    As part of the process, consider why you feel the issue needs to
    be solved. Is this truly something that must be addressed for your
    child’s emotional growth? Is this situation the absolute best one for
    everyone in the family? Are you considering changes because of your
    own memories of childhood, input from outsiders, or worries about
    potential problems, or is this something that is truly affecting