A new talker will often call her caregiver "mommy," which makes parents worry that the child is confused about who is who. She isn...'t. This is a case of limited vocabulary rather than mixed-up identities. When a child has only one word for the female person who takes care of her, calling both of them "mommy" is understandable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your child has the capacity to care for more than one person at a time. The affection she feels for her caregiver doesn't diminish... the love she feels for you. Your caregiver isn't your competition. She is your ally.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By sharing the information and observations with the caregiver, you have a chance to see your child through another pair of eyes. ...Because she has some distance and objectivity, a caregiver often sees things that a parent's total involvement with her child doesn't allow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the child-caregiver relationship is nurturing, reliable and often even joyous, the child's confidence in human relationships as... a source of comfort and reciprocity will be strengthened and expanded in spite of the parent's absence. The child will learn that not only are the parents to be trusted but that other people are trustworthy as well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Who we are has been sidetracked by labels for who we aren't. Phrase names have divided us. Stay-at-home mom, new dad, parent of sp...ecial needs child, working mother, job sharer, non-custodial parent, single parent, empty nesters, spouse caring for spouse, parent with teens, teenage parent, elder caregiver--these and so many other titles have put us in little niches and kept us thinking that we can't help each other because ... we are so different. But we are not a collection of separate sub-species. We caregivers are more like one another than not, no matter how we spend our days.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »