Tag: experts

Your pediatrician will probably tell you that your baby should get used to sleeping by him or herself as soon after birth as possible. The reasoning is that in American culture we emphasize early independence, so babies should adapt quickly to being away from their parents. This is especially true if both parents work and the children are in day care.

However, there is another school of thought that maintains that babies should sleep in the same bed as their parents (an idea shared by about 80 percent of the world's population). The rationale is that human evolution simply can't keep pace with the new demands our culture is placing on its children.

There is no way professional therapists can have all the answers for every problem that shows up in their office. Almost daily I see couples whose challenges are too difficult for me to solve quickly or easily. So I have honed my ability to ask better questions when people are stuck. Ultimately, I have found that asking better and better questions is far more productive than giving bumper sticker solutions to complex problems.

I used this approach on myself with remarkable results. When couples came in with particularly complex problems, I stopped asking myself how to help them solve the problems. Instead, I began looking at how I could help them stop "triggering" each other.