stand. Parents lose their own balance and become alarmed.
Over the years, I have found that these predictable periods of
regression can become opportunities for me to help parents
understand their child. The touchpoints become a window
through which parents can view the great energy that fuels the
child for learning. Each step accomplished leads to a new sense
of autonomy. When seen as normal and predictable, these
periods of regressive behavior are opportunities to understand
the child more deeply and to support his or her growth, rather
than to become locked into a struggle. A child's particular
strengths and vulnerabilities, as well as temperament and cop-
ing style, all come to the surface at such a time. What a chance
for understanding the child as an individual!

Part I of this book is organized around these touchpoints
in the areas of behavioral and emotional growth, showing
how they affect decisions about all areas--sleep, feeding, the
independence that comes with walking, communication, dis-
cipline, or toilet training. Issues are laid out just as they
emerge in office visits with parents, from the prenatal visit
with an expectant mother and father to the checkups for the
infants to the annual visits with the older child. Parents'
questions appear at predictable times. Their concerns about
how to handle these disruptive regressions make our visits
focused. If I can help parents understand the mechanisms in
the child that contribute to troublesome behavior, each visit
becomes more valuable. A caring professional can use such
times to reach into the family system, offer support, and pre-
vent future problems.

Part 2 takes up those specific issues of child rearing in the
first six years that can challenge normal development. "Prob-
lems" of sibling rivalry, crying, tantrums, waking at night,
fears, emotional manipulations, lying, or bedwetting begin
when parents attempt to control situations that really belong
to the child. I try to show how parents can see these various
kinds of behavior as part of the struggle for autonomy, and
how they can remove themselves from the struggle and thus
defuse it.

In writing part 2, I have drawn on articles I wrote for
parents on the same issues in Family Circle and earlier in
Redbook. The topics are perennials, raised in urgent tones by

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