Margaret Watkinson

It’s time to take the plunge and introduce myself. My name (as you may have already guessed…)is Margaret. Little people are my most favorite people on the planet. I have invested my entire life learning as much as I can about babies, toddlers, preschoolers and school aged kids. Pretty much since my first babysitting job at 10 years old, when I was left with 5 young kids, one a preemie, and reported to mom that one of the kids got into the candy and her reaction was to wake up and let their kid have it, I decided that I needed to learn about and advocate for little kids. I started my family at 18 and spend those first 10 years reading, studying, observing, not sleeping (much) and starting my formal “kid” education. I won’t bore you with the entire journey, but the opportunities to learn and research are endless. I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of kids and their families over the years. Kids are always doing their best, their grownups are always doing their best- balancing their professional, personal and parenting goals and always feeling that something is on the back burner. I love to help reframe, enlighten and help parents help their kids be smart, persistent, problem solvers who love learning and who grow to do their best, to be their best self who can also make and learn from their mistakes in the context of the community and family they are a part of.

Sleep is essential to health and the very foundation on which all else sits. Teaching your children to fall and stay asleep independently is the gift that keeps on giving. Newborns, infants, toddlers and young children all bring unique sleep challenges and sleep behaviors to the process of falling and going back to sleep. Parents inadvertently developmental changes and opportunities to firmly, but lovingly establish solid sleep habits. Kids always hit bumps in the sleep road- travel, illness, reaching a new milestone. It’s never too late to teach good sleep habits, even if some negative sleep associations may be established. Of course, we start with eliminating any medical reasons, but basically all kids can and will learn to sleep through the night in a way that works for parents.
Everyone’s health and your child’s development will benefit.

Becoming a life long, passionate reader is the foundation of learning about the world beyond our immediate selves. Reading and writing must be taught- but they are communication that are based on language. Your child’s language acquisition is biological and begins at birth. How language and vocabulary develop in their complexity is dependent on how their parents and adults in their world engage in conversations based on joint attention, pragmatics and use of vocabulary. Intuition serves us well, but a little bit of knowledge combined with intentionality can only enhance a child’s speaking, reading and writing down the road.

Finally, one of my most favorite areas to work with kids and their grownups in on behavior change. Understanding where a child is physically, emotionally, linguistically and cognitively is essential to working with the principles of behavior change successfully. All we know about what a child knows and understands is revealed to us through behavior. What we see and what we hear provide us a window into what a child needs to learn. Parents and children enter into a behavior loop based on what happens before a behavior and by what happens after, a reinforcer, of that behavior. Untangling how infant, toddler and child behavior impact parent behavior and helping parent(s) recognize how they hold the key that can eliminate, increase or decrease any behavior can be life changing!