One must remember when dealing with a child with child separation anxiety, anxiety can be contagious. The more you show it, more your child will pick up on it and make situation more difficult. An easy way to get on top of situation early is to play small "leave and return" games with your child. This way, they get accustomed to you being gone in short intervals, and most importantly...get accustomed to you returning. A simple "peek a boo" game or “hide and seek” around house may do trick.

The more you can do these exercises, and longer amounts of time you can be separated is key to overcoming child separation anxiety. The ebook, "The Separation Anxiety Solution" is full of tips, tricks and helpful advice that has helped many kids overcome this difficult and common problem.It can be found at: The Separation Anxiety Solution

If your child still shows strong symptoms of child separation anxiety after weeks of doing exercises to get them use to you being away, it may be time to see a doctor or therapist. The earlier you can get this problem under control, better it will be not only for your child, but also for you.

And advice is often manipulative.

My friend was having a party and couldn't decide whether to fill house with flowers. A third friend launched into a whole complicated monologue about cost of flowers, work involved arranging them, and so on.

The party giver's cat wandered in. I said I wouldn't pet it because I am allergic to long haired cats. The advice giver immediately sympathised.

'Oh, I am allergic to so many things, I have to avoid cats, dust mites, pollen... you name it!'

She reddened and suddenly went very quiet. Her 'advice' was based on fact that large number of pollen-laden flowers would have spoiled party for her!

An honest response would have been: 'flowers would make it hard for me to come to your party...'

I don't give advice to psychotherapy clients. We often need a range of options to process. I just support them in coming up with options, that's all.

Expert opinion is valuable - but giver needs to detach from outcome.

Practical advice is different: if water is pouring out of a burst pipe you need person who knows location of stopcock!

But if someone asks for more abstract 'advice' I'll first ask what they think they should do, and if they're stuck, I'll say, 'well, you might want to look at... etc'

That leaves it open. Because hey, if it all goes wrong I don't want responsibility of having made decision for them!

======================================= Rhiannon Hill is author of "10 Stupid Things That Can Screw Up Your Life" Get no-bull self-help book that tells it like it is... http://www.bookshaker.com/product_info.php?products_id=102 =======================================