Okay, I have an 18 month old. We are doing a gentle parenting approach of helping her learn how to cope with feelings and understand boundaries and so on. So far it’s going great, but I have a question Un-related to my child at this time. My five-year old niece is highly dramatic. Her mother is too with medical stuff and is a bit of a worry wart. Her daughter gets this from her. I was that way as a child too. I came from a very “get over it” kind of family and found myself feeling this way towards my niece today because she stepped on a tiny thorn and refused to walk the rest of the day (except when she was playing because it was totally fine). She kept crying and saying she couldn’t do anything (clean up, eat, or walk) because of how badly the foot hurt. We checked it out again to make sure and it was fine. She just didn’t want to do things.

My question is, it is very possible my daughter will over exaggerate things when she gets to be this age because I did as a kid as well. I really don’t want to do what my parents did because it made me feel like they didn’t care and I really just wanted attention. What is your approach that you have used when something like this happens?