Time-Out Talk
I should have corrected him right there, but for some reason, I let him whine at me. It is always better to correct all negative behaviors as soon as possible.
Tone
4 Year-Old Stress
We got home late. My four year old fell asleep on the way home. After waking up, he came in to go potty, get dressed and go to bed. From the bathroom I heard crying. He was in there for a long time. He was in the bathroom trying to clean up a mess that he had made in his pants.It was very stressful and disturbing to him to find a dirty pants problem. This stress along with his extreme tiredness made him very sad and he just couldn’t help crying.
Do You See What I See?
Over the last year, my niece has gone through a change. The once happy, helpful girl changed into a whiny, depressed, girl that didn’t look at life the same. One day I got left home with the all the children whilethe adultswent shopping. While I was home with the children I started giving instructions for everyone to clean things up around the house. My niece started arguing with me, then she started whining, then she started complaining about everything in her life and told me that I just didn’t understand her. This is how I handled it…
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Speed Things Up
“My daughter takes 10 minutes to actually say ‘OK’ to an instruction. How do I speed things up?”
If it’s taking 10 minutes for the daughter to say “Okay” to an instruction, then she is having a power struggle and isn’t actually following the instruction. how could you do it better?
The Why’s To Disagreeing Appropriately
When I see my children are getting frustrated, I gently remind them that they can disagree appropriately. I even tell my children exactly how to disagree with ME sometimes. The point of the skill is to learn how to stop emotion and problem solve instead of get upset, and to learn when it’s a good time to appropriately disagree.
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Establishing Consequences
“…We taught the 4 basic skills and the kids had a lot of funrole-playing the way to respond to the different situations, they especially loved disagreeing appropriately! 🙂 Well, I hadn’t determined what our consequences were going to be yet so I told them we would just practice the 4 basic skills this week. I’ve learned from this that it is essential to have consequences established or there is no motivation to respond correctly…”
Why is it so important to have established consequences?
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Fathers: Parent or Playmate Part 3
My husband is a neat and tidy sort of a person. There was a time when our family was living out of laundry baskets instead of closets and drawers, because I just wasn’t able to stay on top of the laundry like I would have liked to.Spencer suggested the topic of having a set time for the laundry to be done and put away. I didn’t make any comments, because I didn’t want to get involved in his problem solving.Figuring out what someone wants is the first step for helping them have ownership of their thoughts and actions. Problem solving in relationships requires discerning what the person really wants in order to see what is needed to inspire change in the person.
Step #1– Ask him
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Fathers: Parent or Playmate Part 2
We have just made a pretty good argument for Dad’s to parent differently and have different experiences with their children. However, having a different God given role doesn’t mean that Dad should feel separated from the flow of the home. In fact, it is important that Dad should view himself as a co-president of the family business. Families should be run just as effectively as a business.
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Fathers: Parent or Playmate Part 1
I have had many questions latelyasking if fathers should parent different andhow to help fatherbecome part of mother’s vision for the family. There are many different situations and personalities, so there areprobably many ways to treat each different relationship.I am going to share some of what I have learned about fathers and what I havedoneto
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Perspective And Self-Preservation
Dear Parents,
My son happened to lose his hat in the Air and Space Museum in DC. We didn’t find out that he had lost the NEW hat until we had been kicked out of the museum at closing time. It took me 30 minutes to find a guard that would break the rules and let me in to retrieve the hat. Luckily my daughter said that she knew exactly where he put it. After successfully tracking down the hat, at dinner time, in flaming heat. My husband seemed a little upset about the matter. He looked put out.
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Most Important For Church Classes
“For clarification, when I describe a child’s inappropriate behavior, do I stop there?
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A Lesson Learned
We came to DC thinking we could get mugged. We left our hotel this morning, with our money hidden, and pinned in our pockets, and no bags visible to steal. We were ready to battle the muggers of DC. In the afternoon, it rained. To be exact, it poured buckets on our heads. We only had shopping bags to put over our heads. A woman saw our pitiful family, and stopped her car in front of us. She put two black umbrellas out the window of her car. One of them still had tags on it. I ran over to the car, and took the umbrellas from her.
Slow Down, Mom
FAMILY
I ran into a stranger as he passed by,
‘Oh excuse me please’ was my reply.
He said, ‘Please excuse me too;
I wasn’t watching for you.’
We were very polite, this stranger and I.
We went on our way and we said goodbye.
But at home a different story !
Mission By Example
I was sitting on the couch today going over plans for our next trip when my six year old daughter, Londyn, sat down next to me and said, “We have to go to Virginia because you want to make the world better, don’t you? Not just our family, but other families too.” I said, “Yes” and smiled. I didn’t need to say anything else. It was very clear to me that she had developed an understanding of my mission. As a family, we talk about mission a lot. We try to analyze what other people’s missions might be. We talk about what kinds of skills we need to develop to find our personal mission
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Why Not?
I instructed my daughter to sweep the floor. She said, “OK Mom, but I don’t know how.”
This surprised me. She had seen me sweep the floor so many times, that I forgot she might not even know how to accomplish the task.So, I told her exactly how to do it. It’s needs to be the same when telling your child what to say.
Have A Mission Book
In order to teach our children how to govern themselves in a family setting, we have to give them a vision, or picture of what the family is workingtoward. This vision, or goal, begins the family’s mission. The vision, goal, or dream is the first thing the family starts with to acheive mission. The concept of personal mission and family mission is both inspiring and overwhelming. Will it be hard to do? Why were we picked for this mission? Why don’t I have my personal mission yet? The list of questions could continue. I have found a book that tells a parable about mission.
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When do you talk about “it”?
I have to ask it because it’s something I struggle with talking about to my kids . . . when do you talk to your children about sex? How do you go about it so that they understand that sex is actually a good thing at the right time and place, and not some evil thing (the world’s view) that you have to do to bring children to the world?
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Character Building
In our family meeting this Sundaya topicwas brought up that our family needs to do more service. We asked for suggestions. After going over many options, we decided that Dad would call aranch in our community that might need our help and see if we could come do some REAL hard WORK.
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Don’t …
A lot of children have selective hearing; have you noticed? Some of this selective hearing is planned and some isn’t. They really don’t hear us correctly sometimes. We can do something to make sure this doesn’t happen as often. Have you ever said don’t run down the hall, and the first thing your child does is run down the hall? My mom used to say to me, “Don’t talk back to me.” The first thing I did after this instruction was talk back to her. Strange. It is never a good idea to start an instruction with the word don’t, because whatever you say after don’t might be
“Crying Doesn’t Bug You, Right?”
A few days after I gave birth to my fourth child I found out that I didn’t have enough milk for him. This was very stressful. (Which I am sure didn’t help me make more milk.) I supplemented him for a long time.
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