Tone

little boy crying

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.

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Happy and sad face girl

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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Son won't listen to his parents

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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FatherAndSonHugging

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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FatherAndSonHugging

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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FatherAndSonHugging

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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FatherAndSonLookingUpIntoCamera

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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YellowUmbrellaInRain

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.

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Mother reading to daughter on couch

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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Broom, dustpan, and child's feet

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.

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Happy Older Family

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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Child with hand to ear

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

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