“I’m having trouble figuring out what behavior is
“normal” for my 4- and 8-year-old boys, what chores I can expect them
to be able to perform, and what kinds of rewards and consequences
work for the different ages. Is there a good book you can suggest?
Or is that something I need to tailor for my own boys (i.e.
What should I expect? Read More »
Tomorrow our family has to leave early for the day. While driving the car tonight I realized that we didn’t have any gas, and if we had to get gas tomorrow morning, we would probably end up running late for our appointments. So, I decided to take some time this evening to re-fuel the car. As I was standing at the pump, I realized that I am not much different than a car. I also need re-fueling from time to time in order to be a happy, healthy mom; the kind of mom that can keep running all day. We all need a little time to re-fuel on a regular basis. I used to take a whole day each m
“How do you take away all privileges from younger kids? My 3.5 year old is really pushing… This post was the first time I really understood the “lose all privileges for 24 hours” thing. I can figure out how to do that with my 6 and 8 year olds, but the younger ones, I just can’t see it. Can you give me a visual please?
Should 3 year old lose privileges for 24 hours too? Read More »
“I have two boys ages 7 and 4. My 7yo has developed a couple problems: stealing and lying. I think that I/we have been making the problem worse in the way we have handled it. We also have a HUGE problem with not minding. He is a very stubborn child and will not help us when trying to come up with consequences for his actions. He says either, “I don’t know” or “give me a spanking” or something like that. Those are NOT working, he seems to get worse with each consequence.
“I just thought I would mention that our meetings often go over 20 minutes but my kids still look forward to them. They love picking the family activity, they like problem solving too.
“Do you have a way for your kids to earn money? Could you elaborate on that?”
There was a time when we paid our children an allowance of sorts. Each child had a calendar. Their consequence for a minor offense was an X on the day of the calendar. After 5 Xs in a day, they lost their privileges for the day. Each day they automatically earned 50 cents because they were part of our family. For each X they earned, 10 cents was subtracted from the day’s totals. Every Friday dad would come home with cash and the children would total their charts and report to dad fo
“I was just wondering, when trying to set up this type of family government for the first time, does it take several family meetings before you can actually implement it? You talk about how each meeting shouldn’t be longer than 20 minutes, but if I’m understanding properly, to begin we need to talk about a family vision, come up with a mission statement, teach everyone the four basic skills (and practice them), and create a family standard…all the things seem to build on each other, so it sounds like it would take longer than twenty minutes to go through all of it properly bef
“I first just want to thank you for the wonderful things you do. I attended the LDSEHE conference in Virginia in May and LOVED the classes I went to from you so much that I bought your CDs. Since then, I’ve listened to them over and over and over trying to en-grain it into my head and heart. My question to you is this: How do you start from scratch with a houseful of kids? I have 9 kiddos ages 12 to 9 mo. They are really good kids, but I’ve learned that I have done then a huge injustice by the way I’ve been parenting them. I am ready to change and increase the love and spi
Job jars are great, but what to put in them? How many chores can you really do around one house? Here’s a list of jobs you can use!
How does 24 hours loss of privilegeswork in your house? Let’s say a13 year old boydoesn’t want to get on board. Buthe shouldn’t be allowed to just hole up in his room away from the rest of the family!However, I have foundthat sending him to sit on his bed is the most effective thingthat can be done.
Consequences are so individual. I don’t expe
Using The Bedroom As A Consequence Read More »
“You mentioned you have touching rules for friends, family, and neighbors–do you mind sharing them?”
There are rules and boundaries for touching for different groups of people. Know what they are and make sure your kids know what they are too.
A reader wrote to me telling me about a young neighborhood child that introduced things of a sexual nature to her daughter. This is not a fun subject. I have been avoiding putting it on the site, but the more I think about it, this topic is probably one of the biggest things parents face. How do we keep our children free from the disease of sexual impurity that seems to be taking over our world? How do we make them aware while not taking away their innocence?
The Times We Live In Part 1 Read More »
A reader loves the chore chart we have for our children and wants to try it, but also wants to know if we have a chore chart for us, the adults.
Adult Chore Chart? Read More »
I have had a few requests for a copy of my chore chart. My system is very simple. Probably not revolutionary, but here it is. This chart is the one that my big children use. They switch chore lists each week.
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
Fathers: Parent or Playmate Part 1 Read More »
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?
When do you talk about “it”? Read More »
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.
Character Building Read More »
A blog reader wrote:
1 – We don’t have a “rule” or certain consequence set up for every behavior in the book (nor do we want so many specific rules!) So, I’m wondering if “just-plain-not-doing-what-you-know-you-should” (be kind, be respectful, be responsible, be honest, don’t hit, tease, talk back, etc.) would be considered “not following instructions”, and would it then be followed up with the usual – an extra job, followed by SODAS, then major maintenance, and 24 hours without privileges…? Or is it better to assign certain consequences to certain behaviors?
Certain Consequences For Certain Behaviors Read More »
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
What Does It Sound Like? Read More »