Using TSG Skills

family laughing

Way To Be: Optimism

“How do you maintain optimism in a depressing world? How do you teach your children to do the same?”

A Not-So-Pretend Story

[Another day of oatmeal for breakfast. I know it’s healthy, but some variety in our diet would be nice. When will the bills stop coming in? Medical bills, living expenses, debts we can’t pay. Don’t think about the money.

“Mom, can we go to the children’s museum? Mom, will you buy me a treat?”

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Teaching Children Respect: 2 Videos of Disagreeing Appropriately

These videosof two cute children were sent to me by another amazing parent who has taught her children to love practicing good behaviors. The more children practice the right way, the more the right way will happen when it isn’t practice time. The second video is of a girl who used to have major tantrums all the time.


Smart Five Year Old! And, cute Tiger!!!


[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcOjbEiRiOU]

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Video: Two Year Old, Sam, Teaches The Four Basic Skills

Read about this amazing video on the next page! [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEV-1UcyooQ&feature=player_embedded] Last week I asked for you to send me copies of some of the things you have done to implement Self-Government into your homes. The things I recieved were amazing! I can't wait until they are all available to you. In the mean time, take

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video game boy

Video Games Addiction: They Are Asking for Help

“How do you parent a child who is red/yellow when you are a white/blue? My son and I are so entirely different and he’s so impulsive (almost destructive) that it completely shakes my world. I often find him sneaking downstairs and turning on the Wii (which we only permit on Friday and Saturday as a privilege).

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angry little boy

Lying, Stealing, and Negative Attention Seeking


10 Years Old And Needs Calmness



“I love your book. In many ways, your book has helped our family. I am faced with a situation that I don’t know what to do about….My son is 10 years old and we have had him since he was a couple of days old. From a very young age he was incredibly difficult to deal with. He constantly seeks our attention. He steals, lies, destroys property, etc. We have alarms on all food and expensive items. He loses 24 hours of privileges at least once a week, often more than that. We were excited one week when he made it 5 days in a row without losing 24 hours. I have really given several parenting books/programs extremely good efforts to no avail. BCLC was the first time we saw hope but I found that he really needed consequences. We’ve been doing your program for a bit and while we are seeing some things really change, others are not changing. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we do the same thing over and over, he still thinks a different outcome will happen.”


Trust In The Process

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Child Hitting

Practicing The Right Way: Cause And Effect Parenting For Toddlers Who Hit And Others

Cause and effect is learned more effectively when the consequences, positive and negative, are practiced first. The example below is geared toward a parent with a toddler, but the principles can be applied to all ages and situations which need to be practiced and understood more.

“My two year old daughter likes to hit. She hits me, she hits my husband and she even hit’s the baby. No matter what I do nothing seems to work. Reasoning doesn’t really work with a two year old, so I am at a loss for what to do about this. I know I need to do something.”

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mother reading to child

Parenting Three Year Olds: They Really Understand

Many people ask me when they should start teaching their children self government skills.  It is never too early to start talking in a deliberate, describing way or to teach the word “okay.”  Even the words “disagree appropriately” can be understood by most youngsters. My little almost 3 year old just asked if she could

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Teenage Attitude Problems

This last week my twelve year old daughter had an attitude problem a number of times in one day. This is very unusual for her and definitely had me analyzing her and the day. She earned negative consequences many times and we had talks about the situations and practiced how she could have handled them better. I really focused on seeking to understand. At one point, after she was calmed down I initiated a conversation to discuss her possible need for more sleep. During this conversation she said, “I just feel like no one really understands. I bet you hav

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Real Control! -Help For Parents

So many people ask me how to control their out of control children… A man I really admire named Jeffrey Holland said, “…the only real control in life is self control.” I couldn’t agree more. You can control the settings on your computer, and control the television choices that come into your home. You can control all the things on your Family Standard and you can control what your family eats for dinner, but you can’t control another person. No matter how hard you try and how much power you try to look like you have, the only person you can control is yourself. Since that is the case, we should capitalize on that power we have to control ourselves, or govern ourselves. If we

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Teaching Honesty: What About Gray Area?

“Just wondering what you do when a child denies doing something like this even though you know it was them or else they try to deceive you about it even though they know that no punishment will be given out for their mistake or wrongdoing if they are honest about it. How do you confront them and have them face up to their failures and take responsibility for their actions? My ds10 will get defensive whenever he does something wrong or makes a mistake he then will usually compound this by trying to lie or deceive his way out of it to save face. We end up punishing him for the lying and deceit when really it should have be a non issue if he had just been honest.””Any suggestions?”

There are three steps to handling this situation.

Step one; Make sure you are not accusing, but that you look and feel safe to talk to. 

Step two: Pre-teach the situation before you say anything………….”Right now _________ just happened. I am going to ask you about your actions. If you choose to be honest about your actions you will not earn any negative consequences. (or you could have a positive consequence in place for being honest) However, if you are not honest then you will choose to earn

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Negative Consequence Rutt: Parenting Tips

“My two oldest boys, ages 8 and 7 are really giving me a run………..I know that if I stay strong, it will all pay off.
We have a family mission statement, we have a job jar, we have been roll playing. They know what our “standards” are.
My 7 year old has had discipline “issues” for 1 and 1/2 weeks consistently every morning during “school time”. He gets so frustrated with me when I calmly let him know that he earned another “consequence” I make sure and tell him that I love him and I wish that he could join us for privileged free time. He assures me that he will try harder but the same things keep happening over and over. He is 7 and very wiggly and dreamy, and distracted. He even has been swearing which is NOT our family standard! I try to explain to him that if he has good control over his body and mouth during school time, he will earn privileges, but he just doesn’t learn…………Any tips?”

It sounds like you are doing pretty well at creating an environment for self-government in your home.

I hope your son is doing better now. If not read pages 66-69 in my book Parenting A House United. I am guessing you have it. This section goes over motivation for children who get themselves in a rutt.

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Depressed Teenager: Hope For Happiness

I have attended your classes at home school conferences and bought the mp3;s.  I am currently purchasing your book, however, I am in crisis.  I have a 17 rd old son that has  been homeschooled since fourth grade.  We originally took him out due to severe depression.  This is something he struggles with.  He has always done well in school.  He went to the public high school for his freshman year.  He was top of the class academically but he hated every minute of it and we allowed him to come back to home school for the past two years.  

About six months ago I could see that he was clinically depressed and we found a counselor to help us through that.  It turns out he was introduced to pornography at school and became addicted and the guilt has caused him to lose about a year of his life.  We are dealing with this issue and he is doing very well and continues to receive counseling with us.  

The crisis is that he cant make a decision about anything in his life and he seems to have no self control.  He wants us to tell him every little thing to do and takes no responsibility.  He takes 8 hours to do simple science due to the fact that if I walk out of his earshot he will immediately waste time doing anything else.  It is so frustrating that we have to literally babysit him and that he needs us to.  I am at my wits end with him and feel like throwing in the towel and sending him to boarding school.  Of course, my rational mind knows that I must clean up this mess with him and no one else.  
Can you please give me some direction on how to get this kid to take back his life and not put us in  the position of jailers.

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“Mom is on the phone” ~Discipline Problem

 

“I do struggle and maybe you could give me some advice.  I spend quite a bit of time with my kids in the morning going over little activities like school workbooks and story time and exercising together.  Yet the minute I get on the phone or sit down to nurse the baby, the three boys are arguing or fighting or taking toys from each other or something of the sort.  I have tried to get them to color or do a certain activity together, but that only lasts so long.  It’s hard to discipline when you are nursing the baby.
 
        I know I have a bit of post-pardom and always feel like I am always nursing the baby or disciplining my children.  I have felt discouraged with my 3 boys behavior and realize some of their actions comes from mom spending so much time with the new little one.  Do you have any tips or suggestions for me on how to best help teach my boys and solve the problems.”

 

 

J You hit a common discipline problem right on the head.  I would like to meet a mother who can have a 30 minute phone conversation and not have things fall apart a little bit.  My one hopeful thought to you is that as they grow, they learn to live without you for 30 minutes, or more.  😉

Nursing a baby is also a hard one.  I have been there too. 

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The Dreaded Attitude Problem

As I go around the country teaching parenting seminars and trying to help parents make healthy changes in their family relationships, I notice there are two things which get asked the most.

1.  What do you do for attitude problems?

2.  How do you stop tantrums? 

      I an not going to expound on tantrums today, but I will say that attitude problems are just tantrums at a different level.  The difference between the two are that tantrums usually happen when a person is small and they often include uncontrolled body movements and crying, and attitude problems are usually mostly verbal with abrasive body language.  Attitude problems are usually more controlled than tantrums.  Both tantrums and attitude problems are signs of frustration, anxiety and lack of healthy communication skills.

     I am pretty confident talking about attitude problems, because I was the attitude problem queen of my house when I was in my teen years.  I think my poor parents earned all their gray hairs during my attitude problem years.  Luckily, I had a very insightful young women’s leader who saw my problem and wasn’t afraid to tell me how to change.  

Great Advice

     One day I was at her home telling her daughter that my parents wouldn’t let me go to a youth party because they

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