Posts Tagged ‘helping kids wait’

• Do You Discipline on Auto-Pilot? (revised)

  Date: 2011.05.31 | Category: Parenting | Response: 14

  Auto-pilot may be a great tool when you’re flying a plane.  Just flip the switch, sit back and relax, and let the computer take you where it’s been pre-programmed to go.  Pretty great.

  But I’ve found that auto-pilot is not so great when I’m disciplining my children.  It can fly me straight into whatever dark and stormy cloudbank is looming, meaning my kids and I are all in for a bumpy ride.  So instead, I’m always working on DECIDING how I want to interact with my kids when I discipline them.

  For example, let’s talk about consequences.  For most parents, when we need to discipline our kids, the first question we ask ourselves is, “What consequence should I give?”  That’s our auto-pilot.  But through my years of parenting, I’ve begun to significantly re-think my use of consequences.

  My four-year-old, for instance, hit me the other day.  He was angry because I told him I needed to finish an email before I could play legos with him, and he came up and slapped me on the back.  (I’m always surprised that a person that small can inflict so much pain.)

  My immediate, auto-pilot reaction was to want to grab him, probably harder than I needed to, and Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Fairness: A Parenting Tip

  Date: 2010.07.26 | Category: Parenting | Response: 13

  “That’s not fair!”  How often do you hear it?  If your kids are anything like mine, you hear it a lot.

  One day I got sick of telling them that “Life isn’t fair.”  It didn’t seem to be registering.  So instead, we started to tell our kids that in our family, fair does not mean equal.  If one of us has to get a shot, we don’t ALL get shots.  Only the person who NEEDS the shot gets it.

  The underlying principle is that everyone in the family will get what they need, and that needs are different from wants.  So when one of them needs new shoes, and the other one wants new shoes, Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Teaching Kids to Wait

  Date: 2010.05.15 | Category: Parenting | Response: 16

  I heard Harvey Karp speak this week. You may know his books The Happiest Baby on the Block and The Happiest Toddler on the Block. I wholeheartedly endorse his baby book and the techniques in it. It’s one of the 3 books I always recommend to expectant parents. But I have some questions, doubts, and concerns about the toddler methods. I’ll talk more about that another day, when my brain is working better. It’s been a long day.

  For now, I want to tell you about a great idea he talked about that I don’t think is in his books. He said that the way most parents teach children to wait isn’t very effective. Read the rest of this entry »