This Blog Is For Women

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nateone

My end goal for parenting is to have happy, independent, helpful, productive adults.  And I’m pretty sure the way to achieve that is by having happy, independent, helpful, productive children.

I don’t mean full blown adult versions of these attributes.  I mean the appropriate child-age versions of them.  So, this means that I begin to look for opportunities to expose my children to opportunities to learn these types of attributes. Read the rest of this entry →

I didn’t have a fancy gadget like this for potty training. But, I’m sure this would do the trick for any child old enough to pull the cord!

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy:

• Eye Contact
• Love and Rules
• The Importance of the Couple Bond
• What are you Paying For?  Allowances for Young Children
• How Much Help?
• Three Piggy Banks

photo credit: flickr

If you don’t believe in your authority who will?  Children are quick to pick up on fear, inconsistency and uncertainty.  It’s like they can smell it.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  They can’t.

So my advice is “fake it until you make it.”  Be firm.  Be loving, but be firm.  Don’t let their cute, sad little faces cause you to bend the rules.  Don’t allow whining and tantrums to weaken your resolve.

You are the parent.  That’s right – You.  You make the rules and it’s up to you to be sure that they are adhered to.

I bet some people don’t even realize that they don’t believe in their own authority.  They just think that people don’t take them seriously, or don’t listen to them.  Or worse, that they have bad children.  shudder

The fact is that we teach people how to treat us.  If we allow our children to disrespect our rules, then we have allowed them to dilute our authority.  We have taught them that we are not serious about laying down rules.  We have shown them that we don’t believe in our own authority.

I imagine that all of this came to be during the time that we were in school.    Something changed in society.  Children were given more freedom and adults less. So, in the end we have parents acting like children and children who are out of control (literally:  No one is controlling them.)

I urge you, as the next generation of adults and parents, to take your role in teaching discipline very seriously.  Teach it by example as self-discipline.  Teach it by direction as rules and consequences.  If you don’t…who will?

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Love and Rules.  or Counting or The Time Out Space

C is for cookie, it’s good enough for me and it was good enough for cookie monster.  But it wasn’t good enough for Lee Iacoca.

I recently came across a piece written in 2007 about the nine C’s of leadership.  It’s called Where Have All the Leaders Gone? And I couldn’t agree more with the message.

www.flickr.com/photos/andresrueda

The nine C’s:

• Curiosity:  so they are learning and becoming smarter, to be better able to lead.
• Creative: so they can manage change and be flexible.
• Communicative: so they can say it like it is.
• Character: so they can lead by example.
• Conviction:  so they can steer the crew.
• Charisma: so the followers will be willing.
• Competent: so they can fulfil their purpose.
• Crisis: they have to be the coolest head in a crisis so that their leadership can be effective.

The Read Aloud Handbook

There’s nothing like snuggling up together to enjoy a good book.  The trouble is that sometimes it’s hard to choose a good book to snuggle up with!

My go-to source  for selecting new family read-alouds is Jim Trelease’s The Read Aloud Handbook.  This book is chock full of reading suggestions for all ages and interests.  We’ve discovered many gems within its pages, some of which we’ve read  multiple times.

Books to be shared out loud need to have a certain literary value to be enjoyable.  Sure, you can read The Diary of a Wimpy Kid out loud.  But, it’s  much more fun to read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen or The Trumpet of the Swan  by E.B.White or the Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary.

Pick up a copy of this book and you’re sure to find many, many hours of  family reading pleasure ahead of you.