“Time’s up. Turn off your iPad,” I yell from the kitchen to another part of the house. “What, Mom?” my son yells back. “No more Minecraft!” I yell a little louder. “WHAT?” I am agitated now. He must be ignoring me. At full-throttle volume: “TURN IT OFF!” Has this ever happened to you? Daily, maybe? One of the biggest changes we made as a
My mother’s death is still so recent – maybe that’s why it’s easier to talk about Zed’s grief instead of my own. He had one small previous experience with death (unless you count rural Grass Valley road kill). Our dog of many years, Ziggy, died when he was two. Fueled by pictures and our stories, he will sometimes use these memories to access a
In my son’s classroom, the teacher praised a child’s roundly perfect cursive o’s. “Good job, Sienna.” At Little League, the coach told the boy who caught the ball, “Good job, Timothy.” Today, I heard “Good job” at the grocery store when the girl stopped throwing her Cheerios, on the playground when a boy hit the wall with the ball instead of his sister, and
If the child cries for what they want, the answer is always “No.” Always? Yep. Consistency is key with this tool. If you’ve ever found yourself giving into a demand made by your child just to stop the crying, this is a good one. We instilled this practice early on in our parenting and we avoided so many of those kinds of struggles with
The Power of Three is a great parenting tool any time you want your child to understand an expectation or new experience. It’s three simple steps involving REPETITION. 1. Tell or show your child the behavior that you expect in a situation the night before or that morning. Use as few words as possible. 2. Tell or show them again a few hours or
Parents, Grandparents, Educators, Friends of Parents, and anyone who interacts with children: Welcome to a site devoted to distilling massive amounts of parenting information into nuggets of gold. All with the intent of helping parents get into and stay in their parenting groove. You can start using what you learn here right away. And parenting will become easier, more enjoyable, and even more of
