3 Parenting Tips

Happy Friday! It is time for fellow bloggers that want to participate to blog three parenting tips or things that work for them.

Sharing their wisdom are the following awesome moms: (Click on their name to visit their blog)
Heather
Amy Fabu
Laurel did one last week that included book suggestions and all here and also posted this today! Laurel has 13 children and she seriously rocks in my book! :-)
Anita PS- Anita is also doing an awesome Feed the Starving Children Project and can use your help!
Chalene
Renee- awesome mom to 11! :-)

Before I start mine, I want to congratulate the Jags on passing court and adding two more beautiful children from Ghana to their family today. See pictures of them here.

For my three tips, I just chose three things that have come up lately. My first one is the one that gave me this idea in the first place as I shared it with a psychologist from my school district and she liked it.

1. Intrinsic Motivation
I think with kids we tend to give a lot of external motivators to reward them for a job well done or we focus too much on how we feel about what they did. I really try to have the focus be on recognizing how they feel when they do a good job. When they do something good or have an accomplishment, I always start by saying exactly what they did (not just that they were good but what they did that was good), ask them how they feel or if they are younger, I will say "do you feel so happy with yourself"
I will also state that I am proud of them but it is not the focus. I start and end what I am saying with their feelings about what they did- not mine. I am hoping that this carries over and helps them to want to do and be good because it makes them feel good about themselves.

2. Problem Solving
I got my ideas here from Love and Logic. I used some of their materials for a class on fostering independence in students with disabilities. The focus of the problem solving is to have the child solve the problem themselves whenever possible. In order to do this you have the following steps when your child presents a problem.
1. Empathic statement letting them know you are acknowledging them and that you care: What a bummer, How sad, I bet that hurt, etc
2. Send a power message letting them know that this is their problem and they can address it: What do you think you will do?
3. If they don't know what to do, you can give them ideas by saying, "Do you want to hear what other kids have tried?" and then give some suggestions both good and bad. It is important to include things that are not how you would solve it so they can evaluate those options and see why they won't work. Love and logic tells you to start with the less desirable ones but depending on the kid and situation, I don't always do that.
4. Each time you give an idea, you ask the child "How will that work?" and have them think about the consequences of doing that solution
5. Give permission for the child to either solve or not solve the problem: "Good luck, I hope it works out"

Then at this point, you let it go. You then check back later to see how it went or I sometimes just wait for them to tell me. If it is still a problem- they come back to me but if it was no big deal and they work it out, they often just move on.

Prior to doing this, I found that I was more involved than I needed to be in every problem that went on with my kids. I have done this problem solving method many times and it is fun to see the kids work out their own problems if they decide to. Sometimes Kman has decided to just let something go. He doen't always choose the solution that I would pick but that is alright too.

My best example of this was when he was having trouble with a kid on the playground that bossed him around and was aggressive. I think a lot of moms would have called the teacher or school or sent in a note at this point. After talking it through and giving ideas, I turned the problem back to him and then waited to see what happened. A few days later, he was so excited to tell me that he put that kids name and his name in the "Bully Box" so that they would have to sit and work it out with the school social worker. Eventually they did and Kman came up with some stragies and ideas during this process that will definitely help if it comes up again.

It is one of my pet peeves when parents get way too involved in every tiny situation that comes up as it often makes things worse. I saw it happen so many times when I was a teacher. It is refreshing to try this first and see if the kids can work through the problem on their own and only intervening when it doesn't work form them or the situation calls for it.

3. Spending quality time alone with each child
TR and I are really good at getting alone time in with each child. If one of us is going somewhere, we often split them up and take one or two with us instead of all or none of them. Even if we are just running an errand to Home Depot, it is fine. We can always add in a trip to Sonic for a drink if we want but the focus is on giving time and one on one attention to that child while we are running the errand.
We also have to make sure to get in the child that is not demanding as much attention. Selina needs attention because she is two and is our little newbie, Cater needs attention because she is five and is just a child that really needs that one on one time. Kman is pretty easy right now and does not require as much attention so we have to make sure that we are giving him that time alone with each of us.
I think this helped with the transition of bringing Selina home more than anything else. Cater had an especially hard time with me being gone and then coming home with a new sister that was to share her room. She had a lot of bottled up feelings and fears about this that it took her weeks to get through. In those weeks she acted out verbally and physically, it was a challenging time for all of us.
One of our best conversations about this was when just the two of us went out somewhere. We were chatting in the car and all of a sudden, out of the blue she said, "Mom when you were gone in Africa, I was scared. I did not know when you were coming back and where you were. I missed you so bad that I cried a lot of times. I wanted you to come home." It was a wonderful opportunity for us to talk about this and process it. This exchange only came after weeks of us working with her and giving her attention and helping her to see that she is still important and loved and that we have enough love in our hearts for everyone. It wasn't until she understood that, that she was able to reflect on her feelings about how that time was so hard for her. Being alone with her off somewhere without anyone else, gave her the opportunity to share that.


These are just a few things we do. I know they have love and logic parenting classes in my area and I want to go to one. I have read many of their articles online here and I tend to agree with their philosophy and approaches more often than not. I am always on the lookout for more ideas and information because we all know parenting is something we always are having to go back to the drawing board to come up with new ideas, strategies and approaches as have more children and they grow!!

If you are a blogger and want to share your ideas, just do your blog post with your tips and link to this post. Make sure I know you did it and then I will link to everyone that does it.

To those that contributed ideas, thanks for playing. You added some excitement to my weekend and have taught me something new in the process!