You know about setting warm limits: Moving in calmly when you need to stop a behavior, but what happens when it feels like there is no chance to keep calm? Like, your child is about to stick their finger in the power socket. Or dashes out across a busy street. Then how do you set
Have you ever felt bound by the need to be consistent in your parenting, and then felt the failure when you couldn’t be? We’re often told that when we are consistent around schedules, eating, playing, tidying, sleeping, then all will run smooth. Yet, so often that isn’t what we see. And that can feel mighty
We’ve all read the stats. Eating dinner together with our children helps with everything from language skills and emotional resilience, to avoiding drink, drugs and obesity, and scoring better grades in school later on. So we juggle our schedules, shop with care, turn off the TV and take a break from chores. We try really
No doesn’t have to be yelled or sound mean to be effective. Try these 17 kind ways to say no that kids do actually listen to.
By Andrea McCracken As the school year has got started my daughter has gotten more and more social, and wants to play with her friends often after school. One day at a friend’s house they had played, had ice cream and done more activities than would typically happen at our house. She was enjoying her
Your son has been acting out all day. First he grabbed his friend’s toy truck at a playdate and refused to play nicely. He threw it across the room when you asked him to return it. Then when you got home he ate just two bites of a sandwich, turned his plate upside down
“This afternoon I could tell that my four-year-old was going off track. His behavior was erratic, and he couldn’t seem to settle. I didn’t exactly see what happened, but I heard my seventeen-month-old daughter crying. I walked over and my son said, “She just fell,” which he has been saying sometimes when he hurts her.
We were at an impasse for at least 10 minutes. We tried to wait patiently for her to be ready to leave, but she refused to buckle her car seat and physically prevented us from helping her. Finally, after at least 10 minutes, she allowed me to help her. She was tired and angry and the look in her eyes said, “Help me. I’m in here somewhere and I can’t find myself.”
We started setting limits with cartoons about two years ago. My son would ask for just one more cartoon, and I would stand my ground and simply tell him, “Not now,” or, “You can watch some more tomorrow—but not now.”
My 7-year-old daughter, M, returned home from trick-or-treating this Halloween with a bag of candy that weighed at least 5 pounds. In past years, she would eat a few pieces of candy Halloween night, we would put the bag up away from the dogs, and then she could choose a piece each night after dinner. She would forget it was there after a couple of nights, and then we’d bring the rest into work for the office candy bowl. It didn’t quite work that way this year though.
I was feeling tight and cranky in my parenting. I knew I needed to think about setting limits on screen time, and my impulse was to grab the iPad out of my son’s hands and stomp on it. I was not thinking well!!