Do something fun with your children

My children and I like going for bush walks. It's fun to walk around the bush looking at plants and flowers and burnt tree trunks and interesting looking tree branches.

My children look for caterpillars, lizards, scorpions, ekidnas, rabbits. Always hoping to find something curious on our travels. I love seeing them happy and excited when they discover something and call me over to see.

You may not have lots of spare time in your busy schedule yet it's important to spend time with your children doing something fun that they enjoy. Watch them as they have fun, notice their happy faces, notice how excited they are to see, do, learn and explore. Even as they get close to and during their teen years keep that wonder and joy alive in your children by fostering the fun things in life.

You could play at the park, feed ducks (veges not bread), read to them, go bush walking, collect rocks, leaves, sticks, go to the country (with NO electronics), bake or cook, camping, the beach. Even if it's only once a month or every couple of months. Take the time to drop everything and spend time being present with your children.

Don't be lazy or neglectful.  Be an active parent and part of your children's lives.

It's not a debate

Parenting is NOT a debate. It's not you running for presidency and having to face your opponent (your child) and have a debate to prove who is the better candidate. 

Within reason YOU are the boss of your household, not your children. I say within reason because you don't want to be so strict or bossy that your children resent you, you don't want to be like the lady from the movie American Crime. You don't want to be an asshole or a bitch.

At the same time you need to be the driving force behind the direction you want your children to take.

Birds and bees

Some parents dread the birds and bees talk. It freaks them out so much they can't and don't have that talk with their children.

Trouble with that is their children will turn to their peers to find stuff out and that could be bad, and in most cases is.

Or worse they turn to magazines and pornography. The amount of children and teens viewing pornography these days is growing and is huge compared to how many viewed it years ago. Hoards of children and teens are learning about sex this way and as a parent, seriously, this is NOT how you want your child to learn about the birds and bees.

Find your child's bargaining tool

What I mean by bargaining tool is that one thing your child can't live without. It could be food, it could be their mobile phone, their Xbox or PlayStation, pocket money, a teddy, a blanket or other toys. When I say food I don't mean starving your child to death, we all can't live without food. What I mean is some children put more importance on food than others and this can be used as a bargaining tool.

It can take a while to find your child's bargaining tool so be on the look out from the age of 2-3 on wards. Knowing what it is comes in handy when dealing with terrible twos. Keep in mind their bargaining tool will change as they get older.

Why is knowing their bargaining tool so important? You use this tool to help discipline your children, to get them doing what you want them to do.

Make a craft box for your children

Children love making things, they love getting dirty and creating a mess as well as creating a master piece.

We each have our own tolerance level about what crafty things we like our children to do or have. For example some people don't mind letting their children paint freely on paper while sitting at the kitchen bench, others don't mind their children getting out the glitter and glue and pencils, spreading out on the floor and creating a fun mess, some people don't mind their children getting out the play dough and making things.

What ever your tolerance level is (the mess you don't mind your children making) put a bunch of crafty things together in a box and let this be your children's activity box. It could have pencils and colouring books, glitter and glue, play dough, paint, crayons. It could have foam balls and ripped up bits of newspaper, stickers, leaves and glue. It could have coloured sand, stones, rocks, leaves...

How ever you feel about crafty messes (some people have little patience for mess, especially if children forget to put things away or accidentally damage something), it is good to let children play and create and have fun.  It can also be a fun thing for mum and dad to join in on as well. If mess inside bothers you let your children create outside.

Understand your tolerance level and create a craft box that is suitable to the things you don't mind your children playing with and creating.

Repair broken relationships - before it's too late

To recap on the strained relationship I had with one of my children, they were my partner's favourite and a little monster because my partner took the child's side over everyone else. My child had a major attitude problem towards me (and others) because they thought they ruled the house. For example the only person they would let hold them was my partner, if I or our other children tried to hold them, they would whack at us, struggle and cry. Then my partner would come along and molly coddle them and all would be well, except that it reinforced my child's own importance and my partner's importance, while showing that the rest of the family were irrelevant.

 

As my child grew, since I was bad cop, the one always saying no to him, they would challenge me physically and verbally. They'd tell me I'm not the boss then we'd have scuffles followed by all mighty tantrums because they weren't winning and the other parent wasn't around to back the up. In short they were hard work.

Good times... not!

Find something in common

If you've ever watched the Super Nanny you will know that she talks to parents about spending quality time with each of your children one on one. This is probably easier if you only have one child. If you have more than one, or lots, trying to find time to spend with each of them is going to be a juggling act.

Super Nanny might disagree with me here, but I cheat a little when it comes to spending quality time with my children.  I find activities I like to do and see if my children enjoy them too. There is no point in your child wanting you to go on the wizzy dizzy with them all the time when you hate the wizzy dizzy for example. It works better, as in you're more likely to keep it up, if you both enjoy the activity. Yes?

I recommend finding something you have in common with each of your children. Each child has a different personality and enjoys different things. Maybe you have one child who would like to paint nails with you, or draw with you, colour in with you, go out for coffee and cake, ride together, take art classes, go bush walking, feed the local ducks handfuls of peas... you get the idea.

My children like dancing and singing and listening to music and spending time in the garden, they like going to the beach and building sand castles. I enjoy those things too. They also like building Lego and playing flying games and cars, not something I enjoy participating in therefore I don't do that with them.

Watch your children play, pay attention to what they enjoy and work out the things you also enjoy and could do with them. Then spend at least 30 mins each week doing one of those things with your child, having quality one on one time with each of them.

The word game

I invented a game to play with my children the other day with some really good results.

The objective of the game is to come up with words relating to sounds people make that are either good to hear or bad to hear. I asked my children to help me come up with words related to good and bad sounds and as they called out the words I wrote them down.

GOOD sounds to hear

happy, talking, eating / enjoying food, humor, laughter, creativity, playing games, manners, getting along, being nice to each other

BAD sounds to hear

whining, arguing, bossy, yelling, rude, inappropriate things, silly, nagging, pleading, fighting, sniffing

Words that are both good and bad like crying didn't go on either list. Crying isn't a bad noise to hear in that it's normal to cry, feel sad, overwhelmed, frustrated. Though crying can be bad if the child is crying to manipulate a parent. Even feeling angry is normal, it's just how we deal with that anger that is either good or bad.

This list can be added to every so often so the game can be continued when ever we think of new words to add to our list.

How this game turned out to have good results is when my children or I made one of those annoying sounds I got to ask if that sound was on the good or bad list? One child was whining for example and when questioned about that sound he said it's bad and stopped. Now we have some direction and control over the sounds we like to hear from each other.

You can write the words on a poster and hang it where everyone sees it and when a BAD sound is made you can point to the list.

Your bad upbringing

Just because you can have children doesn't mean you should. The fact is not everyone is going to be a good parent.

There are those who can and do escape their bad upbringing and do a better job with their own children. Sadly there are those that don't and it's to those people I suggest you think before you have children and pass on your family legacy.

Get to know your children

As parents it's crucial to know who your children are, how they tick, what they enjoy, what they like about themselves and their lives and what issues concern them.

Again in days of old parents would hardly talk to their children let alone take any time to get to know who their children were, and children didn't know their parents either. They'd spend all this time together under the one roof only to grow up not actually knowing each other. How sad.

A story comes to mind from Oprah. She was interviewing the neglectful mother of a boy who had committed suicide at age 13 to escape the severe bullying he was experiencing at school. This young boy was bullied daily, tormented for being baldy dressed, smelly, malnourished and unappealing. Turns out his mother was so neglectful this boy went to school in soiled dirty clothes, smelling of urine if he'd wet the bed the night before, no lunch, unkempt, unshowered.

I'm not your entertainment

In days of old parents spent so little time with children, especially dads, that children often grew up not knowing their parents or having spent any quality time with them. Turns out this had detrimental affects on children who felt unloved and neglected and often had poor relationships with their parents as adults. Only to continue the cycle - think Cat's In The Cradle.

These days we've got more pressure to be super parents, perfect at everything. We have to spend just the right amount of time with our children or else we're failing as parents and the time we're expected to spend with our children seems to be a fair whack each day.

I'm all for doing something fun with my children. At the same time it's not my job, or yours, to entertain them or be their friend. By friend I mean someone they hang out with an awful lot.

If your child is bad it's YOUR fault

Often I'll meet parents who complain about their children, including their adult children. Talking about how bad that person is, how bad they've turned out, all the bad things they're doing, the mistakes, how they hurt people. And it makes me want to go through these people like a dose of salts because If your child is BAD it's YOUR fault! You raised that child. You made that child who it is.

You reap what you sew. Your child is your creation. They are born a blank canvas that YOU write upon!!!!! Did I mention YOU!

I'll often hear parents saying things like: my child never comes to visit me, my child never gives me gifts, my child is unloving, my child is naughty, my child won't do as he's told, my child hates me, my child has no relationship with me, my child is rude, my child is selfish, they don't hug me or show affection blah blah blah...

The great smacking debate… still!

Let me tell you a little story about smacking.

My then 3 year old used to love taking the gas knobs off the stove top.  They would take them off and hide them and think it was funny when I had to go searching for them.  After a while they began turning the gas on before removing the knobs.  I dare say this was accidental on their part at first.  They had no idea about gas and what was releasing it into the house.  Though once my child realised it bothered me (aka got my attention) they did it all the more - as 3 year olds do.

I talked with child about leaving the knobs alone, not touching the knobs, the danger of touching the knobs (which they couldn’t comprehend).  I then started punishing my child for touching and removing the gas knobs with time out and banishing toys.  I removed the gas knobs myself so they couldn’t be turned on or removed.  My child still managed to turn the gas on via the metal stubs that stuck out.  This gas knob thing went on for ages with my child winning each round.  The more they knew about how annoying I found it the more they seemed to enjoy my panic and concern.  Or rather the ‘attention’ they got from doing it.

Develop individual bedtime routines

When I tuck my children in they each have their own individual good night routines. Something special and unique we've made up together that leaves them feeling loved and treasured.

For me it's always been important to have that special time before sleep to show my children I love them and care about them. Especially since some days our time together is scarce AND they grow up so quick.

At bedtime we get to have some quiet quality time together even if it's just a few minutes of what was the favourite part of your day.

My first child is "I love you more than..." and we'd have to each come up with an ending i.e. more than all the stars in the sky, more than all the freckles on my body etc.

My second child is a series of kisses like one of those really cool hand shakes people do only it's different kisses, butterfly, Eskimo etc.

With the third child it's big squeezey hugs and raspberry kisses.

Even my partner has joined the fun and invented unique bedtime hugs and kisses routines for them and they love it!

It's a nice little way to make them feel important and valued and a lovely way to end the day with them.

What do you do for your children's bedtime routine?