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.