Spring is in the air

The sun is shining brightly this morning. We are all tired of winter weather, hats, coats, gloves, and messing footprints on the floor. We yearn to open the windows wide and let in the fresh air. Seasonal changes is one reason I like living in the mid-west. When I get weary of one set of challenges that comes with monotonous weather--it will change.

Parenting tip of the day:

How much "praise" is too much?

Here are some of my thoughts on "praising" your child:

• Make praise genuine and appropriate. Flowery, "over the top" praise sounds insincere even to a 3 year old after a while.
• Use language that is meaningful and that fits the situation--not everything that your child does is "great" or "fantastic"--face it, eating lunch or putting toys away is what is expected--not "fabulous" or "terrific"--soon these "over used" words will loose all meaning--and most importantly--they will loose their effectiveness.
• Consider using a phrase such as this: You eat your breakfast now you have lots of energy to play--so let's clean up and you can play with your trains now."
• Should we be "conditioning" our children to "need" or "want" praise for every little thing he/she does all day.
• Praise as much as you can maintain--we all get weary of saying the same thing--children get weary of hearing the same thing over and over--therefore it looses effectiveness. Saying "great job" 45 times a day may make that phrase somewhat useless.
• Use statements of fact such as, "You put the blocks in the basket they look nice and neat." give a smile and that's all.
• None verbal positive interaction with your child is a powerful tool. I worked with a school psychologist that suggested a goal of 10 positive interactions for every one request that required cooperation. The positive interactions could be very simple, such as a touch on the back or head--a thumbs up sign, eye contact and a smile, lots of nonverbal positive interaction make our words mean more when we do use them--and not "over use" them.

I hope some of these "tips" make sense and are useful parenting tools. Good parenting is a wonderful gift we give to our children and to society--it really is, "the most important job" you will ever have.

Have a wonderful day--think good thoughts!

MissT

Hello--I have been absent for quite some time. I am back and want to make a change. I hope that any readers I have will find this change to be positive.

I would like to focus on child rearing, positive forms of discipline, and general parenting advice. I will continue to put inspirational bits and pieces into the blog. But I am finding a lot of young parents that really want practical parenting advice and I feel that I can give some valuable tips to parent, grandparents, caregivers, preschool teachers, etc...

I will take questions from readers and attempt to research and answer specific questions. Until I get some questions I will be posing questions or situations myself and attempt to address a concern that I have observed. I am hoping to get a lot of feed back from readers.

The first situation I would like to address is:

"What do I do when my 3 year old child screams in the house?"

My advice to parents or caregivers of a 3 or 4 year old child that screams a indoors would be the following:

• first and foremost--model the behavior you want--check yourself and your family members--are you using your "indoor voice"?
• next, calmly remind the child to use an indoor voice--model the behavior and try to get the child to imitate you
• the next time the child screams, gently but firmly take the child by the hand--take him/her to the nearest outside door--go outside and ask the child to "make that noise again"
• say, "good, that is an outdoor noise, please do it again"--continue this until it is not so much fun any more--at least 5 or 6 times
• then return indoors and say, "We use an inside voice when we are inside the house and an outdoor voice when we are outside the house"
• repeat each time the child screams--the outdoor experience does not need to be like a punishment--but it is not meant to be "recess" time either--it is just a way of emphasising to the child that you need the loud voice to be used outside only

This usually works very well--especially if it is a bit cold outside and the child is missing out of something he/she wants to do inside. Give this a try and let me know if it works for you.