Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Parent Sharing-Episode 2-Traveling

Check out our second regular episode of Parent Sharing (available on iTunes or through the player to the right of this post).  In this episode we talk about traveling with children (with as few tears as possible).  Whether your traveling by plane, train, or automobile, a little pre-planning can help make your trip a whole lot better. 

As always, you can get in touch with us here at this blog, through our e-mail ParentSharing@aol.com, or on Facebook at Parent Sharing.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

New Mini-Episode

Check out our latest mini-episode.  We take a couple of minutes to get to know one of your hosts, Kathy.  We'll get to Christina in a future mini-sode, and also be updating with a full episode in the next couple of days, so stay tuned! 

You can subscribe to us on iTunes, check out our Facebook page (Parent Sharing), or listen to the podcast on the player to the right of this post.

Traveling Without Tears (or at least as few as possible)

It's that time of the year again, families taking vacations. Whether you have small children, teens, or even adults.  Whether you are traveling by plane, train or automobile, the same question always comes up. You know the one I am referring to. "Are we there yet?" Most of the time you are ten minutes away from home the first time those words are uttered. I think this topic came to mind as I was walking Christina's dog. I am dog sitting for a few days while Christina is vacationing at the beach. Her drive to the beach was only a few hours, but I bet she will have some interesting experiences to tell us about when she gets back. This information comes a week too late for her, but hopefully will find you in the planning stages of your trip. Here are some of the tricks I have learned in my years of traveling with children, no matter what their ages (even the dreaded teen years):

1. I would love to get credit for this idea on how to make your trip go more smoothly, but the credit goes to my hubby. We were about to leave on a trip that would have us in the car for more then twenty hours, and he got the idea to put together a book of activities for each of our children. They were 10 and 7 at the time. As you can imagine, a boy and girl of differing ages had very different ideas about what was interesting. The "book" was a loose leaf binder that had a map of the route that we would be traveling which allowed each of our children to color in states as we past from state to state. They always knew where we were on our journey. We perfected this several years later, when on a three week cross country trip the maps included places of interest and places that we planned on stopping. We tried to pick at least a few places of interest along the way for each child. In addition to the map, there were puzzle pages, coloring pages, games, stories and blank pages. (Important note: each one should be age appropriate.)

2. Bring healthy snacks in a separate bag for each child with their names on it. This eliminates two problems, everyone fighting over one particular food item and upset stomachs from eating too many treats. I think we can all agree that there are few things worse than having a child who is feeling sick and/or throwing up in the car on a long trip. I had the children pack their own snack bag for the trip, this eliminated the problem of me not packing what they liked. I would lay out the things that they could choose from on the counter and they would pack their own bag. They could decorate the bag if they wanted to, but the name was the only requirement.

3. Bring a cooler with some drinks. It will save you from having to buy lots of drinks on the road. Drinks should be limited to water and light colored or clear liquids. Save your car's upholstery, learn from my mistakes. No red, purple or blue drink boxes. I am sure that wherever that car is now, the stain is still there.

4. Keep them busy. Each child was allowed to bring a backpack full of things that they wanted for the trip. Books, games, and their snack bag needed to fit in it. I packed a bag that I kept up front with me. My "in case of emergency" bag. (Only to be used if the children or I were getting really antsy. My husband would tell you that I don't travel very well either.) It did include a first aid kit, and many other essentials. Some more examples of what could be included in the kids' bags, or the emergency bag are a sketch pad or Magna Doodle for drawing, magnetic board games, iPods, DVD Player with headphones and movies, books on tape of varying age levels, and a few surprise snacks.

I can tell you from experience, that a little before hand planning makes for a much more pleasant trip for the adults in the car. Please share any ideas that you have for traveling with children of any age. We may share them on our upcoming podcast, and besides, I am always looking for new ideas. As I said before, I don't travel well.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Parent Sharing Episode 1-Discipline

Check out our first Parent Sharing podcast. Where Kathy and Christina delve into the wonderful world of discipline, and share some honest (sometimes embarrassing) personal tales of parenting. Be sure to share your experiences, questions, and suggestions.

Parent Sharing Episode 1-Discipline

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Finding the Right Consequence

When assigning a consequence for a misbehavior, I believe that it is important for a parent to make sure that the consequence has a relationship to the misbehavior if possible. It is better that a consequence teaches the desired lesson, then just be punitive in nature. Two types of consequences that you may consider when determining a punishment for a particular behavior are: logical consequences and natural consequences.
Natural consequences occur naturally when your child engages in a particular behavior. These are very effective if they occur immediately following an action, and may not require any intervening on your part to eliminate the behavior. An example of a natural consequence may be getting a burn when touching a hot stove. Any parent who has teenagers knows that telling your teen that they can't be friends or date someone usually just serves to strain the relationship between the two of you and encourage them to sneak around to be with that person. It may be much more effective, if it is not someone who is dangerous to be around, to allow your child to find out on there own that this is a person that they do not want to associate with. Getting your approval to go out with this person may take away all the intrigue and excitement that your child perceives about this person.
Logical consequences are consequences that you assign to your child when they have engaged in a misbehavior. They are logical in that they "fit the crime" to assist the child in learning from their misbehavior. An example may be not allowing your child to have dessert if they have not eaten their dinner or not letting your teenager use the computer for a week because you caught them on a website that you do not allow them to go to.
When disciplining your child, remembering two things will go a long way to improving your child's behavior: that you need to always be consistent and consequences work best when relate to the unwanted behavior.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The Meat and Potatoes of Disipline

"It is not the severity of the consequence, it is the certainty of it." Heard this quote at a workshop and thought that it really summed up the most important points about discipline. If anyone knows where this quote came from please let me know, because I would love to give credit where credit is due.

The first part of this quote reminds us that discipline does not have to be severe. I hope we are past the time where we adhere to the concept of spare the rod, spoil the child. Spanking a child to the point of them not being able to sit down without pain or leaving marks is first and foremost against the law. Secondly, these children not only grow up to do the same to their children, but are more likely to engage in violent behaviors as they are growing up. Having said that, I am not opposed to occasionally giving a child a little spank on the bottom.

The second part of this quote contains what I believe to be the key to making discipline work for you as the parent. If a child believes that one time in ten they are going to get away with a behavior, they are more likely to engage in this behavior, hoping that it is the one time that they will not get into trouble. For some reason, it doesn't seem to register in a child's mind that those are not very good odds. It is imperative, given this information, that you be consistent with your discipline 100% of the time.

When choosing consequences for misbehavior, it is most important to consider the child. When my son was little a tiny little pat on the bottom, worked wonderfully. However when it came to my daughter, this was not the case. One time I found myself spanking her again and again as she shouted out that that didn't hurt. After three smacks on the bottom and a hand that was starting to sting a little, I came to the revelation that spanking was not going to work with her. I placed her in a time out chair that was located in the entry to our house and went to set the timer in the kitchen for four minutes (she was four at the time). Before I could get to the timer, she was out of the chair. I placed her back in the chair, and went to set the timer again. After going through his song and dance about seven or eight times, she finally realized that I was not letting her off the hook and she stayed in the chair for the entire four minutes which according to her was forever. The next time that I placed her in time out, it only took four times of putting her back in the chair. Important to note when using time out, you should choose a location where there is not a lot of activity going on around the child, and there is nothing for them to play with that is close at hand. Note that their bedroom is probably not a good location because there are toys and books for them to occupy themselves with.

One More Thought About Attention Seeking Behaviors

Pay close attention to which of your child's behaviors you are giving attention to because those are the behaviors that you are reinforcing. We are all guilty of giving negative attention, and lots of it, to those behaviors that drive us crazy. This attention ensures that these behaviors will occur more and more often. Exactly the opposite effect that we want. It is not to late to start paying attention to the good behaviors and try to ignore those unwanted behaviors as long as they do not put your child in danger. Understand that there will be an increase in the unwanted behavior when you begin ignoring it. Children will start by testing us, not believing that this behavior will not get them the attention that they are seeking anymore. Stay strong and keep on this path, this behavior will go away as soon as your child realizes that they will no longer get attention for it.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Topic Is....Discipline

Discipline seems to be a topic that most parents are interested in and the number of hits that one gets when searching the web is overwelming and quite confusing. What site do you trust? There are many thought on discipline and I will discuss my thoughts on those in a future post, but there are some things that I think all parents need to know about your child's bad behavior first. Humans are attention seeking creatures for the most part, children are no different. They want attention. They don't really care if that attention is positive or negative, they just want attention. If we give them some positive attention, it may reduce the number of bad behaviors that they engage in to get our "negative" attention. Which in turn reduces the amount that you need to discipline. Some food for thought when discussing positive attention: in our always connected society, are we really giving our children our undivided attention or are we on the cell phone, sitting next to them watching TV, or talking to them while we are surfing the net, tweeting or texting at the same time. Consider taking time to just be with your child, turn off all your electronics and eliminate other distractions. Make sure to give each child individual attention whenever possible.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Author's Thoughts About This Blog

My name is Kathy and I have been a School Guidance Counselor and a Mental Health Counselor for the past twelve years. Although book learning and college courses in these fields are helpful, most of my knowledge in this area comes from my combined 55 years of parenting. Two very different children: 29 year old male and 26 year old female. I have held many parenting workshop over the years and they all have one thing in common, they have not been well attended. Feedback on these workshops suggest that the information is valuable but there is not enough time in the day to attend a workshop. I am hoping that providing this information through a blog may reach out and help more parents.