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January 13th, 2012
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It is never too late to accept our children and our lives as this is the way it is for right now; this season; this time.
It’s never too late to reject this feeling; the bad behaviour; the blahs and get help.
New habits take time to remain and old habits entice us with the warm and fuzzy slipper effect. We can change.
If we’re not happy with the way things are in our playtime or their playtime before we reject it find a good exit strategy.
No one likes cold turkey. No one wins or feels better for it.
For us to embrace and accept we need to feel like this is fun, good, worth it and there’s room to fail.
Failure will come. It’s not the end. Hugs, encouragement, lick our wounds and move back on. Success comes to those who fail.
Accept and reject ideals (without regret and with confidence.)We can’t put it off any longer playtime is important.
How are we modeling accepting and rejecting with our children?
{Image Credit}
Looking for inspiration
Click here to read the rest of the posts in the series, 31 Days to a more Playful Tot.
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January 11th, 2012
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Comparisons hurt, harm and are useful.
If I asked you what type of parenting style do you support with play. What would you say?
It wasn’t until I was in a different country in a totally diferent situation did I realise that I my idea of play was different. It was then I wondered am I doing it right?
We don’t all move. We often have the same friends and same circles.
Is there a right way to play? If there is, who do I listen to? What about my family and individualism?
Knowing your own mind takes time to develop. We come with all the baggage of our childhood and family relationships. Now we have a playful tot to raise and lots of decisions to make on important issues like TV time, electronic media, mobile media, organic toys, wooden toys, plastic toys, Montessori, Waldorf, classes, playgroups, the list goes on. Our mind isn’t just made up on all issues- just like that.
How do you develop your mind so you don’t just follow the crowd?
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Knowing your mind in 25 steps
- Look at your children and learn how they work.
- Go to trusted sources. You have to decide who they are.
- Accept advice as just that advice- what worked for them may or maynot work for you.
- Try new things
- Share your ideas. Other people see things you may not see.
- Have encouraging and supportive friends
- Your children will make you cry and despair but they have the capacity to make you laugh and weep with joy if we create opportunities for that to happen more than once in a while.
- Accept and reject things as the season changes in your family
- Create plans.
- Educate yourself in the areas you lack
- Beware of bandwagons
- Ask questions…..ruminate on ideas….feel free to adapt, transform or drop ideas….after careful thought.
- Find and talk to people who have been there before you. It’s amazing how much perspective they will give you.
- observe families who you admire. Try out what they are doing.
- Sometimes you need to take a break and focus on other things like your marriage, home, work, career, goals, dreams or ambitions. Not just your kids will thank you for it.
- Parenting is not a competition. Some are further along than I am. I’ll be further along than someone else.
- Everyone has problems. No one is perfect
- Discuss your ideas, opinions and direction with your spouse, friends and family- they know you and will often give you interesting advice ( some good and some not so good)
- It’s okay to be different. Different isn’t automatically bad or good.
- Have thought provoking twitter and facebook friends. They will challenge you in good ways.
- Grow
- Remember that sticking your head in the sand doesn’t work there has to be another way.
- Encourage people who try things out- they are actively working on knowing their mind ( You can learn from their successes and failures)
- Compare yourself less to those around you. Some comparison is good but be careful
- We don’t need to know all the answers and get it right the first time. We can let many things just go and roll with it,however we have to decide which ones we do intentionally.
I’m working on No.21 this year. What about you I’m curious?
What are you doing to ‘know your mind’ on issues in 2012?
Are there any areas you find the hardest to do?
Click here to read the rest of the posts in the series, 31 Days to a more Playful Tot.
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January 10th, 2012
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Every now and then I’m reminded about how I need to give my son’s choices.
Choices that I can live with. Not any old choice.
I eagerly absorbed the principles and practises of Love and Logic, after attending a course in 2004. The power of choice seemed like a really good idea. I felt I was ahead of the curve. It worked.
Our next child threw us the curve ball and now we looked at 123 Magic. We now had a mix of ideas. I was glad for the different ideas as it made me think. There you go made me think so I needed to make sure that if I wanted to raise thinking children I needed to give them opportunities to make them think.
This is not new. None of us like to be told what to do all the time. However in our time pressured society we just don’t have the time, usually to give choices. I’ve talked about our walk to Nursery and how I needed to slow down and effectively smell the coffee. Today I want to talk about how the power of questions can really change your children’s outlook.
The biggest battle of wills
They don’t want to do or have what you are offering because you are only telling them. With their new voice, No is the best word in the world. They see the power. We need to give them chance to say, Yes!
Love and Logic, if I remember rightly, encourage as many choices as you can. We never thought that made total sense for our family.Partly because we’re just not able to think of at least two choices for everything we want to do at the time. You have to think carefully.
Do you want to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt here?
Neither shirt is a problem to you.
They are more playful when they feel like they’ve had a say in their environment. So are we. It involved a change of mindset for us to think this way constantly.
Oatmeal or cereal? OJ or milk? This book or that book?
Learning can be either passive or active. Passive learning is when the parent is responsible for all learning conditions. Parents direct and children comply. Passive learning is easier for parents to do than active learning, but less beneficial for children….. Active learning is not only more exciting for children but usually results in better intellectual development
Ready to Learn: Goldberg
It starts simply with things like choosing which socks, and even this can seem like a hassle but they really love it. It’s part of the power we can give away. It continues with choices about food and learning how to express preference clearly and nicely, whether they be negative, neutral or positive. It continues with dinner games and question cards and leads to full discussions and learning about our children.
Communicating our values
Values are communicated and if we don’t’ hear what our children are thinking we have no chance of communicating our values to them in a way that they’ll be able to take on new information and make good choices about to do with these thoughts. I’m sure you’ve had the experience that what came out of your mouth was alien to what you thought you’d ever really say or even believe. But in the saying you realized it and perhaps changed or did something about it.
Yesterday we were reviewing our chore list for the umpteenth time. I want it to work. They want it to work. It breaks down regularly. After listening to a show about entitlement I decided to battle the chore problem yet again.
This time I added a time element….. It boiled down to having three chores and them deciding when to do them. Immediately they both sussed they didn’t need to do each chore each day. They had to decide when they would do it, how often etc. They asked me a lot of questions. Do I expect they will be perfect? No. But here’s a great opportunity to try out their decision-making process.
Last evening, over dinner, I asked how their chores went for the day. Proudly the oldest gave me his reasoning of why he’s decided to do his that way. His middle brother was listening. The middle one gave his very different version. I was able to ask how did it work for you? ( In true Dr Phil fashion!) We had an interesting dialogue about the struggles and they asked and each gave different answers.
Decision- making and the power of questions
At that moment, for the briefest of time, it didn’t matter if they had done the chores. Here they were actively discussing decision-making; the pitfalls of their brother’s ideas and congratulating them on what they did. I loved the process. The chores, to be honest were executed pretty well but they are a long work in progress.
It’s not always like this but I really believe the foundation of choices and active learning helps them to make decisions. They know we have each others back and we’re not afraid with our advice if we’re not sure.
How do you translate the power of questions into your family?
Click here to read the rest of the posts in the series, 31 Days to a more Playful Tot.
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November 2nd, 2011
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Melissa over at Chasing Cheerios mentioned a Cultural Exchange just before the Summer. It sounded a great idea.
The idea was to send a packgae out that represented your country to a group of people. Melissa coordinated the whole thing. We were in a group of 6 people. 6 packages- how difficult would that be?
Naturally life gets busy during the summer. My husband was back after a year deployment so life was hectic. The kids also spent a large portion with Grandparents. I didn’t want to send activities for them to do. Hanging out with the Grandparents was all that was required.
So September rolls around and back to school. Again super busy. The boys and I worked really hard on finding UK things and what they wanted.
This is what we selected for our package. Each one was a little different.
ELC money in Euros and Sterling- Twining fruit Tea. (We’re big fruit tea drinkers but we were thinking of the kids- no caffeine!)
- Mini chocolate digestives ( I had to buy a second packet the first packets got…er..um eaten)
- Love hearts and traditional sweets
- keyring with a tourist attraction from the UK/London. Here we have the traditional phone box. Not many of these around.
- Make a flag activity
- Information pack about the K including recipes
- Drawn picture of a Beefeater costume.
Imagine that duplicated 6 times. It was an interesting time at the post office sending these off.
Next the wait…….
So far we’ve received one from Arizonia and one from Japan.
The boys are beyond excited to open them up. We unpacked them at Dinnertime.
If you get the chance to participate in an exchange….do!
There are lots of physical swaps online. I spoke about the International Postcard Swap on the podcast recently.
Have you participated in any swaps? Share the links below
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September 29th, 2011
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Each year school districts up and down the land produce a large long list of items for children to bring to school.
It was stuff of legend to me. I’d heard about long prescriptive lists and not finding the exact thing and knew. I just knew they had to be exaggerations. urban myths gone too far.
So I was a little knocked off my feet to receive my first list a few years ago.
I wasn’t prepared or well informed so I was late to the shops and found the cupboards bare. I tramped to many a shop along with the ‘furrowed brow posse’ of equally worried mums some of us with kids and others who knew better.
Who knew elation could be so great to hear the assistant say there was a box of crayola colourfast X YZ in the back. Three families sigh and check it off the list.
Who knew I would spend over $130 that day getting everything. And no there’s wasn’t a line in the budget for that. Yes we did eat differently that week.
Older and wiser the following year things were a lot better. Line in the budget, got to the right shops, made it to a few sales….most importantly watched what was going on with the savvy mums. Made all the difference.
Image credit: Dnorbot
The kids are all sorted with the things. It’s all in school. But what about us. What do we need to remember to do during the back to school time?
We want to be just as organized in our lives, home and work.
Here are a few reminders of things that should be on my back to school list
- Don’t sign up for everything.
- Schedule downtime and connection time with each child- Everyday.
- Make playing outdoors a habit- forget seasons predict and adapt.
- Not everyone is doing it. It might look like it but they aren’t. It’s Okay to be different!
- Playdates and dinners with mates.
- Learn new skills, go out, let the kids see you differently.
- Take it easy on yourself. When systems, routines and ideas fail. Pick yourself up and try again. Chocolate is not the answer. ( That last bit was for me!) Manic Mommies is always good.
It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon and do a lot or volunteer for things. While the kids are in daycare, preschool or school what back to school supplies do you look out for, for yourself?
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