10Tips For Great Parenting via Mrs PiggleWiggle

1. Engage your child’s imagination: Whether it is chores or overcoming a bad habit give your child the skills to think outside of the box.
2. Be his/her number one fan and forever cheerleader. There are billions of people in the world that are queuing up to tell your kid what a failure he is. It doesn’t have to come from you. Even if there are things that he doesn’t do well you can always find something positive to say! Remember Power of Life and Death?
3. Allow him to learn from his own mistakes as much as possible. This means standing back and allowing him to experience the consequences of his actions.
4. Help you child put himself in other’s shoes. Didn’t feed the dog? Maybe skipping lunch or a snack might be in order.
5. Care about the kids more than the stuff. Children should be taught to be careful with things and take care of what they have; however when you find that you are yelling or spanking excessively because a child broke an antique vase then you are the one with the problem. The message you are sending is “my stuff is more important than you”.
6. Let the punishment fit the crime. I had a child that would kick holes in the wall in a temper. Used to send the child out side to kick the brick trim on the house until she didn’t feel like kicking walls anymore. Didn’t hurt her OR the wall.
7. Listen with your heart.
8. Keep them busy with a good balance of play and chores and time to be bored.
9. Make memories.
10. Never lose the wonder and magic of childhood.

image: Taken by Erin Audet Myers, collection of marye audet

Post from: Blisstree

Parenting According to Mrs. PiggleWiggle

Not my son, but the tantrum face is uncanny.

It all started last weekend at Lowe’s Home Improvement. The gorgeous weather lured us to walk through the garden shop – along with everyone else in the city – to consider all the things we should plant once we find the time to actually do something productive. We even picked out a few things, only to put them back after discovering it would take longer to stand in line to pay for our finds than it would to actually plant the flowers. The mere act of moving a blue flower from our buggy back to its spot in the garden center was enough to unglue my child. “But I want it!” he screamed. The screaming turned into wails and the flailing of arms. I leaned down to my son to quiet him because, after all, he was making quite a scene, when he suddenly reared back and swung an arm at me. I raised my hand and our hands connected, making a loud SLAP that startled us both. Rick quickly grabbed Truman and gave him a swat on the backside.

Honestly, it wasn’t so much a swat as it was a pat. A little tap on the rear to get his attention. We’re not opposed to spankings but they don’t really work on Truman. We usually take away a favorite toy and that gets us the best results. No kidding, but the few times we have spanked Truman he’s responded with a laugh.

Not this time. No, this time he began wailing and screaming, “You hurt me! Stop hurting me!” We were mortified. We looked at each other and sighed, picked up our sniffling son and headed to the car. As we walked past the long line of people waiting at the register, I heard one woman say loudly, “I was never spanked as a child. I just don’t see how people can do that!”

Give me a break. I looked at the woman, then at Rick, and rolled my eyes. She probably doesn’t have children or if she does, she probably doesn’t live in the real world.

The story should have ended there, with us heading on our merry way comforted in that none of the strangers there knew us. But it’s not that simple. Not when you’re married to the local television newsman who spends four hours a day on TV on the No. 1 morning news program in the state. There are just a few places in our relatively small town where he goes unnoticed. Lowe’s is not one of them. And now that morning newsman would get labeled as a public child-spanker. This, the man who loves his son so dearly that just talking about his little boy can move him to tears.

Luckily, DHR never came. The gossip never made it to the papers. And we have been able to walk into Lowe’s since without feeling disgraced. I have read from The Go-To Mom
that “disciplining children in public can humiliate, embarrass and anger your child even more. Plus with an audience, she knows how vulnerable you both are.”

If you were curious if that were true, then let our experience be your proof.

(photo, Flickr, hyperscholar)

JWJourney

Post from: Blisstree

Public Discipline = Public Humiliation

I told her that the reason I know that I am absolutely finished having children is because I am over being interested and back to being annoyed.

I’m a pretty good volunteer, I do my public service. I focus on my strengths, I enjoy teenagers, especially the “bad” ones, so I volunteer as a mentor and for a teen outreach in the community. I run a book club to give women a place to go hang out with adult conversation. I occasionally clean my mother-in-laws floors, I take my non-driving grandmother grocery shopping or to the pharmacy, I invite my daughter’s best friend over so her mom can go to the doctor. I figure I’m good on the service front.

Today this woman informed me I had to sign up to teach my child’s Sunday school class. When I told her I don’t really like young children and would prefer not to do it she looked at me like I should probably be struck by lightening. I got the same look when I told them I didn’t want to volunteer for vacation bible school.

I understand their logic – everyone needs to pitch in and they need teachers.

But, here’s my logic – I’m sending my daughter to vacation bible school so I can get some work done. I’m going to my own Sunday school class so I can talk to grown ups. I spend all day, all week, all month with my kids – it’s these church services that give me a break from my kids. Signing up to multiply the children I’m responsible for by ten or a hundred is enough to make me want to run screaming.

I like some children. I adore my own and think they are the most interesting people ever created. I don’t mind being around children that are not total misbehaving brats. But, too often my friends even are raising total brats that never have a consequence or rule and I don’t find it the least bit cute. I even have a few friends I think twice before calling because they won’t enforce any type of discipline – no time outs, no spanking, no bed time, nothing – and frankly I’m sick of the whining, crying battle. That’s not fun for me.

Just because my children participate in the children’s ministries – does that obligate me to volunteer there? What do you all think?

Post from: Blisstree

Other People’s Children