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To most kids, Halloween can be one of the best holidays
ever. Dressing up, getting candy, staying up late—what could be better to a
child? But sometimes, Halloween can be frightening to parents. What about the
scary costumed older kids your little one may encounter? Will the candy be safe
to eat? What about knocking on the doors of strangers—won’t that send the wrong
message to my kids?
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Image courtesy of hin255/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Here are some tips to make Halloween safe and fun for your
children.
- Costume safety comes before fashion.
If a hemline drags the ground, chances are your child will tip over
sometime during the evening. If a mask is too loose, your kid might fall
down, too. Make sure the costumes aren’t a walking hazard for your child
and you’ll have an easier evening.
- Stick to your own neighborhood.
Unless you live in candy wasteland, resist the urge to go to the mall or
another neighborhood to trick-or-treat. Part of the fun of Halloween is
actually talking to your neighbors! Introduce yourselves and your kids,
and be sure to say hello the next time you see him mowing the lawn.
- Mind your manners. Remind your
children to speak to the grownups who open their doors, saying “please”
and “thank you.” Also, ask them not to grab big handfuls of candy from the
offered bowl. We make it a rule that if we can’t hear the “thank you” from
each child from our post a few feet away, then that candy is ours. We’ve
never had to enforce that rule, come to think of it! Somehow, the kids
manage to be pretty clear in their thanks.
- Have a candy-eating policy before
Halloween. We generally allow the kids to eat a lot of candy on
Halloween itself. Then they can take a piece with their lunch until it’s
gone. Sometimes that means Halloween candy is being consumed close to Christmas,
but candy doesn’t go bad, right? The kids know that if they sneak candy,
Mom and Dad get to eat the rest!
- Giving is as good as receiving.
Part of the fun for our family is returning home and handing out candy to
those who knock on our door. All of our kids really enjoy this part of the
evening and are disappointed if no one comes looking for candy.
Whatever your Halloween traditions, stay safe and have a
sweet time! I know my Dorothy, Mary, Robin Hood and Dragon will.
Coming in early 2014,
Sarah and Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love &
Leadership in a four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for
more information.
I was
quite the scaredy cat as a child. Shadows in the night spooked me at times, and
let’s not think about things that went bump in the darkness! Forget watching
scary movies or even those with the barest hint of zombies, vampires, ghosts or
goblins.
Some
of my friends had no such qualms. The scarier the better for them. A moonless
night and the sound of a lonely werewolf only brought howls of laughter, not
shudders of fear.
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Image courtesy of ammer/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Things
got pretty dark a few decades ago, but nothing like today’s saturation with
darkness. Movies like World War Z, television shows like “The Walking
Dead,” book and film series juggernauts like Twilight and Harry Potter have
brought zombies, vampires and wizardry into vogue.
With so much dark stuff surrounding us on a regular basis,
it can be easy to forget that children of all ages can find such things
disturbing or scary. Rather than assume our kids are fine with the images and
increasingly life-like skeletons, zombies and vampires, we should use these
encounters to remind them that these things especially visible this time of
year are not real.
We kept an eye on how our children reacted to scary things
and either avoided houses with more realistic Halloween decorations or visited
in the daytime so that the child could clearly see it wasn’t real. How are some
ways you’ve handled a scared child this time of year?
Until next time,
Sarah
Early next year, Sarah
and Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership
in a four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
Most
parents think nothing of uploading information and photos of their children on
social media, but are they overlooking the risk factors? We have chosen not to
post any photographs or images of our children with the rare exception if the
picture doesn’t show their face at all. We also don’t list our children’s full
names, only their first initial, in postings.
Are
we especially paranoid? Or just a bit odd? We freely acknowledge that we are
outside the norm, given how many photos of children proliferate Facebook,
Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media and websites. And we certainly don’t
expect everyone to follow our lead—that’s a decision each family needs to make
on their own.
But
here’s some food for thought: each time a photo or story about your child is uploaded,
that image or mention will likely follow your child around forever. As we’ve
learned over the years, once something is out there in cyberspace, it can take
on a life of its own. Yes, there are things you can do to mitigate that, by
removing GPS tags, by keeping on top of the ever-changing privacy rules for
Facebook and other social media sites.
I’ve come up with a few questions I like to ask myself
before sharing anything about my children in any type of public forum—whether it’s
in an article, to a group of moms, on Facebook or in a book.
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| Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Will my child be
embarrassed to have this story overheard today? Next year? As an adult? Sometimes,
things that would embarrass our child today would be okay in a few weeks or
even years. Other times, it’s an incident that might be best left within the
family.
Is this gossip?
We often don’t think that we can gossip about our own family, but we can.
Thinking about our stories and images of our children as potential gossip can
curtail our impulse to post.
Am I sharing this story
or photo because I want to “show-off” my child? If you’re after merely a
response or “likes” for the photo, then maybe you’re not posting for the right
reasons.
What is my motive for
sharing this particular image or story? This is even tougher for those of
us with home-based businesses or how are self-employed. As a parent coach and
someone who writes about parenting, I have to be careful about what stories I
use from my own family and which ones I keep locked in the family vault, so to
speak.
Until next time,
Sarah
Early next year, Sarah
and Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership
in a four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
Grandma was right!
There is an easy way and a hard way to raise kids. By and large, today’s
parents are choosing the hard way. This series of blogs will tackle familiar
phrases that used to be commonplace but fell out of favor during the last few
decades of the 20th century—and why parents should not be afraid to follow the
sentiment expressed in the phrases.
How many times have you done something for your children
that they can do for themselves? Most of us do way too much for our seemingly
helpless kids. The phrase “You can do that yourself” has not gotten much of a
workout these days.
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Image courtesy of digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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It’s hard to watch our kids struggle with a task, whether
it’s learning to tie their own shoes or figuring out the fingering on a piano
piece or finishing a particularly tricky bit of math homework. But what we fail
to realize is that by jumping in and doing the task for the child—or
significantly helping a child with the project—we are actually enabling her to
not learn to do it herself.
Many parents have forgotten how to say to their children, “You
can do that yourself.” Instead, enabling has taken over modern parenting.
Enabling is evident whenever a parent does something for the child that the
child is perfectly capable of doing for himself. Many parents fail to figure
the cost of enabling and how it affects the child—and themselves. The cost of
enabling to the child is increased dependence on parents, which increases the
anxiety of the mother.
The child feels inadequate and helpless, lacks problem-solving
and competency skills, and lacks appreciation for his personal strengths and
weaknesses. In turn, that fuels the mother’s increased frustration at having to
teach the same things constantly to the child.
Enabling also lowers the child’s academic performance,
triggering in the mother a tendency to personalize her child’s school
performance, as she ties his school performance with her worth/performance as a
mom.
To break the enabling cycle, we as parents need to stop
doing so much for our kids. Start by taking counting to ten and repeating to
yourself, “She can do it herself” whenever you see your child struggling or
getting frustrated with a task. Turn away and focus on something else when your
child is attempting to figure something out, such as homework, so that you won’t
be tempted to jump in too soon.
Sure it's hard to watch your child fall down while learning to ride a bike and skin her knee. But only by testing her limits will she learn the sweet taste of doing it by herself. Give your child the breathing room to fail—and you will be
surprised at how often she succeeds.
In October, Sarah will
be giving a series of talks on The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really
Works through the City
of Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department. Also in October, Sarah and Mary
Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership in a
four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
Q: I’m a single mom
with a 15-year-old daughter who is 3 months pregnant. My daughter thinks that
because she’s having a baby, she should be treated as an adult. In her mind,
that means no longer following our house rules, not doing chores and staying
home from school. I’m not sure how to counter her arguments—your thoughts?
A: Ah, most teenagers try this tactic, pregnant or not, so
it’s nothing really unusual. My answer would be the same, as her pregnancy
doesn’t make any difference in her position in her home. Until your daughter is
working and supporting herself completely, she is not an independent adult.
She’s expecting all the privileges of an adult—making her own rules, deciding
what to do around the house, deciding on whether or not she’s going to
school—without the responsibilities of paying the rent, buying groceries,
working full-time, etc.
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Image courtesy of imagerymajestic/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Therefore, as long as she’s living under your rent—and one
assumes, you’re paying for her room and board, as one does with an
not-yet-emancipated child—then she must follow your rules. You are not a hotel,
she is not a paying guest. As a member of your household on a daily basis, she
is expected to contribute to its upkeep by doing chores (pregnancy should not
curtail her ability to push a vacuum or scrub a sink). As a member of your
household, she is expected to attend school—that is her “job” now. As a member
of your household, she is expected to follow the house rules.
When you inform your daughter of this, expect pushback, as
she’s not going to like it. Be prepared to back up your stance by kicking her
out of her very nice, very comfortable Garden-of-a-bedroom. When she refuses to
comply (and chances are very good that she will), remove all electronics,
including her cell phone (which I’m guessing you foot the bill for), computers,
tablets, music, etc., as well as her favorite clothes, books, games, whatever
she most enjoys doing. This should be done when your daughter is out of the
house, so conspire with a friend or relative to get her away for a few hours.
If you can’t afford a storage unit or don’t have a room or
attic you can lock her things in (she can’t access to them at all), then
consider installing a deadbolt on her door and allowing her access once in the
morning and once in the evening for 10 minutes each time to get fresh clothes.
Have her sleep on a couch or guest room for a while.
Once her room is stripped or locked up, hand her a printed
list of chores, with specific times for her to complete them. Also give her a
print out of the house rules and your expectation that she go to school every
day. Then inform her that she will start to get her stuff back when she becomes
more obedient. I’d make this contingent on at least a month of good behavior
(but don’t tell her that—keep her guessing as to how long this will last).
After a month of good behavior, then start giving her back her stuff, starting
with the least favorite item, working your way up to her cell phone (which I’m
assuming is her most favorite item).
Then be prepared for a massive temper tantrum. Trust me,
this will not be pretty. But keep reminding yourself as she rants and raves,
that you are doing what is best for her, even though she won’t thank you now
and maybe not ever. Remember that you don’t have to listen to her but can walk
away. Your job is to give her enough of a push so that she will see the right
decision is in her best interest. She probably won’t see it that way, but then
again, she’s not the parent.
Coming in early 2014,
Sarah and Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love &
Leadership in a four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for
more information.
Grandma was right!
There is an easy way and a hard way to raise kids. By and large, today’s
parents are choosing the hard way. This series of blogs will tackle familiar
phrases that used to be commonplace but fell out of favor during the last few
decades of the 20th century—and why parents should not be afraid to follow the
sentiment expressed in the phrases.
What role does Dad have in your family’s life? Is he
regulated to a supporting role, a parenting aide to Mom? Does he share in the
discipline? Is he merely a buddy, someone to clown around with while Mom does
the heavy lifting?
Part of the confusion today over the role of a father has
its roots in the idealized view of the 1950s nuclear family. Dad brought home
the bacon, Mom fried it up in a pan, and the kids were pretty much seen but not
heard. As part of the backlash against what many saw as a distant, cold father
figure, Dads have move out of the background and into the foreground—but not
exactly into a co-parenting role.
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Photo Credit: Photos.com/Stock Photos/Photos.com
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Most husbands and wives, when they become Mother and Father,
move into a lopsided arrangement whereas the wives/mothers become the head of
the child-rearing department and the husbands/fathers float into a buddy/pal
relationship with the child. If today’s typical mother were to tell her kids,
“Wait until your father gets home!,” in response to misbehavior, most kids
would not worry one iota. In fact, they would look forward to Dad coming home
to play with them.
This shift into turning Dad into a mere play-pal hasn’t done
any favors to the average American marriage, either. Most parents forget that
they should be spending more time in the role of husband and wife instead of
mother/father. Our job is to help our spouse see his or her role is not to be
the world’s greatest dad or mom, but to be the world’s greatest husband or
wife.
By concentrating more on the marriage relationship, you will
actually be a better mother and father. Might sound counterintuitive, but
numerous studies have shown that children are happier and feel more secure when
they know their parents’ marriage is strong. Instead of encouraging your
husband or wife to be the world’s greatest dad or mom, say you want him or her
to be the world’s greatest husband or wife.
Once you make that change—a more focus on husband/wife than
mom/dad roles—moving Dad from the fringes of parenting should be easier. A
father shouldn’t be a mere parenting aide, but a full participant in parenting
decisions and discipline. A good rule of thumb is that the parent with the most
hands-on interaction with the children should be the primary discipliner. But
that doesn’t mean the Dad (in most cases) can’t mete out consequences when
needed or to back up Mom by delivering punishments when requested by Mom.
In October, Sarah will
be giving a series of talks on The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really
Works through the City
of Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department. Coming in early 2014, Sarah and
Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership in a
four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
Q: Over the summer,
my 18-year-old son claims we shouldn’t restrict him for playing Internet video
games when his older sister (20) watches TV constantly. They are both college
students and are back in school now, but will be home for breaks. My son tends
to be shier than his sister, but she also does more to help around the house. I
don’t want my son to spend all his time online when he’s home. I’m really not
looking forward to more fights when they come home for the holidays. What can
we do?
A: Before I answer your question, I have one of my own. Why
are you still micromanaging your adult children’s lives? Your daughter is 20
and your son is 18. Both are off at college. Therefore, they are perfectly
capable of managing their own lives, complete with friends and
responsibilities, right?
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Image courtesy of imagerymajestic/
FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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As for the question you didn’t ask, which is how to get your
adult children living at home to do chores, that is very simple. List chores to
be done (this should be nearly all the household work), divide between the two
of them. Tell them to do the chores (make sure you give specific times if you
want chores down a certain way, like mowing the grass Saturday before noon). Then if the chores are not done, you can
certainly take away their electronic toys.
What can you do to change your son? Nothing. The only person
who can change your son is your son. You can’t make him do things differently.
However, you can stop being an enabler. By that I mean don’t buy him games,
don’t pay for his addiction, don’t give him a computer to play his games on,
that sort of thing.
Finally, stop playing the “Not fair” game with your son.
Life’s not fair and the sooner you stop trying to make it fair, then life will
settle down more in your home.
In October, Sarah will
be giving a series of talks on The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really
Works through the City
of Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department. Coming in early 2014, Sarah and
Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership in a
four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
Grandma was right!
There is an easy way and a hard way to raise kids. By and large, today’s
parents are choosing the hard way. This series of blogs will tackle familiar
phrases that used to be commonplace but fell out of favor during the last few
decades of the 20th century—and why parents should not be afraid to follow the
sentiment expressed in the phrases.
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Image courtesy of Feelart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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This golden oldie of parenting yesteryear is a must-have for
every parent’s repertoire. Basically, stewing in your own juices--or lying in a bed you made-- means facing
the consequences of your actions. So many times, we as parents want to shield
our children from “bad” consequences brought on by our children’s poor
decisions or plain, old bad behavior.
This is one of my favorite phrases, mostly because I love to
say “stew in your own juices”—it just sounds rather delicious, don’t you think?
To help children want to solve their own problems—and thus not stew in their
own juices—parents have to become mean parents, that is parents who mean what
they say and say what they mean. Sure, their children might call them Big Meanies,
but that’s just because their kids can’t get away with things in their house.
Big Meanies allow children to “stew in their own juices” and
“lie in their own beds”, i.e., experience the full consequences of their own
misbehavior. This puts the monkey on the back of the only one who can solve the
problem—the child.
As long as you step in and try to solve the problem that
your child created, the more your child will not solve the problem himself. And
the more stress and strife you will create in your home.
The more you step back and let the child solve—or not solve,
as the case may be—his own problems, then the more your child will be able to
solve his own problems. When your child doesn’t want to, then you leave him
alone to suffer the results of his own silly actions, without offering any
assistance.
By allowing your child to stew in his own juices, you will
be giving him the time to think about what went wrong and how to change things
the next time around. Parents who jump in and solve the problem for the child
are not providing him with that opportunity—and are thus not letting him learn
from his mistakes and to do better the next time.
So mix it up by letting your child stew in his own juices—or
lie in his own bed, if you prefer that phrasing—the next time he misbehaves or
fails to follow through on something. You might be labeled a Big Meanie, but
your child will be the better for it.
Coming in early 2014, Sarah
and Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership
in a four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
Q: My eight-year-old
boy has been disobedient and defiant since he was three. He’s also bullying his
three younger siblings. We’ve tried stripping his room and putting him on
restriction, but I don’t think we’ve held the line as long as we should have.
It hasn’t seemed to make a different in his behavior. We plan on kicking him
out of the garden [stripping his room of play value and confining him to his
room]. However, even though his “things” are not available, all the toys of our
other kids are strewn all over the house. And what do we do about family plans,
such as camping?
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Image courtesy of ponsuwan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
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A: With four children of my own, I understand your concerns.
Here’s a solution: the 30-day chart system. On the fridge, post a list of three
to five targeted misbehaviors, such as “No bullying,” “Obey the first time we
tell you to do something,” etc. Be as specific as you can in the behaviors to
leave no wiggle room on his part. Put away all of his favorite toys and/or
electronics (that means no TV, DVDs, movies, in addition to any video games,
etc.), even if it’s something with which another sibling likes to play.
Remember to think like your son does and hit him where it hurts, a la the
Godfather Principle (make them an offer they can’t refuse).
If he does any of the targeted misbehaviors while out of his
room, he has two “free” passes per day. If he “uses” the two free passes by
doing one of the misbehaviors, then he’s in a guest room (without toys, etc.)
and to bed (in his own room) directly after supper, lights out. Each time he’s
confined to his room, the 30 day chart starts over the next day—even if he
blows it on the 29th day.
Inform him that he will start to get back his things once he
can go 30 days without the target misbehaviors. Even if he’s confined to his
room, he can still go with you on outings when you can’t leave him at home.
As for the bullying aspect: Be careful that you don’t assign
roles to your kids, as in your older son is the “bully” and your younger
children are the “victims.” Remember that children are going to have conflict,
and to let them work it out for the most part on their own. You should not be refereeing
their squabbles. If they’re fighting over a toy, then take the toy away but
don’t assign blame or try to figure out who started the fight, etc.
Stay the course until he can complete 30 days without losing
his two free passes, then you can “step it up” (by adding another target
misbehavior to the list) or “step it down” (by removing one of his two daily
free passes). Some kids are more bullish than others when it comes to learning,
so that’s why it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.
In October, Sarah will
be giving a series of talks on The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really
Works through the City
of Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department. Also in October, Sarah and Mary
Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership in a
four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
Grandma was right!
There is an easy way and a hard way to raise kids. By and large, today’s
parents are choosing the hard way. This series of blogs will tackle familiar
phrases that used to be commonplace but fell out of favor during the last few
decades of the 20th century—and why parents should not be afraid to follow the
sentiment expressed in the phrases.
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Image courtesy of Gualberto107/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
|
A recent Wall Street Journal article asked, “ Should
You Bring Mom and Dad to the Office?” The story focused on the growing
trend of Millenials—the generation born between the 1981 and the early
2000s—who are arriving at job interviews with a resume and their parents. This
group of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings “are much closer to their
parents than previous generations, and they have gained a reputation for being
coddled by so-called helicopter parents.”
Some employers, who once balked at the practice, have slowly
begun to embrace the presence of parents at the interview stage—and beyond. For
example, the Wall Street Journal article quoted a Northwestern Mutual executive
who “does everything it can to accommodate the parents of college-aged interns,
including regularly inviting them to the office for open houses. … Some
Northwestern Mutual managers call or send notes to parents when interns achieve
their sales goals and let parents come along to interviews and hear details of
job offers. They may even visit parents at home.”
Apparently, some parents have forgotten to employ the
phrase, “You need to stand on your own two feet,” to any great effect with
their offspring. My mother would say this whenever I started to ask her for
help with my homework—worksheets, I might add, that I was perfectly capable of
doing myself but was too lazy to extend the brain effort required.
Telling a child to stand on his own two feet is another way
of encouraging him that he can do the task at hand, that within himself are the
necessary skills and abilities to finish, start, complete or tackle whatever
mountain is standing before him. Homework, learning to ride a bike, putting
together a puzzle—those are some of the things that kids sometimes ask for
assistance when they can do it themselves.
Parents of yesteryear knew that a child usually asked for
help as the first resort, not after the child has wrestled with something for
an extended period of time and still couldn’t figure it out. A child will
always try to take the path of least resistance, and that’s when parents need
to pull out the phrase, “You need to stand on your own two feet” to prod the
child to work more towards his independence.
Grown children who allow mom and dad to accompany them on
job interviews haven’t learned how to stand on their own two feet. They are
missing out on a key component to success in life: learning how to lead a life
of independence. That dependence on parents starts when a child is young, too
young to realize his own need to try and fail, to fall and get back up, which
is really what teaching a child to stand on his own two feet is all about.
Having that skill is much better than dragging Mom and Dad along to a job
interview—and one that will produce an independent and successful adult in the
process.
This month, Sarah will
be giving a series of talks on The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really
Works through the City
of Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department. Also in October, Sarah and Mary
Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership in a
four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more
information.
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