1 common parenting mistake

Rewarding negative behaviour!

We all want the best for our children and most of us would not knowingly do things that would make them feel bad or their behaviour worse. While working with children for over 30 years I have noticed very common, universal things that parent’s do that are simply making their children’s behaviour worse. Rewarding Negative behaviour is one of the most common and it is done accidentally or unconsciously most of the time just to get some instant relief from the children’s bad behaviour. Of cause if you just stop to think about it you will see that rewarding negative behaviour is just going to make it more likely to happen again.

What sorts of negative behaviours are getting rewarded?

Crying

Tantrums

Moaning

Whining

Screaming

Interrupting

Making a noise

Showing off

Being demanding

Being cheeky or rude

Arguments

These are common behaviours and pretty much all children have done them to some degree at one time or another. If children receive some kind of reward or payoff when they do this they will quickly learn that it gets them what they want.

Why do children act this way?

They get the toy they want

They get the attention they want

They get the reaction they want

They don’t have to do something they didn’t want to do

They get the sweets, money or game they wanted

Although children end up getting what they wanted in the short term, in the long run this is very destructive for them because they need to learn better ways to handle themselves. If they learn to ask for what they want in a positive way, it will help them to feel good about themselves and be more confident in their own abilities.

Some things parents are doing to reward negative behaviour?

Smiling at behaviour to pretend it was just a joke,

Giving them affection such as sitting them on your knee and trying to cuddle them out of a tantrum

Talking or trying to reason with them while they are screaming

Trying to placate them while they are crying for something

Giving into them

Not having consequences for disobedient behaviour

Because children will do more of what they get attention for, it is vital that you stop rewarding negative behaviour. Instead you need to use positive methods to encourage good behaviour such as using rules and boundaries and age appropriate consequences. Just by watching out for the times that you do it will help you to stop it, so next time your child’s starts their screaming or arguing, walk away, don’t get drawn into confrontation and stay calm and remember!

Children can’t fight with someone who won’t fight, it’s not worth screaming at someone who won’t listen and what’s the point of having a tantrum if no one is their to see it!!!

Herbs and Spices: Familiar Flavors Help Your Child Like New Foods

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Herbs and Spices -- High in Antioxidants

Herbs and spices are very healthy.  They are extremely high in antioxidants -- after all, many of them were originally used to preserve food.  Some spices have useful phytochemicals that help us fight viruses, bacteria, and even prevent cancer or heart disease.

Using Herbs and Spices to Make Unfamiliar Food That Tastes Familiar

As healthy as herbs and spices are, they are also an extremely helpful tool in helping children learn to like healthy food.  In almost every culture, a time-honored way of getting children to like a new food is to flavor it with a familiar taste.  Greek children will happily eat a new food if it tastes like oregano and lemon.  Indian children will love any new food that tastes like curry.  Your child may eat anything as long as it has ketchup dumped all over it!

While your child is still young -- even a baby -- introduce him to a wide variety of herbs and spices.  Sprinkle cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg on your child's apple slices.  Add some fresh chopped garlic to your child's spaghetti.  Put a little turmeric in your child's macaroni and cheese. 

Once your child learns to love these flavors, you can introduce another food by sprinkling the same familiar herbs on it.  Feeding your child pomegranate for the first time?  Sprinkle the same cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg on this new fruit. It will seem familiar and comforting.

Herbs and spices are not only healthy, they're also a great tool for introducing new foods!

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Related Links

Cure Your Junk Food Kid in 6 Weeks

Let Your Child Smell Flavorful Foods 

See the Latest Article...

Quiet Time!!

This week I had an article published, which is directed at Early Years Practitioners. But it is also very applicable to parent's, so hopefully you will find it useful, would love your comments!!

As Early Years Practitioners you have the opportunity to make a huge difference in a child’s life in many ways. Think about how you can shape a child’s whole future if they come into nursery disruptive and misbehaving but leave to go to school eager to learn and well behaved. It is possible to transform any child’s behaviour with the right approach and by remembering that a child’s behaviour is shaped by their thoughts, which means that if you want positive behaviour you have to encourage children to have positive thoughts and feel good about their selves.

This leaves you with a daily challenge of using only positive techniques that really work and are proven to bring out the best in all children. Here is one very effective positive way to promote good behaviour in your childcare setting which will have a long lasting positive effect on every child.

‘QUIET TIME’.

Quiet time, is a perfect time for children to just sit quietly and calm down and it helps you to simply get on with your work with minimum disruption. A child can be taken to quiet time without the whole class knowing and it is most effective when you simply, quietly and calmly walk up to a child and ask them to come to quiet time.

Quiet time is not to be confused with the naughty spot or naughty chair. There is a different negative feeling to being on the naughty spot, than there is to having quiet time. The naughty chair implies that the child is naughty, which is of course negative and unhelpful. Quiet time is not about making a child feel bad but an opportunity for a child to be taken out of a disruptive situation and as a consequence for unwanted behaviour. This way you are far more likely to end unwanted behaviour rather than temporarily distracted a child from it.

• Rules of quiet time
Let the children know the rules before you need to use quiet time for the first time. Pick a good time to introduce it and let the children know that there is no more naughty spot (if you use it) but that they will have quiet time if they are misbehaving. Here are some rules that you can tell the children about quiet time.

Children’s rules of quiet time; 3-9 year olds
1. You will have to go to quiet time if you misbehave
2. You will stay in quiet time for 4 minutes (one minute per year old)
3. Quiet time means that you will have to sit in a chair by the teacher or standing or sitting by them when we are outside
4. Quiet time starts when you are sitting quietly
5. If you start to make a fuss, talk, or leave quiet time, the time starts again when you are sitting still again
6. You can leave quiet time when the teachers say it is time You are not to talk to anyone when you are in quiet time

Quiet time for 18 month -3 year olds

Very young child can benefit from quiet time although they will not remember or understand rules so will need to use it where appropriate and will not be able to have explained the rules as such beforehand. You will only need to use it as a last resort and sparingly to help a child calm down by sitting by you for a short time.

Practitioners rules for quiet time

1. Use quiet time when children will not comply with the nursery rules and you have used a fitting consequences but the behaviour is persisting.
2. Quiet time is on a chair or on the floor next to you
3. Quiet time is for 1 minute for every year of their lives and it starts from when they are sitting still and quiet. (be accurate on this and make sure you time it, if you want it to be effective)
4. When in quiet time don’t give the child attention
5. Quiet time needs to be used consistently for unwanted behaviour. You may find you are using it several times a day at first, but this will become less frequent as the children begin to adjust to your new rules and positive actions.
6. If a child tries to leave quiet time or gets upset, take their hand and put them back into quiet time, for the first time you can say, you need to sit in quiet time, but anytime after that don’t speak to them, just take them back to quiet time.
7. When quiet time is over you can tell the child that quiet time has finished and add, “thank you for sitting nicely”. Then direct them to what you want them to do, which may be to do what you asked them before they went into quiet time.

So remember that quiet time is all about keeping a positive relationship with the children because this way you will bring out a child’s natural desire to please you. It gives you a chance to promote good behaviour and show children by example how you want them to behave.


Please contact me for details of staff training days and parent courses at childbehaviour@aol.com and go to the Child Behaviour website for more details; http://bit.ly/CBD1DAY

Don't Force Kids to Eat, But Don't Let Them Complain

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

In order to teach children to like healthy food, you'll need to feed them foods that are new, and foods that require many exposures to like.  As a result, your children will probably not like all the meals you cook.  They may not like a meal because the food is new.  Or they won't like it because it's a food that requires many exposures to like, like vegetables.

It's ok for your child not to like a food.  It's ok for your child to not eat a food.  But don't let your child complain about a food.  Complaining is not ok for several reasons.  First of all, it saps your morale.  As a parent dedicated to teaching your child to like healthy food, you put in time and effort cooking healthy, home-cooked meals, made with real ingredients.  It's demoralizing to have your child complain when you've worked so hard.  Second, if one child complains, it influences the other children.  It's difficult for even an adult to enjoy a dish when someone is saying how yucky it tastes.

So, implement these rules.  First, your children can eat or not eat a dish.  Don't make them eat something they don't like (although you can suggest that they try it).  Second, your children cannot complain about a dish.  If they don't want to eat it, they can eat the other dishes on the plate.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Happier Kids Now expo for free!

The happier kids now expo is full of helpful tips for parent's and teachers on how to help children to grow up happier. Join in now for free, I really think you willbe glad you did :)

Let me know Ruth

Tips on motivating young children to be active listeners

Here are some really useful ideas from a friend of mine of how to motivate young children to be active listeners, thanks Kakie for the great tips.

Kakie is co-creator and author for the popular Bur Bur and Friends children's book series. Bur Bur and Friends uses a cast of multicultural characters who educate kids about sports, outdoor exploration and active play through first time experiences.

As a mom it is really hard sometimes to pick your battles. (“How many times do I have to ask you to put your shoes on before you actually do it?”). Here are some strategies that seem have been successful for me. Hopefully they will work for you too.
1. I went to a local craft store,bought some brightly colored tag board and created a chart. Every time my son listens or helps, we put a sticker on the board. When the board gets full he gets a treat or toy. What is important here is that kids tie the good behavior to a reward that makes them feel good with positive reinforcement.
2. I also picked up a notebook and said to my son, “I think you are really creative. What would you think if we created a list of family rules in our house? Wouldn’t that be a great idea?” He responds with a yes and then I say, ” I need your help. What do you think they should be?” This gets buy in (with a little coaching).
Once we finished I said, “Wow – you are really good at this! So now, we both agree that these are our family rules? Remember, you created them, so do we agree moving ahead we will stick to them? Can we shake hands on that, Great! Lets sign it together! “(you may need to repeat this 4-5 times).
I took everything he said and turned it into a positive statement, had him sign the paper and explained what the signing meant (a promise or a contract). So for example, if he said, “Don’t complain”, I changed it to “We always help family without being asked.”
When he began acting up by not listening, I would point to the refrigerator where the rules were posted and calmly say, “Hmmmm, do you think that one is part of the family rules? Remember what it meant when we signed it? Don’t forget, you made those family rules all by yourself.”
It is also important to brag about the rules list in front of family and friends in front of him ‘Johnny made up a list of rules for our house, isn’t that terrific?’ Then say ‘What do you think we need to do to make sure we are following the rules?” Can we pretend this never happened and try to do it again using the rules? What would that look like?…
It’s brilliant – they come up with the answers and you look like a shining star. I believe our kids want to please us. This is especially true when we are giving them positive reinforcement.
Don’t forget to keep those rules up on the refrigerator!!
Here is the rules list for our family:
a. We say nice words and are kind
b. We listen and pay attention
c. We cooperate and work together like a friend
d. We always do what is right
e. We respect what we have
f. We express our feelings
g. We encourage each other
h. We laugh, make funny jokes and always give hugs and kisses
i. We talk in a respectful tone
j. We use our words, ask for what we need
k. Always tell the truth and be honest
l. Be thankful
m. We help family without being asked
n. We use constructive criticism
o. We separate the person from the behavior (he is too young to get this now, but as he grows he will come to understand what that means).

By Kakie Fitzsimmons, Vice President and founding partner, Farmer’s Hat Productions co-author Bur Bur and Friends book series, catch up with Kakie at http://burburandfriends.com/

Take care Ruth

How do you want your children to behave?

Do you find that the more your child misbehaves the more you think about it and the more you think about it the worse it gets?  Then it's time to take a step back and think about how you really want your child to behave.

By taking the time to regularly think about how you would like your child to behave you will find yourself focusing more on their good behaviour and encouraging more of that. 

It is vital that you pay more attention to how you would like your children to behave because children will do more of what they get attention for and by thinking about how you would like your child to behave you will start to ask yourself the right questions about how you can get your child to behave in that way. 

For example, if you feel that your child is unco-operative and never helps you out and you would like your child to be more co-operative and helpful, stop saying to yourself my child is unco-operative and never helps me out and start to ask yourself,

"How can I get my child to be more co-operative and helpful?"

This way you will start to come up with the answers you need.

You can start to think about how you want your child to behave by making a list of 5 behaviours you don't like and making them into a positive statement instead like the one above.

For example,

I hate my child moaning and crying to get what they want

Change it into a positive...

I want my child to ask nicely for what they want

Now think of ways that you can encourage this behaviour

• Only let them have what they want if they ask nicely
• Don't give into their crying and tantrums
• Praise them when they ask nicely
• ............add more ideas

By focusing on the behaviour that you want from your child, your mind will look for the answers of how to get it.  Give it a try and let me know how you get on..

If you like this idea and would like more, you can find a comprehensive guide to your child's behaviour in my book;
'A Parent's Guide to Children's Behaviour', which you can download instantly at http://tinyurl.com/yds3gqq

Best wishes Ruth