When One Kid Picks On the Other

Can't promise the world here, but it works for us and for my friend's kids too.

Sibling rivalry, insecurity, personality... Whatever makes that one kid more aggressive about getting his way or just belittling the other kid... I don't know.  I had to think long and hard about the Psychology 102 class I took so long ago and all the things I was so sure of when I was younger.  

How did I handle this when I was a nanny?  It wasn't a problem for me.  It was only a problem when their parents were home.

When I taught gymnastics?  Maybe I was lucky or perfectly even-handed or maybe girls don't do it as much.  Who knows?

But I could see the flaws in how the school kept handling my one son's behavior and when I tried to explain that punishment is attention and thus is positive re-enforcement, they kinda told me to go blow.  Back at 'ya, school.  Now they are homeschooled and it's SO MUCH less of a problem.

This is what I came up with:
Punishment won't work because getting attention is usually the child's goal when he misbehaves.
So, when one kid is behaving unfairly toward the other kid, the victim gets a kiss on the head.

That's it.  No bribes.  No yelling.  No crying angry fits.  No punishment at all.  I explain that the victim is being treated unfairly and he gets a kiss on the head.  Sometimes he gets a hug too.

I will say one more thing about my parenting style:  I am a tyrant.  We have lots of homeschool days when we all wish and threaten to go back to public school.  I don't pretend to be perfect at any of this.  But my goal is to raise my children to their full potential, not to be their friend.  I'm OK with them disliking me sometimes because...  

One of my very favorite people was this 72 year-old psychologist who lived near me years ago.  Every time we were together we would laugh until we cried.  I smacked her in the head once when she was being stung by a bee and she accused me of having issues with my mother.  "My mother is allergic to bees!" I yelled.  Then we laughed until we couldn't breathe.

I asked if she had an opinion about one of my odd-ball employees and she said, "I always have an opinion.  I just don't tell you unless you give me $78."

So here is what she said about being a perfect mother: Don't.  She said mothers should always be "not quite good enough."  It makes their children strive for independence and improvement.  And let's face it, nobody is a perfect mother.  Not quite good enough is all any of us will ever be and that is exactly what our kids need.

We Passed A Law!

It's been a big year for us and I was asked for some information about one event in particular:  my kids worked to pass Georgia House Bill 810.

So here's a copy of the email we exchanged:

Hello again!
Good to hear from you!  Hope everything is going well for you!  It's been a big year for us.  The boys feel like Sapelo Island was the best school day this year! 

You are welcome to post the info about HB810.  What other information would you like to know? 

We tried to follow the bill from the time I read about it until the signing.  The day I saw the post...

How To Get Your Kids To Behave - Parts 1&2

The key to getting children to behave is motivation. 

Give them a reason to want to do things your way.  Things like: "If you get yourself dressed all the way to the shoes, you get a tootsie roll."  
"If you finish your homework in less than an hour, you get a tootsie roll."  
"If you put away the laundry, you get to choose dinner."

The next step is follow-through for both rewards and punishment.

No giving in to crying when you know how much they really, really wanted something. If there was a prerequisite to get the reward and they didn't do it, they don't get it.  Period.  If you really wanted to give it to them, you should not have given them conditions to earn it. 

Punishments too.  If the entire extended family is here from out of town just for the parade, you can't possibly "not go to the parade unless you finish your homework." Don't claim that will be the punishment.  Choose something enforceable. 

My kids behave.  Most of the time.  I have great kids.  But they didn't figure it out on their own.  I had to teach them because I am the parent.  And teaching is done inside a set of restrictions called rules.  If the rules are broken and not repaired with consequences, their behavior will be broken too.

It stinks to enforce rules.  But it stinks more to be unappreciated, taken for granted, lied to and disrespected. 

We try to avoid the rules completely by motivation.  We aren't even on the punishment end of the spectrum....most of the time.

How to Get Your Kid to Read AND Follow Directions

Here's a tip to get your kids to read: make them prepare their own food.

Exercise in following directions: make them prepare their own food.

Start with microwave meals.  Make sure you aren't teaching them to cook.  Scrambled eggs for instance, would not be reading or following directions.  That would be you demonstrating and they aren't going to listen or pay attention to you because they will still get the food either way.

Move up to brownies.  They will be motivated by brownies.  Your job is oven duty ONLY.  Resist the urge to help.  They have to clean up too if they want to eat the brownies.  They can clean up while the brownies cool.

Then cookies.  A LOT of reading and following directions for cookies.  I'll bet you've even messed them up once or twice, right?

When they can make cookies, they are ready for anything!

SNOW-ish!

One inch of snow has been promised to us but of course the kids expect the six inches we got a few years back.

So here's the stone-cold skinny on the trick we tried:

Throwing boiling water into the super-cooled atmosphere...

McWane Science Center

McWane Science Center takes up a big corner of downtown Birmingham, AL and rightly so.  The ingenuity of the interactive displays more than makes up for the few missing pieces in the giant Tinker Toys.  The kids wanted to spend hours just laying on the bed of nails.  Nails go up...

Presidents, Lesson One

Seems like basic historical knowledge in the United States would start with the founding of the country and by default, the Founding Fathers and Early Presidents.

We have a great book called John, Paul, George and Ben.  My kids were indoctrinated into  Beatles culture early, so they got the joke right away.

The founding of the country is a great subject for little boys because...

"Times" Line

Here is a physical demonstration of multiplication facts.  Since the kids make their own, the information is more personal and absorbed more quickly.

Four pieces of notebook paper taped together to make one long sheet.  All the red lines lined up and the top margins were overlapped so the blue lines continued evenly down the entire length of the paper.

Each line was numbered from 1-100.

The line numbers were the...