Parenting Tips

Compassionate Parenting provides a secure emotional base from which children carry out their genetic programs to explore and interact with their environments in safety and protection. At the same time, parents develop the protective, nurturing, and compassionate skills that empower them in all areas of life, including work and health. We simply function at our best when we have emotional connections with our children that are strong, flexible, and enjoyable.

Compassion most definitely does not mean letting children get away with bad or selfish behavior. It does not mean that parents should go along with whatever children want. Nor does it mean overindulgence, generosity, or magnanimity. Compassionate parents are able to see beneath the surface of their children’s behavior to get at the deeper motivations. They empower children to control their own behavior by teaching them to regulate their motivations.

Compassionate Parenting is certainly not perfect parenting. The best parents in the world do not go a single day without making some error in what they do or say to their children. Fortunately, kids are extremely resilient when it comes to parental mistakes. A major tenet of the Compassionate Parenting program is that whatever parents say and do matters far less than their emotional motivation. Unless a child is deep into a destructive mode, almost anything a parent says or does in apositive mode will succeed. In fact, experiments show that children perceive even highly critical statements done with positive motivation as caring and encouraging.

Regardless of what mode the child is in, almost nothing the parent says or does in the negative or destructive modes will work. Parents must not match the negative and destructive motivations of their children in kind. Doing so only reinforces them and teaches kids the dangerous lesson that the one with the most power to be negative and destructive wins.

General Skills of Compassionate Parenting
• Listen to your children. Research shows that children in all stages of development complain that their parents yell too much and listen too little.

• As much as possible, let solutions to problems come from the children. As they mature, your job is less to give answers and more and more to ask the questions that lead them to solutions.

• Choose toys that have something beneath the surface to help deepen their interest. Young children cannot sustain interest for long, but they can develop a beginning awareness that interest works better when it runs deeper than the surface.

• Understand that change stimulates emotion. You and your children will have emotional response to change, regardless of the content.

• Take care to respond to positive emotions as well as negative. Otherwise, you set up the habit of using trouble to get attention. Compassionate attention to expressions of interest and enjoyment are opportunities to develop positive emotional response in children and adults.

• Express affection to your children and to other adults in the family.

General Rules of Effective Discipline
Like all human beings, children need discipline to help them function at their best. They actually want discipline. Children who receive little discipline tend to feel unloved, isolated, and unprotected. Many adolescents from undisciplined homes lie to their peers and make up limits that they attribute to neglectful parents.

Children view it as the job of parents to set limits and as their job to oppose them. Compassionate Parents set firm limits about important issues of safety, health, learning, education, and morality and encourage cooperation with the rest.

Many discipline problems rise from some physical discomfort, such as hunger or sleep deprivation. Take care that the child’s physical needs and your own are met. Emotional discomfort caused by nervous energy, anxiety, and disappointment accounts for most the rest. Of course, discipline that increases anxiety, such as yelling or shaming, will only make emotional discomfort worse and produce more of the undesired behavior, at least in the long run.

• Discipline must be implemented with positive parental motivation to protect, nurture, encourage, influence, guide, or cooperate.

• Discipline is a long-term project. Except around safety issues, discipline is never for a single behavior. Rather, it is to give direction for a stream of behaviors over time.

• Stress safety, health, learning, education, and morality as goals that produce pride and empowerment.

• Whenever possible, point out how the long-term best interests of the child are served by cooperation.

• Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. Give short, clear instructions. Don’t yell.

• Keep the focus on the behavior, not your emotional state. Never discipline in anger.

• Ask questions whenever possible to help children come up with their own motivation to cooperate. The regulation for behavior must be established in the child, not in you as policeman.

• Help children to understand that their behavior is a choice. They always have the power to choose better behavior.

• Help children think through the consequences of their behavior choices, especially the response that their behavior invokes in other people.

http://compassionpower.com.

Source: http://www.365articles.com

Your children learn how men should behave in relationships by watching you. Even if you do not live with their mother, they are keenly aware of the way you interact with her. Most divorce and domestic violence happens to men and women who grew up without a father modeling healthy relationship behavior. Here are 10 tips to help you model the way you want your daughter to be treated in her adult relationships, and the way you want your son to treat the woman he loves.
1. Value their mother: Children value themselves and others more when they feel that their mother and father value one another.
2. Perspective-taking (seeing things through someone else’s eyes): Show your children the importance of respecting the perspectives of people they love, even when they disagree with them.
3. Cooperation: Show how to participate willingly in work, problem-solving, or task-accomplishment.
4. Negotiation: Show your children how to work out solutions to problems that respect one another’s perspectives.
5. Resourcefulness: Never stop trying to make things better.
6. Motivation to improve: Approach disagreements with the attitude of making them better, not worse.
7. Compassion: This gut-level reaction to your wife’s pain, discomfort, or anxiety includes sympathy, protectiveness, and willingness to help but not control. It recognizes that your wife is different from you, with her own temperament, set of experiences, beliefs, values, and preferences.
8. Good will: Learning a positive attitude toward the people they love will greatly improve your children’s chances of having good relationships. Think good thoughts about your wife, and always give her the benefit of a doubt.
9. Affection: Showing affection toward their mother makes children feel more secure.
10. Relationship investment: Successful relationships require that people care about and occasionally do nice things for one another.

http://compassionpowr.com

Source: http://www.365articles.com

Organising a kids party is great fun!

No, wait! Come back! I’ll explain…

How many times have you dropped your kids off at a party, only to witness chaos as soon as the door is opened by a hassled mother whose eyes are begging you to take her away from all of this and put her out of her misery?

Behind her, two kids are swinging from the light fittings; another pair are tearing up the carpet, presumably trying to find a hidden entrance to the magical world of Narnia; and the rest are deeply engrossed in a who-can-stuff-the-most-hamsters-into-your-mouth contest.

It needn’t be like that…

The only reason that kids parties dissolve into little sessions of anarchy is boredom - and that, dear parent, is all down to you.

“But, I tried so hard!”, I hear you cry. Yes, you probably did: lots of crisps, a big cake, and plenty of balloons.

The thing is, you broke the number one rule of kids parties. The rule that you must obey at all costs, unless you want your house destroyed by a legion of little monsters…

NEVER, EVER PLAY MUSICAL CHAIRS!

Here’s a secret: kids hate the game. Even if they once enjoyed it, they’ve played it at every birthday, Christmas and end of school party they’ve ever been to.

Plus, you’re the one who has to cope with a dozen or more bored kids careering round the edges of the room while two determined finalists battle is out for that final seat.

That leads me nicely to rule number two:

NEVER PLAY ANY GAME THAT INVOLVE KIDS BEING ‘OUT’

If you play games that keep all the kids involved from start to finish, you’ve got their attention – and when you’ve got their attention, they aren’t scratching their name into the varnish of your dining table. Simple, really.

Here are a few more tried and tested party laws:

GET RID OF THE PARENTS

Aside from the ones that are there to help, parents get in the way. Plus, their kids won’t really start to enjoy themselves until their figure of authority has gone.

GIVE EACH KID A NAME STICKER

Not only will you remember who everyone is, they also help quieter children to break the ice, and you can write everything from parent’s mobile phone numbers to special dietary requirements on them, thus avoiding needless stress.

See how easy it can be?

ALWAYS HAVE A PARTY THEME

It’s the 21st century. A few party poppers and re-lighting candles just don’t do it anymore. A party theme gets the kids excited from the moment they receive their invitation, and gives you something to do on the big day as they start to arrive. The early kids can make extra bits of costume or help with last minute decorations while they’re waiting for their friends to turn up.

Then, run the party in this order:

GAMES – FOOD – PRESENTS

It may seem cruel to the party child, but always leave the opening of the presents to the end of the party to avoid gifts getting broken or lost in the fun. And if you get the kids running wild after they’ve had food, you’re just asking for trouble!

That’s all there is to it. Follow those six simple rules, and you’ll enjoy the party almost as much as your kids. Plus, you’ll be considered a hero at the school gates on Monday morning!

And remember to have fun! It is a party after all!

Source: http://www.365articles.com

Many parents make the decision to homeschool their children, and in doing so are privy to some clear benefits. Homeschooling allows you to tailor a specific education to your child’s individual needs, something that is often lacking in the public or private school systems. Homeschooling also allows you and your child to learn together, creating not only a valuable learning experience but strengthening family bonds. Add to this the fact that it is often prohibitively expensive to send multiple children to private schools, and we can see why homeschooling has become increasingly popular.

One of the most important aspects of homeschooling your child is coming up with a clear plan and set of goals. One of the greatest aspects of homeschooling - its complete flexibility - can also be one of the most difficult if it is not approached directly. Without a clear plan, you run the risk of creating a scattershot education that puts your child out of place with his or her peers.

So when you begin homeschooling, you should come up with a clear set of general goals. Think about why you want to homeschool your children, and what you want them to get out of the experience. What, generally, do you want your child’s education to encompass? Once you have answered these general questions for yourself, begin to split your child’s education into various subject areas. For each subject area, you want to come up with a timeline and set of goals.

A good place to start in terms of a timeline would be to look at the standard curriculum for your child’s grade in a public or private school. While it is almost certainly true that one of these reasons you’ve selected to homeschool your child is to go beyond and outside this standard curriculum, you also want to make sure that your child does not fall behind his or her peers in a given subject area.

Come up with your plan by looking at the standard expectations for a given subject level and then working backwards: how do you want to achieve that level of knowledge? What are the targets for each week? By setting these targets you can establish a timeline and curriculum that allows for effective homeschooling.

Clearly, one of the points of homeschooling is its relative flexibility, and you by no means need to stick to a plan in a completely rigid manner, but don’t let this tempt you into avoiding one: although it may seem wonderful to have an entirely “organic” education for your children, this can easily go awry. If you constantly let your child’s learning be dictated exclusively by his or her interests, gaps will appear in her knowledge. Instead make a clear educational plan that allows for flexibility. Plan what your child is going to learn, but leave the “how she will learn it” some breathing room: as you begin the process of homeschooling you’ll learn how your child learns best, and can begin to incorporate this into the lessons.

By coming up with a clear educational plan you arm yourself with one of the most essential tools to effective homeschooling.

Home Schooling Tips and Information

Source: http://www.365articles.com

I’ve played just about every kids party game going - but here are a few even I wouldn’t go

near…

Milk The Hamster

Musical Vomiting

Who Can Fit The Most Goldfish In their Mouth?

Catch The Colostomy

I Spy With Grandpa’s Glass Eye…

Rover’s Buried Here Somewhere

Pin The Tail On The Pitbull

Pass The Dog Turd

Mommy’s Closet Battery-Operated-Item Scavenger Hunt

How Much Milk Can You Fit In Daddy’s Briefcase?

An Eye For An Eye

The Entrance To Narnia Is Somewhere Beneath This Carpet

Light Fitting Trapeze

Staple Grandma

Rinse The Poor Kid

They’ll Never Find The Gerbil

Who Needs Brakes?

Lick Chase

Raise The Dead

Clown Kick Relay

Having said that, I can think of at least three of the above I’ve just about stopped from

being played. The life of a kids entertainer can often be interesting…

Source: http://www.365articles.com