Avivah Werner

Category: Parenting

  • Dealing with defiance

    >Today my oldest (4 1/2) started whining and acting not nicely. I told her she needed to go to her room and when she was ready, she could come out. She said, “no”.   I didn’t react well as I felt like she was being defiant to my face.  And, I felt like I didn’t have anything to punish her with.  I seriously did not know how to react properly. I reacted poorly and escalated the whole thing more than it needed to be – not b/c what she had initially done but b/c she continued to be defiant and wouldn’t listen. How do you choose the appropriate punishment?  How do you stay calm in situations like this one? I feel horrible for the way I acted/over re-acted and for the way the whole thing spiraled out of control. <<

    Let’s start at the beginning, to when your daughter first started whining. At that point, I would have directly addressed the whining, since that’s the first thing she did that was upsetting to you – I would not send her to the room.   (I’m not a proponent of sending kids to their room since it doesn’t address the heart of the issue, which is their inner attitude.)  I would tell her as soon as she started whining that if there’s something that she wants to say, she can, but it needs to be with a pleasant voice. Then I would have her practice using a pleasant voice to say whatever she was trying to say.   If she whines in the future, do the same thing: immediately have her use her pleasant voice. If she refuses to speak nicely and escalates the situation, then tell her since she’s having a hard time speaking nicely, she can stay quiet until she can speak nicely.   And if she persisted in escalating the situation, I would tell her that since it’s hard for her to remember not to whine, she needs to put her hand over her mouth to help her remember.

    While this is happening, though, it’s important that you stay warm and loving.  Keep her close to you during this entire time; don’t think that because she’s not whining that she should go play on her own.  Take some time to connect on a heart level with her, to keep the bonds between you strong. This is a big part of why I feel I can be pretty strong (people looking in on the outside who didn’t see the big picture might think it was overly strict) when I need to and my kids don’t usually perceive it as punitive – because I’ve made an effort to keep our relationships strong and they know they’re loved.

    Responding right away to the first thing that she did that needed correction would have avoided the entire scenario above, and the it wouldn’t have turned into a power struggle.   I say that because lots of times parents overreact to situations because they feel helpless, so then they get more upset than they would if they felt they knew how to handle the situation. By interacting with her from a position of confidence and inner strength, you’ll feel loving and calm when you discipline her. To be continued tomorrow…. 🙂

    Avivah

    PS – thank you, R, for your patience in waiting for this response!  🙂

  • Swaddling babies

    This post is one I’ve been wanting to write for over four weeks now! 

    Before my 18 month old was born, a friend lent me a book, The Happiest Baby on the Block, that detailed the benefits of swaddling.  I liked what he had to say about a baby feeling more cozy and secure when swaddled, but when the baby was born, I just couldn’t seem to successfully swaddle him and keep him swaddled – an arm always seemed to be poking up a minute after I wrapped him. So after trying a number of times and not having any success, I gave it up.

    Fast forward 17 months.  The day after this baby was born, a friend gave me a swaddling blanket, and it has been fantastic!  I really marvel at what a difference it makes when the baby is swaddled and when he isn’t.  He sleeps much longer, and cries much less.  Three nights ago, the swaddler went into the wash.  I was waiting for it to be washed, and didn’t use it for the first night.  The baby was awake at least six times that night.  The next night, I still didn’t see the swaddler in the clean clothes basket, so again, I couldn’t use it.  The same thing – he slept fitfully and woke up a number of times.  Yesterday afternoon, I mentioned to one of my girls that I really needed the swaddler, and she told me it had been put away in his drawer with his clean clothes two days before!  Anyway, last night was sooo wonderful – he slept all night with just one early morning feeding.  This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a noticeable difference when he’s swaddled properly. 

    We’ve swaddled him at times during the day when he was crying, and he stopped right away.  I told my husband that seeing the difference makes me wonder what our other babies would have been like if swaddled, since I would classify this baby (when swaddled :)) as calm and easy going.  I’ve had my share of very challenging babies!

     So is the magic in the special blanket?  No, I don’t think so.  But I do think that it makes it much easier to do, especially since most baby blankets aren’t the right size or material to use as swaddlers.  My 7 yod prefers to swaddle him with a regular baby blanket, and she’s much better at wrapping him than I am!  But for me, the swaddler has been a lifesaver.

    Avivah

  • Deck building

    So often I think about posting but life is so busy that I just don’t get around to it!! This is the busiest time of year for me, and this year is busier than usual with our newest arrival taking up time and attention.  🙂

    Today was my official due date – it’s so nice that the baby has been a member of the family almost three weeks already, instead of waiting and wondering when he would be born.   Since I didn’t have to spend energy on wondering and waiting, I was able to move on to something else that I had been thinking about for quite a while. :)))

    I’ve been wanting to build a deck for the past year, and had planned it for a summer project with my kids.  I thought it would be especially nice since we would have a sturdy surface to put up the new easily assembled kind of blow up pool and the kids could enjoy water play in the hot weather.  But when the oldest two kids suddenly ended up going to sleep away camp for a month, I shelved the plans for this year – it seemed like too much to take on in the eighth month of pregnancy, in the heat of the summer, without two of the most capable workers. 

    My husband has been against this idea since I first brought it up, and didn’t get more receptive to it as time went on.  🙂  He felt that I have so much to do that he didn’t want to see me take on another big project.  I explained to him a couple of months ago that I like having something to do, but he was happy when I realized that the deck was too big a project for me at that time and stopped thinking about it.

    What does this have to do with anything right now?  Well, yesterday afternoon I had this sudden idea that we could build the deck (freestanding platform style) before my husband came home today at 4 pm.  I knew he would be happy to have it done, and if he didn’t know we were doing it, he wouldn’t worry that I was doing too much so soon after birth.  I discussed the possibility with the kids, who were very enthusiastic, but told them my concerns about the very tight time frame we would be working under.  When I first thought about building it, I planned to allot a week to get it done – and now I was giving us a day!  I talked to them about what would have to be done in what order, and the importance of being focused on our tasks.  They realized that I wouldn’t be able to physically help them with the building (it being so soon after birth), and the actual work would all be up to them – I would just direct them.  Since I had read books about deck building several months ago, I knew what we needed to do and we didn’t need to spend much time thinking about it or researching – we just had to work out the size and layout we wanted.

    The kids really wanted to do it so that we could use it for Sukkos (last year we were on the dirt and when it rained, it became mud; not so pleasant) and eagerly agreed to take on the challenge, and boy, they are an amazing team!  It was very sweet to see all six of them (oldest ds wasn’t home at first) all working together – hammering, unscrewing, etc- even my 17 month old was in on the action – he found a large bolt and used it as a hammer to bang on the wood alongside his older siblings.  When ds14 got home, he jumped right in to help.

    We decided on a deck that would be 16.5 feet by almost 13 feet, eight inches off of the ground.  (Because it is freestanding, we didn’t have to worry about digging foundations or applying for permits, both potentially a big concern.)  Since we were using lumber for the frame that we collected a few months ago from a deck someone was dismantling, it took significantly more time to assemble than it would have if we had just purchased exactly the lumber we needed from the store.  But the boards were already in the yard, and it was a good feeling to finally put them to use. 

    We didn’t actually manage to finish everything before my husband got home, but we did have the entire frame finished by then, and I came home from the lumber yard with the final load of wood to cover the frame with right after dh got home.  He literally was speechless – he couldn’t believe that we thought of the idea and gotten so much done in the day that he was gone.  The kids at first couldn’t tell how he felt about it, because he just kept saying how shocked he was – so finally ds8 asked if he was happy about it.  And dh told him he just couldn’t believe it, that he thought it was amazing.

    Tomorrow morning the kids plan to finish attaching the surface boards – most of them are down, but all of them aren’t yet screwed into place.  Since I have alot of other things I need to do tomorrow (being erev Sukkos), they decided they want to wake up early so they can finish it by 11 am or so before they need to get to their other tasks.  It has been exciting for them to watch the deck take form and know that they have really made this crazy idea happen in time to use for our sukka this year. 

    I strongly believe in giving kids opportunities to stretch themselves.  As parents, we can’t give our children confidence or self esteem, but we can give them experiences that have the potential to build an inner confidence.  When kids successfully accomplish something that feels significant to them,  they feel more confident and that confidence will carry over into many other areas of life.

    Avivah

  • Labor Day activities

    We had a nice full day yesterday.  We started off by starting to finish off organizing all the boxes of clothes, but then needed to leave to a community fix up day.  We were there for several hours (not dh and ds14), and got a lot done.  Well, I didn’t do much except watch ds17 months while the kids worked.  I feel that volunteering is an important thing for the kids to participate in, to see how they can help others with their time and energy.  They are able to realize that they can help make a difference even if they are kids!  Not that many people showed up, maybe because it was Labor Day.  One of the organizers came over to ask if he could give the older girls a brand new stereo he had forgotten was there in the storage area they were clearing out, so I said it was fine.  I didn’t realize that he really meant a stereo system!  (Apparently he bought a load of 50 at an auction, sold a bunch, bartered a bunch more for a vehicle, and forgot that he had stored three more away.)  It is really nice, but really big!  So they ended up setting it up in the basement instead of their room, where everyone can enjoy it.

    Straight from there I took ds to a dentist appt – his dentist was very generous in offering to stay late so he could see ds, since he knew that I made the appt seven weeks ago but then got the school calendar and found out they would be having school at the time of the scheduled appt.  The entire building where the dentist was located was locked, but we found an unlocked stairwell and went up.  There was just one problem – I couldn’t remember what floor the dentist was on, so at each floor, we walked around to see if he was there, then went back up the next flight of stairs.  He was on the fifth floor – I was finding it kind of amusing picturing myself going up all these stairs (while having lots of strong Braxton Hicks), as fast as I could (which isn’t very fast at this point 🙂 because I didn’t want to be late. 

    Right after the dentist, ds and I went to the memorial service for a friend’s 20 year old daughter, who was tragically killed in a car accident.  She was a very special young lady, who left an unusually large amount of good memories behind for someone that age (or even someone 20 years older). 

     Once I got home, I wanted to get back to the job of organizing all those clothes boxes we started on earlier, but got sidetracked when we went to set up the new stereo in the basement.  When I got down there, I saw it needed some major reorganizing, so we got to work to get that done.  I was pretty wiped out by dinner time!

    I was joking to ds14 that it would be a good day to give birth, due to the name of the day, but that didn’t happen.  🙂   I actually expected that it would, due to some signs and strong feelings about it, but those feelings shifted to anxiety when I found out my midwife was an hour and a half away and wouldn’t be back until 8 am.  And since dh had to leave for work at 6 am, it didn’t seem like a good time. 🙂  People don’t realize what a major part emotions play in giving birth or going into labor.  A woman who feels emotionally ready will let go and labor can progress, but many times labor will stall or stop entirely when something happens to interrupt her feeling of security.

     As for those boxes of clothes – that became today’s job!  We have a few boxes left that were in the room where our toddler was sleeping that we didn’t yet get to, but otherwise, all the others in the house have been moved to the attic.  So hopefully I can get it all finished up today.  Though there’s always more to get done, this is a big project that I will be glad to know is finished, and will give everyone more space in their rooms, while making it easier for everyone to find/put away clothes that they are growing into or out of.

     Avivah

  • Love is the key

    A couple of months ago, within a couple of days I had three separate conversations with three different moms in which I was asked for suggestions on how to deal with parenting challenges they were having. The ages ranged from toddlers through adolescence, but my parenting philosophy is the same for everyone, it’s just the specifics that change.

    Afterwards I was concerned that these parents might take my suggestions and apply them without the inner love towards their child that makes the crucial difference in how the rules are perceived. Parenting isn’t black and white, though when listening to specific parenting suggestions, it’s easy to think it’s just a matter of following a formula and then you’ll get results. But it’s not – it’s a matter of the heart. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of just following the instructions on how to raise your child, but when we do, we risk damaging our relationships as we place rules above people’s feelings and needs. I was afraid these parents were going to take a hard line approach with their children as a result of our conversations (I stressed with them the importance of clarifying limits and expectations) but that shouldn’t include a hard line attitude (though I repeatedly stressed this, I didn’t feel that it was absorbed the way the action suggestions were).

    There are steps that I suggest parents take to get back on track with their children, to turn things around in the right direction (and they are the things that I would do, too), but I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that it’s all orders and strictness around here. It’s not, and I wouldn’t want it to be for anyone else either. When the boundaries are clarified with love, it leaves most of the time together with our children available for enjoyable and loving interactions.

    I’ve fallen into the trap of leaning too heavily on my authority and not having enough understanding of the individual child while insisting things be done a certain way, and it’s damaging in the long and short term to interact with our children like this. Actually, what prompted this post now is that a couple of weeks ago I realized that I was doing that with a particular child. I noticed lessening receptiveness to what I said and increasing friction in our interactions. After a few days, I realized this negativity was becoming somewhat regular, and it made me sit back and think about where it was coming from and why it was happening. Though it was unpleasant to realize, I had to honestly admit to myself that I was being too demanding in certain situations with this child.

    I then made the conscious effort to get myself back into a good space, speaking from love and not speaking at all unless there was love in my heart, and almost immediately, the friction faded away. Parenting is more than barking orders and expecting immediate compliance from our children. Parenting isn’t mainly about the rules, it’s about the spirit and attitude that we apply them with, as well as the relationships we build with our children when we interact with them.

    Remember: we can’t insist on our children showing respect for us and forget that we need to show them respect, too.

  • Teaching independence and older kids

    Hooray – my kitchen sink is finally fixed!!! It’s been a problem for a week now, something was wrong with the garbage disposale and dh wasn’t home long enough to fix it before the weekend. Yesterday morning he took the entire thing apart, but didn’t have time to put it together before he had to go to work. Do you know how fun washing dishes in a plastic box only about 1.5 times bigger than a shoebox is (because that was all I had to use in place of a dishpan)? It was really a huge effort to get the dishes done, since it meant going back and forth every few minutes to dump out the dirty water, rinsing the washed dishes, then back to dump the water again. It really makes me think about how easy we have it nowadays, and appreciate a tiny bit how much harder our ancestors had to work than we do.

    To continue with the examples I promised yesterday on older kids, here you are!

    I began teaching my kids to cook (at the stove) when they were 5 – 7. A friend once told me she didn’t feel it was safe for her daughter to learn to cook (at the time she was 8 yrs. old and it came up because she cooked with my girls when she came to visit, and was so excited and kept saying she couldn’t believe she was really cooking something). I suggested that instead of just refusing to allow her daughter access to the kitchen because of her concerns, she address the issue directly and show her daughter how to be safe when cooking (for example, her daughter had long hair, so she could have shown her how to pull her hair up so it wouldn’t be a fire hazaard, and initially stayed with her while she cooked).

    My oldest son (he’ll be 14 tomorrow :)) has independently done a huge amount of work to finish our attic. His ability to do this didn’t happen overnight and didn’t magically appear out of nowhere. I initially worked with him and showed him how to hang drywall, dh showed him how to use power tools. As he got more and more comfortable with the skills necessary, I gave him more leeway. Now he goes up to the attic when he has time and desire and does whatever he does, and I just go admire all of his work at the end of the day. This could never happen if I didn’t help him learn to be capable and safe early on in the process, and trust he was inherently competent.

    Kids have an innate need to explore their environment and it’s stifling and unhealthy to make things forbidden. Sometimes as parents it’s easier (in the short term) to just say ‘no’ instead of taking the time to teach them to do what they want to do safely. But in the long run, it’s detrimental and just makes life harder for both the child and parents.

    Avivah

  • Stair climbing and teaching independence

    Someone commented about the danger involved in allowing a baby to be in a home with stairs and no safety gate, which I didn’t agree with. Here’s my position:

    I don’t think it’s a dangerous situation for a baby to be in a home with stairs, just dangerous to be in a home with stairs without being allowed to learn to safely climb them. I’ve lived in houses with stairs for my last three babies, never used a safety gate, and haven’t found this to be a concern. The way I deal with it may not be typical, but it works well for us and we’ve never had a baby fall down the stairs.

    As soon as a baby shows signs of readiness to climb the stairs, I let him, staying close by (right behind him) in case he slips. As he gets more experienced, I give him more and more leeway (eg, staying within a step or two but not immediately behind him), until I’m confident that he can safely climb by himself. This doesn’t take a very long time, but does require the willingness to invest the time to help your baby become safely independent. My baby is now 15 months, and regularly climbed to the next floor without anyone around by the age of 12 months (probably earlier, I just can’t remember those kind of specifics).

    This is reflective of my general approach to parenting, which is to help my kids navigate new situations by staying close in the beginning while allowing them to explore, and decreasing my presence/ help until they are ready to be independent. This applies as much to babies (eg, teaching them not to swallow small items by giving them the opportunity to learn to discriminate) as it does to older children (there are lots of life lessons then!).

    I try not to say no just because I can picture something going wrong. Instead, I think about how to make the situation emotionally comfortable for me without stifling the child’s need to explore his environment. This process doesn’t stop, it’s ongoing as kids get older. My kids have a pretty good level of competence in many areas because I’ve given them room to develop competence, but that has never meant taking a hands off attitude and letting whatever happens, happen.

    (I’ll continue in my next post with some examples of how this has played out with older kids.)

    Avivah

  • Foosball tables and family fun

    Wow, I’m feeling tired today. And I woke up late, too, and just finished a nap. I need to rework my mornings, since I’m sleeping in later than usual and dd10 has been waking up and taking care of the little one when he wakes up (earlier than everyone else, of course and she’s the one who hears him first!). Very sweet of her, but she needs to get started on her morning routine when she wakes up and this keeps her from being able to get started the way she would like. When I go to sleep earlier, I wake up at 4 am and can’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours and then oversleep until 8:30 or 9; when I go to sleep later, I wake up at 8:30 or 9 am and the kids are all up before me. I’m wondering if I should just go to sleep early and then wake up at 4 am. I could certainly get a lot accomplished in a quiet house! And maybe then I could schedule in a mid day nap.

    Anyway, I fortunately have some time to get ungroggy before I need to head out to buy the game table that I called someone about. We currently have a foosball table that we got (for free) that the kids LOVE. I never really played foosball as a kid and it had no attraction for me, so I didn’t anticipate how popular it would be. When we moved it to the basement, the framing had to be dismantled and now won’t easily go back together, so it’s a bit shaky. I pointed out to ds13 that all we need to do is get some small screws and redrill the holes for two cross boards, which he agreed about, but in the meantime, I found someone selling a junior game table. It has foosball and several other games (like mini ping pong, knock hockey, shuffleboard, pool), and I thought it would be nice to have since it maximizes the games they can play and takes up the same amount of space as the individual foosball table. (I really like items that maximize space by doing more than one thing.) I stumbled across this when I was looking for a used air hockey table, and getting this solves part of the dilemma I was wondering about.

    Here was my dilemma – we only have room for two game tables in the basement, and one has to be junior sized. If I got a full sized air hockey table, some of the kids would be too small to use it, but if I got a kids’ sized version, then the older kids wouldn’t be able to comfortably play. So this solves it – the new game table will have several games for the younger set (assuming that when I see it, it’s what I want and I buy it), and then when I find a full sized air hockey table for the older ones, I’ll get that. The older ones can still enjoy playing at the smaller table for the games other than air hockey.

    Why all the effort and thought about game tables? I’m really not one to believe my kids need lots of toys or have to cater to their every little material whim. (People assume that since we spend so much time at home and the kids like it, I must have loads of toys, but I really don’t.) These were my idea; they never would have even thought of asking for them. Though I could certainly find other uses for the space, I feel it’s important for the home to be a place where kids want to be and enjoy being. Part of that is getting along with your family members, and part of it is having nice things available to do with each other and with friends who come over. So these are being purchased based on my values and goals for our family. These items encourage playing together – you can’t play on your own – and having fun together on a regular basis bonds siblings even more. Strong sibling and parental relationships are an integral part of the goals I have for our family.

    How do you make your home a place your kids want to be?

    Avivah

  • Shopping, bargains, and compliments on ds

    I’ve noticed that super busy days around here are usually followed by slow days, and today was no exception. Yesterday was very full – we started with an orthodontist appointment for my 12 year old dd, who had her braces taken off. Now she has to wear a retainer for the next six months, and since it’s something that takes adjusting to (it’s not easy to speak normally with it in), she’s not looking forward to it.

    Directly from there we went to PA for our big shopping day. We stocked up on bulk grains, fresh milk, canned goods, and lots more, but our big bargain of the day was free range eggs! We stopped in at the bulk foods place for our usual items, and they had a sale of 79 cents a dozen for brown free range eggs! (This was an especially good price, since around here regular eggs are $1.39 dz.) I took all the cartons that were out (just 9) and asked if she had more. Turns out they had lots more – so I got a case of thirty dozen in addition to the 9 I had in my cart. I asked why they were so cheap, and she told me that a local farmer had a bunch of laying hens and made an error in estimating how much he would have to sell. He had lots more than he could sell and asked this store if they could sell some. So I relieved them of some of their overflow. 🙂

    I met a lovely lady months ago at one of the stores I visited yesterday, and we’ve stayed in sporadic email contact, so we arranged to meet there again. I also met another mom of seven kids in the store. She was in line right behind me, but I was busy with my zillion things that I was putting on the conveyer belt, so I didn’t notice her. My daughter whispered to me that there was someone with seven kids behind us – we’ve noticed before that though seven seems to us like a small family, when we see others with a similarly sized family, it looks really big! It helps me remember what other people must see when they look at us! I turned around and said hi, and started chatting with her. It turns out we’re both due with number 8 around the same time – she’s due two weeks before me. I left the store, but while I was loading my van, she came out and thanked me for my comments, and we continued chatting a bit longer. Her kids were waiting in the van for her, though, and we all know how hard it is to talk at leisure when we know the kids are feeling impatient! I took her number so maybe we’ll have the chance to connect another time in the future.

    I really need to get a separate freezer. I somehow make do with the top of the fridge freezer, but it doesn’t allow me to bake or cook in bulk like I used to, which was a big time saver. (It’s so nice at the end of a busy day to be able to reach in to your freezer and pull out a delicious dish!) And on big shopping days like yesterday, I really push the freezer to it’s absolute max. That’s being careful not to buy all that I would like to buy, knowing how limited space is. I would love to buy more milk so I could put it in the freezer, but I really can’t make room for more than four gallons. The fresh milk is the main reason we go so far for shopping (it’s not available in our state because of ridiculous legal restrictions), but I don’t like to go more often than once a month, which means that for two weeks we have plenty of milk, and for two weeks we have none. Feast or famine. 🙂

    I got home just in time to see a friend’s husband getting in to his car. He was delivering some of their overflow food, since people are making food for them following the birth of their baby (this is the friend I wrote about in my last post) and they can’t eat all of it and don’t want it to go to waste. We certainly enjoyed having a nice meal at the end of a busy day that I didn’t have to do anything to prepare! We quickly unpacked all the groceries, and made it in time for my older son’s baseball game, only ten minutes late (he went ahead of us). We took the food with us, because everyone was starving by the time we got home – it was really, really nice to be able to just dish out something filling and tasty for everyone in the short time we were at home.

    Ds is a really good baseball player, and this seasonal league is something he looks forward to all year. I was talking to the wife of one of the dads who coaches for my son’s team, who told me her husband said he is ‘awesome’. She went on to tell me that her husband isn’t one to give compliments out lightly, and was really impressed by his character. It’s always nice to hear things like that, isn’t it? To me, character is the most important thing, and if he were a terrific ball player who was selfish and disrespectful, it wouldn’t be worth two cents to me. It’s a constant conscious effort to help our kids work on their character, but it is so rewarding to see them grow up as mature and self aware.

    Avivah

  • Reverse Psychology – is it good or bad?

    Many moms have learned about the concept of reverse psychology, and think it’s a great strategy. (Reverse psychology is when you tell your child to do the opposite of what you want them to do, knowing that he will act in opposition to what you said and end up doing what you actually want.) It seems like the magic solution – you get him to act the way you want, and he gets to think he’s in control and making the decisions in spite of what you say, so what could be bad?

    Is there anything wrong with using reverse psychology? Personally, I think it’s manipulative. Instead of openly and honestly communicating what you want, you’re tricking your child into doing what you want. As he gets older it will become clear to him what you’re doing, saying one thing but meaning something else. There’s a lot of ambiguity in communicating like that. Is that the way you want him to learn to communicate?

    Secondly, and this is a big one – who is the one making the decisions in your home? Do you want your child to think it’s him? I’m a strong advocate of giving children choices in areas of their lives that are negotiable, but at the same time, they need to know when a parent tells them to do something, the parent’s word is not negotiable, period. If the parent says it, they need to do it.

    The parent needs to clearly be the authority figure in the home, but authority doesn’t come from harshness and rigidity, or from the need to gratify his own ego – it comes from loving his child enough to clearly communicate expectations and consistently follow through on those stated guidelines. It may be cute to see a three year old acting like the a little adult, and parents will laugh about how adorable it is at that age to be bossy or fresh. But the precedent that is being set is going to lead to a lot of misery for the child and parent, as she gets older and thinks she can tell everyone what to do.

    I think using reverse psychology is appealing precisely because so many moms don’t know how to get their kids to listen in any other way. But remember – your child will sense your resolve (or lack of it) without you saying anything – it’s something that radiates from within. Be clear in your own mind about what you want to accomplish, and know that you are willing to follow through to help the child learn you mean what you say.

    When it’s time for your child to do something, don’t try to trick them into thinking they are making the choices and doing what they want in spite of what you say. Tell them what you want, firmly and with love, and follow through.

    Avivah