Parenting Blog

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Toddlers

Night Terrors and Monster Go Away Spray!

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msl-monstergoawayAt least one or twice a week, my husband and I hear little footsteps in the dead of night, traversing from across the hall and into our bedroom, with “Mommy, I had a bad dream”. Usually, we are both too exhausted to take them back, so we end up with one (sometimes two) little bodies squeezed in between us. And putting them to bed is even more of an issue, with claims of “Mommy I’m scared”, “Mom I don’t want to be alone” (even if they aren’t alone, “Mommy I have bad dreams” etc etc., making the bedtime ritual stretch out even longer until bone tired Mom is about to pass out on the bunk with them.

So when I saw this product on My Daily Om, I thought, What a clever idea, I wish I thought of it!….followed by… I have to get one!. Formulated by a Mom, this fabulous spray gets rid of those bedtime monsters both physically and psychologically. Physically, because it uses essential oils and works it’s magic through aromatherapy, and psychologically, well, you know. We Moms are all amateur doctors, right?

[Read more…] about Night Terrors and Monster Go Away Spray!

Originally posted on February 7, 2009 @ 7:47 am

Making School Familiar

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It is that time of the year again – when children go back to school. For some it is coming back. It is a familiar experience. Something that they look forward to. For others, it is a totally new experience. There is the element of fear as well as anticipation. For the parents, the supporting role has never been more important. This is especially true for those parents who have kids who are going to school for the first time.

I still remember my first day in primary school. My mother worked as a teacher in the same school I went to. Still, it took two teacher helpers and the teacher herself to pry me away from my mother’s arms. And I was bawling like a baby.

How can we help our kids when they first go to school? The best thing to do would be to make school familiar to them. They are going away to a strange environment and will be out of their comfort zone. Even before they actually have to go to school, there are some things that we can do to help them.

One thing that you can do is to pass by the school often and point it out to your child. Tell him good stories about school and prepare him for the day that he would actually have to go there. Build it up and encourage him. More so, tell him about your own positive experiences in school. Tell him how exciting it is and how he is going to learn a lot of things and make new friends. Try it – it has worked for me.

But how about you, how do you think you can prepare your child for school?

Originally posted on August 27, 2008 @ 10:31 pm

Yogi Parenting

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Before you burst out laughing and saying something about Yogi Bear, nope, it doesn’t have anything to do with him. Yogi parenting is something that I recently read about and it seems pretty interesting. Yogi is the noun used to refer to someone who practices yoga. So basically, yogi parenting is applying yoga principles to parenting.

I have heard of yoga so many times – my friends are so into it right now – but I have never really tried it for myself. When I read this article on yogi parenting, though, I started to have second thoughts. Maybe it is a good idea!

Amy Bertrand at StlToday writes about Suzanne Tucker, a yoga enthusiast, who is practicing yogi parenting:

“For me, yogi parenting is a way of being more than a thing you do, it’s a place to come from, an approach to parenting.”

That approach includes allowing your children to make mistakes to help them grow and being in the moment with them as much as possible.

“It’s about understanding the mind of a child,” Suzanne says. Yoga, with its breathing techniques and teaching you to be “present” in your mind, help with that.

For instance, when a child scrapes her knee, the parent’s natural reaction may be to say, “Oh, tell me what happened.” In yogi parenting you pull the child into the present and say, “Let me see it, let’s work on helping this now.”

“You bring that child into the present instead of letting them relive the past,” Suzanne says.

Though I am sure this is but a small part of the whole concept, it does make sense. What about you, have you heard of yogi parenting? What are your thoughts on this?

Originally posted on July 30, 2008 @ 10:48 am

The Little Boy Is A Scaredy Cat

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I don’t know if you would agree with me but sometimes, our culture puts too much premium on little boys being tough and brave. Boys shouldn’t cry. Boys shouldn’t be afraid of the dark. Boys shouldn’t be afraid of thunder and lightning. And the list goes on and on.

I am sure, though, that parents of little boys know better than that. Children are children and when they get exposed to something that they find scary, they can either become braver or more scared. This topic of children being scared came to mind earlier this week. I was just dredging up some memories and suddenly thought of how some parents try to shelter their children from anything remotely scary.

Television shows are strictly regulated and so are books, movies, and other media. While I do agree with this regulation (for other reasons), I believe that children should be exposed to “reasonably” scary material from time to time. The truth is that our children will be exposed to scary things and events no matter how much we shelter them.

If they are of school age, they will certainly hear about and maybe experience scary things outside of the home. Same thing if the children go outside to play. We just cannot control certain things! So how are we to handle this issue? What if your little boy is a scaredy cat?

I haven’t had a serious problem with this but in my experience, reassuring your child about his safety and at the same time making him aware of the realities of the situation works. How about you, what do you do to help your child with his fears?

Originally posted on August 15, 2008 @ 11:28 pm

Where Do Parents Go Wrong? (Part 4)

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spanking
I guess you’ve had enough of me pointing out where us parents could go wrong, huh? It is good to reminded every now and then though, isn’t it? So anyhow, I think that for the last entry in this series, I’d focus on one controversial issue: punishing children.

I wrote about harsh parenting in April. In that post, I raised the question “where do we draw the line between maintaining discipline and harsh parenting?” Indeed, where do we draw that line?

In her article, Nancy Shute says:

Although spanking has been deplored by child-development experts since the days of Dr. Spock in the 1940s, as many as 90 percent of parents think it’s ok to spank young children, according to research by Murray Straus, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. Kazdin and other behavioral researchers say parents commonly punish far more harshly than they need to.

To her credit, she does not totally rule out the need for physical discipline. She just suggests that there are other ways to discipline aside from spanking. I totally agree with her about the idea that “finding bigger sticks” may not be the best course to take. After all, if you spank your child and he does not respond positively, how would a harsher (physical) punishment be any different?

I like the idea of timeouts. In my experience, this works well for young kids. The article suggests:

Discipline works best when it’s immediate, mild, and brief, because it’s then associated with the transgression and doesn’t breed more anger and resentment. A timeout should last for just a few minutes, usually one minute for each year of age of the child.

Makes sense?

Photo courtesy of artbyheather

Originally posted on June 20, 2008 @ 11:42 pm

Birthday Party Time – Who Is The Star?

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childrens party
In our family, once June comes around, we start thinking about birthday parties for the kids. From the month of June to August, we have several birthdays to celebrate. Sometimes, I think that the adults are even more excited than the kids are, especially if the celebrant is still very young.

The preparations and all the fuss that surrounds birthday time was brought to mind again while I was reading this blog post by Kori Rodley Irons. She wrote:

Organizing and coordinating the perfect party has become an obsession with the average family-at least it can seem that way. We want our child to have a great day, sure, but we may also get caught up in trying to give the standard party for our socio-economic level, meet neighborhood and peer group expectations, and make sure that our child doesn’t feel slighted. What can get lost in the whole quest for the perfect party is just exactly who the party is supposed to be for anyway!

Indeed, I cannot count how many birthday parties – children’s birthday parties, mind you – that I have been to wherein more than half of the visitors were adults! Sometimes, in our excitement, we forget who the real star of the party is. We forget who the party is really for.

I got an idea – maybe this time around, we will ask the kids first. What do you want to do for your birthday? Maybe they won’t even want a party!

Originally posted on May 28, 2008 @ 9:19 am

Should Toddlers Diet?

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I was eating at our office pantry the other day when some of my female colleagues started talking about their children. These two colleagues are relatively new moms, with kids aged around 2 or 3. They are quite young and are very much hands on parents. One is even majored in psychology in college and knows a lot about child development.

So anyway, I heard them talking about putting their babies on a diet. I heard a pretty explosive WHAT? in my head. Why on earth would you put your 2-year old kid on a diet unless she had some condition that necessitated it? I couldn’t keep my curiosity in reign so I asked.

The answer was that babies at that age should only have so and so amount of milk in a day. Apparently, her baby is used to consuming more than that so she decided to limit the amount of milk that her baby is consuming. This is so to avoid any negative effects of overeating – or drinking in this case.

My thoughts? One, what if your baby does need more than the recommended amount? Even if there is a suggested amount, babies are unique. Two, isn’t it a bit too early to put a two-year old on a diet?

I don’t know. I just may have a different perception of the situation. What do you guys think about putting toddlers on a diet?

Photo courtesy of Reini68

Originally posted on July 12, 2008 @ 4:45 pm

Ignoring Bad Behavior

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tantrum
Just like many families who didn’t go out of the city over the Easter weekend, we found ourselves at the mall on Saturday. It was not one of the most perfect times to go as there were throngs of people but we still found ourselves enjoying each other’s company and the sights to see. That was, until our little boy started throwing a fit because he wanted some Coke before dinner. Of course, mommy said no – he can have a glass after the meal. It would have been fine except that an uncle went ahead and bought himself a can. Little boy then started whining and comparing his uncle.

So how did we handle this? The way we usually do it is to give calm explanations. Children are quite rational if you get them used to it from the outset. Yesterday, though, it didn’t work immediately. Little boy kept whining and asking for a Coke. I decided to ignore him. After a while it stopped and we had dinner in peace – with two glasses of Coke afterwards.

Did I do the right thing? Should we ignore our children’s bad behavior? Tammy Daniele in Parenting Coach suggests doing so. However, she emphasizes that we should not ignore the CHILD but ignore the BEHAVIOR instead. She goes on to say that: A simple statement that sends the message that you, as a parent, are not going to respond to certain behaviors and will not respond until a more suitable behavior is being displayed.

I totally agree. How about you?

Originally posted on March 23, 2008 @ 1:24 pm

The Laptop Episode

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ww

You really can’t blame O for what happened. The past few weeks I’ve been letting him play on my husband’s laptop, where he discovered the joys of the Teletubbies site. You see, he would watch his big sister N as she expertly lead Stephanie to defeat Robbie Rotten in the Lazytown (Nick Jr) site, or dressed Ken in the funkiest outfits at Barbie’s online home.

He would sit next to her quietly on our large office swivel chair, seemingly more interested than he was with his usual Elmo or Blues Clues morning shows. So I thought, why not let him try it himself?

Well, between the Thomas and Friends, Teletubbies and Sesame Street sites, he was hooked, toddling each morning after breakfast to the laptop, saying: “Mommy, games!”

Not so good for my home work schedule, but I thought it was harmless in itself until last night. I was answering emails, and he was on my bed, watching Barney Goes To School as his sister was in the bath. N shouted out for me, so I quickly went to her, leaving O alone, with the laptop open on the desk.

When I got back to the room, two minutes later, I saw, to my horror, that more than half of the laptop keys were GONE. Plucked off. And there was O looking quite pleased with himself, with the missing keys piled neatly on the desk.

Just recently we had spent an obscene amount of money getting a new LCD screen for this Mac laptop, so you can imagine my reaction when I saw what he’d done. Not a proud I’m-a-Mom-in-control moment, but more like a hysterical i’m-a-horrible-mom thing. So there were obviously a lot of tears (no violence though, I assure you), of which I felt terribly guilty about later.

Luckily, the kind man at our local computer shop was able to put all but one key back on, but I can confirm that for now, at least, O’s online exploits are on hold. At least until the terrible twos are over.

Originally posted on March 22, 2007 @ 9:38 am