“What about when they say, “I didn’t hear you” as their reason/excuse for not following instructions…but you think they must have?”
This is a classic! It is either one of two things. Either your child really didn’t hear you, or she just lied to try to make the reason she didn’t follow instructions look like your fault instead of hers.
If you are constantly hearing this excuse for instructions not being followed, then you should first ask yourself, Continue reading
A lot of children have selective hearing; have you noticed? Some of this selective hearing is planned and some isn’t. They really don’t hear us correctly sometimes. We can do something to make sure this doesn’t happen as often.
Have you ever said don’t run down the hall, and the first thing your child does is run down the hall? My mom used to say to me, “Don’t talk back to me.” The first thing I did after this instruction was talk back to her. Strange.
It is never a good idea to start an instruction with the word don’t, because whatever you say after don’t might be the part of the instruction that they think they have to follow. Here is a classic example. Continue reading
As I was thinking about what question would beneficial to answer today on M*, I realized I had just answered questions this morning on television which might be of interest to M* readers. Today my husband and I had a great day with Debbie and Ron on The KJZZ morning show hosted by KUTV2 news station. I hope these video clips will be interesting and useful to you and your family. Today’s topic was consequences and how to choose them. Remember, “Home should be the safest place to make mistakes.” (Parenting A House United)
Below are the links to the two segments we appeared in.
Segment one: http://connect2utah.com/content/fulltext/?cid=79502
Segment Two: http://connect2utah.com/media_player.php?media_id=119902
Last month we also appeared on the show and will on the second Friday of each month. Below are the links to last month’s segments. Continue reading
There are certain skills I teach my children for successful communication in my home. Two of the main skills are Following Instructions and Accepting No Answers. These are two of the basic skills for showing respect to parents and for learning how to respect any authority, even God. People who can’t do these basic skills are very noticeable in society.
However, learning these skills takes lots of practice and really goes against our selfish tendency to disconnect and Continue reading
One of Those Days
Have you ever had one of those days where you go, go, go? On these days there are lots of places to get to, you are always running late and your children seem to be grumpy, whiny, and aggressive. You don’t know if you’ll ever master getting out the door with a smile on your face and everyone in a good mood.
At the ends of days like these we plop on the couch grateful that there is finally quiet in the house and still some chocolate ice cream in the freezer. We hope the children will give us at least two hours of good sleep and that we might be able to actually check something off or our to-do list before we get to ‘turn in.’ These are the days we can’t wait to finish.
I have felt those days too. Continue reading
