Children, Stress, and Exercise

I came across this interesting article about children, stress, and exercise. In short, it suggests that children who are more active throughout the day are less prone to anxiety in difficult situations. Children who are less active appear to be less able to cope with stressful life events. You can read more at the link below!

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/exercise-may-help-protect-children-from-stress/

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Spread the Word to Pre-School Parents!

There is an exciting opportunity about to start for parents of low-income 3-and-4-year-olds! A great organization is running FREE groups for parents on Tuesday evenings. Participants will receive free books and supplies, free childcare during class, gift cards, and light refreshments. The groups teach parents how to prepare their children for school success.

If you are a parent of a 3-or-4-year-old and your family qualifies for free or reduced lunch at school, call 855-332-9333 for more information about signing up for the program. The first meeting is Tuesday, February 26 at 5:30pm in the Chestnut Trace Community Center.

Or, if your church or business is looking to partner with a group for community service or charitable donations, this is a great cause! The organization is called First Teachers @ Home, and I have been very impressed with the passion and intentions of the people running it. You can call the number above if you would like to volunteer or contribute in any way!

Volunteer Opportunity With Local Kids

I've gotten word about a program called First Teachers @ Home that is starting next week at Chestnut Trace apartments. It sounds really cool! This is a nonprofit organization that aims to teach parents of 3 and 4-year-olds how to prepare their children for kindergarten. What a fantastic head start for those families! I can tell you without any doubt in my mind that those kinds of skills are incredibly valuable for school success over the years.

First Teachers @ Home is looking for volunteers to either work with the children's program, or provide simple meals for the meetings (for example, a hot dog, chips, apple, and water). I thought I would let y'all know, in case you or a group/church/business you know of may want to support this cause.

You can read more about the program in this article:

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20120819/NEWS/120819774

And you can watch a video clip of a WVUA news story about it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O85VDImKWWo

If you're interested in volunteering, you can visit the website http://www.first-teachers.org/ and contact Yolanda McKinney, the Community Partnership Director, at 951-8989.

If you live in Chestnut Trace, have a 3 or 4-year-old, and would like to participate in the program, please let me know! School counselors can make "referrals" and I am happy to do so for anyone who is interested!

Thank you for reading! We are glad you are here!

Building Self-Esteem

I was talking with a parent about self-esteem yesterday, and I thought it might be a valuable topic to post about here. Self-esteem is a big buzzword, and lots of experts have lots of different things to say about it!

One thing that I think has been counterintuitive for me is that praise and compliments do not build self-esteem. In fact, in kids with very low self-concept, those kinds of words can actually cause them to feel uncomfortable and distrust us! They do not match the child's deeply held beliefs about herself, so they sound inauthentic, false, manipulative, and upsetting.

I won't go into a whole bunch of details today, but in the Parenting with Love and Logic book, Foster Cline and Jim Fay describe what they call the "three-legged table" of self-concept. They think that three important implied messages our kids get from us are what create a strong sense of self in them.

The three messages are:
1. I am loved unconditionally by the important people in my life.
2. I have the skills I need to make it.
3. I am capable of taking control of my life.

The Love and Logic folks firmly believe that positive self-esteem comes from accomplishment, and that kids get the most out of what they accomplish for themselves... even if it isn't "right" or perfect the first time they try.

Like I said, I will try to keep my thoughts pretty brief, since obviously this is a topic that could go on for pages! If you are interested in hearing more about self-esteem, just let me know and I will do another post or two to follow- up on this one. In the meantime, I'll leave you with an email I got recently from the Love and Logic listserve.

Shaping Self-Concept, one of our most popular audios, teaches a very special type of love. It's the type that allows our kids to struggle…lets them work through their trials…and guides them toward independence instead of insecurity.

This love can be expressed daily by:

• Allowing kids to wrestle with tying their shoes…instead of automatically jumping in and doing it for them.
• Letting them dress themselves…even if the clothes they choose don't match.
• Teaching them how to talk to their teachers about problems at school…rather than always doing it for them.
• Expecting that they speak up and order meals for themselves…instead of ordering for them.
• Having them call the insurance company and arrange for their own car insurance…instead of doing it all for them.
• Letting them do most of the work required to fill out their college applications…rather than preparing all of the paperwork for them.

Remembering that the more things they learn to do for themselves, the stronger and more confident they will become!

In Shaping Self-Concept you'll hear even more tips for helping your kids develop the type of unselfish and humble confidence required to enjoy success in life. You'll also hear how this confidence dramatically increases a child's motivation to do well in school.

Isn't it ironic that our kids have to face some tough times in order to live confident, joyful lives?

Dr. Charles Fay

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Playing Games Builds the Brain!

I noticed this article over the summer and saved it to share with y'all here! It is about how playing typical childhood games (like Red Light Green Light or Simon Says) strengthens the "executive functions" of children's brains.

The executive functions are super important for learning and success in life. They are a group of several different overlapping brain skills that control when and how we organize, prioritize, sequence, and use information and feedback. Executive functions were once described to me as the "conductor" who is directing the "symphony" of various brain areas, skills, and tasks. Some examples of executive functions are time management, flexibility in thought/behavior/emotion, beginning and completing activities, self-correction/monitoring, goal-setting, problem-solving, and planning.

There is a lot of research and attention focused on the significance of executive functions lately. The article mentions that one recent study showed that "a child’s ability at age 4 to pay attention and complete a task... were the greatest predictors of whether he or she finished college by age 25." Whoa!

Anyway, the article says that play is one of the most cognitively stimulating things a child can do, and that the key to making games educational is to start with a simple game and add increasingly complicated rules.

From the article:“We tend to equate learning with the content of learning, with what information children have, rather than the how of learning,” says Ellen Galinsky, a child-development researcher and author of Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs. “But focusing on the how of learning, on executive functions, gives you the skills to learn new information, which is why they tend to be so predictive of long-term success."

If you'd like more information, you can find the whole article at the link below. If you'd like me to send home a few pages I can copy from a book I have about executive functions (called Tigers Too), just let me know!

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/simon-says-dont-use-flashcards/

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Family Night Cards & Volunteers Appreciated!

Well, we seem to be rolling along at full speed in our new school year! Today I have just two small things to get our blog communication started: some family night cards I saw over the summer, and a hopeful request for volunteer help!

First, I noticed these printable family night cards for sale online ($9). Of course, you could make your own for much less money with your own ideas that you family has brainstormed themselves. Each card has a different activity, like craft night, movie night, outdoors night, etc. These might be fun to put in a hat and let one of your children "draw" one out each week to see what the family will do together, or just to use as reminders of all the fun family activities that are possible when you're in a rut.

Lastly, I know that we're all busy and overscheduled, but if any parents, guardians, or family members out there have a little bit of extra time now and then and wouldn't mind helping me with a few tasks to keep the school counseling program running efficiently, I'd love to hear from you! Having extra hands makes a huge difference!

The things I most often need help with are counting pretzel sticks into ziploc baggies, counting and distributing snack bags for several classrooms weekly, folding or cutting papers for classroom lessons, and sticking labels on my "backpack mail" newsletters and putting them in teachers' mailboxes.

Most of these tasks will likely take 30 minutes or less (probably rarely more than 1 hour), and I am more than happy to work around volunteers' schedules. Some of the jobs can be taken home or done here at school at times that work well for you. For the snack bag distribution, though, it would be best to have someone who could come on Thursdays or Fridays as standing commitment (could be once a month, or hopefully even less frequently if we get several volunteers to share the days!)

If you might be willing to help with the Thursday/Friday job or the "as-needed" tasks, please email me and let me know. I'll set up a schedule of dates for the Thursday/Friday volunteers, and for the "as-needed" tasks, I'll just email the people who are willing to volunteer when I anticipate one of those jobs coming up and you can write me back if you're available to do it. Thank you so much for your consideration. I cannot tell you how much your extra pairs of hands mean to me!

Thank you very much for reading! We're glad you are here!

Back to Basics of Parenting

I received the following through the Love and Logic email list the other day, and thought it was a useful reminder. So many times it really does seem like we are overdoing it when it comes to discipline! We find ourselves adding layer upon layer of reward, punishment, new technique, old technique, etc. Does this sound familiar? I, for one, see and experience it all the time. :)

Sometimes, when we're bending over backward to stop a problem and it still persists, it can be useful to see if less is more. Sometimes in our efforts to come up with exactly the right combination of strategies, we lose sight of the simpler approaches that may actually be more effective, or the critical foundations (like unconditional love) that are necessary for any discipline strategy to work. I've seen the least complicated explanation zap issues before, and maybe it could help you too! Especially at this crazy-busy time of year, it may be worth a try. :)

Do great parents use a large variety of good parenting skills? Not typically!

Great parents don't overwhelm themselves by trying to use every trick in the book. Instead, they rely on a small number of skills yet apply them with consistency.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by your kids, could it be that you're trying too hard to do too many things? Might it be time to get back to the bare basics?

What are these "bare basics"? Listed below are the top three I've observed from my experience with thousands of truly great parents and educators:

They demonstrate unconditional warmth and love.

Kids feel this magical type of love when their parents spend plenty of time with them, when their parents focus on their strengths, and when their parents display empathy instead of anger or sarcasm when things go wrong.

Their "yes" is always "yes" and their "no" is always "no."

Great parents are extremely careful to set only the limits they know they can enforce. They remember this important rule for setting limits:

Never tell a stubborn child what to do.
Instead, describe what you will do or allow.

Wouldn't you like your kids to believe that every word you say is important?

They allow their kids to experience the logical and natural consequences of their decisions.

Isn't it hard to watch our kids struggle with the consequences of their mistakes? While it breaks our hearts at times, allowing them to learn in this way gives them a tremendous advantage as they grow. They develop respect, responsibility, and a good grasp of good old-fashioned common sense.

The key, of course, is to display empathy rather than anger. If you ever find this difficult, listen to our audio: Keeping Cool When Parenting Heats Up.


Raising great kids really can be a joy when we remember that we don't have to overcomplicate parenting with too many skills and too much theory. Keep it simple and enjoy your kids.

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Helping Kids Focus on School

A TPS parent shared a link with me that features several ideas about how to help/motivate kids to focus on schoolwork and take it seriously. All the ideas are from real parents with real kids. I copied and pasted the information I thought was most helpful below, but if you would like to go to the actual website, the link is at the bottom of the page. Hope you think some of the strategies are useful!

I took a "Homework Survival Course" and it made such a difference in our home. When my son comes home from school at 3P we give him an hour to 'decompress' at home and enjoy time with his family. He knows at 4P it is quiet time in the house. That means the entire house is quiet, phone off the hook, no tv, no radio. My son has a study area in our kitchen. He does his homework close by so he knows we are available to ask questions and we can gauge if he's getting frustrated. We make sure all the supplies he needs for homework is close to him so he's not running around all over the house to get scissors here and crayons there. My daughter (3) colors or looks through picture books. My husband and I also read a book to show that even though we are not in school, we still regard keeping up with education and improving ourselves continuously as important. Since implementing this schedule homework time has been a breeze. I love it because I want to instill in my son that when he goes off to college that study time is study time: if you work hard you can play harder later, just give yourself that allotted time to do good now.

I always let my girls know that education is the ultimate in life. My little daughter has this big admiration for police in uniform. She always wish to be one of them,. Then I tell her getting education and especially doing her homework is the first step. Hearing this, she get down to doing her homework.

Like many Moms, I face the constant struggle between telling my children to do things and letting them make their own choices. I want my children to come home and do their homework because they want to, and I also want them to play and have fun because, after all, they are children. If we let our children run the show then we often don't get the results we want for them, but if we don't give them the freedom and respect of their own choice then it can come back to bite us when they are older and the stakes are higher.

Here are 5 tips I use to get my children to focus on their school work.

1. Get involved. - When my children know that they are getting positive attention and support as they work through their school work, they have more confidence in themselves and tend to get their work done quickly and easily. They are reassured because I am right by their side if they need a little extra guidance and they are so proud when they can show me that they figured something out on their own.

2. Make it fun. - Sometimes I thought that being firm, rigid and strict would help my unfocused child gain focus. This was a huge misunderstanding. The truth is the more I breathed down their necks the less focused they became. (And I remembered when my father did it to me… YUCK!) Now we brainstorm at our family meetings ways to help my children make boring or hard work fun. We work through the solution together so the results are easier and much more fun! Just using Google I have found crossword puzzles to learn spelling words, sudoku puzzles to learn math, and we have even taken a family field trip to an Animal Eco Station to do a book report. Making it fun is making it happen.

3. Give them choices. - If they aren't motivated to do their school work right away, I give my kids an outlet to clear their mind so they can move into a space of greater focus and clarity. My son is active, so we shoot hoops or walk the dogs prior to getting started with his school work. My daughter is an artist, so I encourage her to do a project before sitting to focus on homework. The more I have learned how my children operate, the more success I have had in supporting the work they need to do.

4. Turn it into a game. – The last thing I want to do is fight with my kids to get them to want to do things, so I had to figure out something that made it fun to ask. The solution: my kids LOVE GAMES! We started playing them as a family when my kids were very little (a bit of early conditioning has proven to be quite effective!). I get creative with my kids and as often as I can I make their homework into a game so they are playing rather than working. It is all in how you look at it so I make it fun.

5. Make agreements. – When I was a kid my father was great at telling me what he expected from me and rarely asked me what I thought. This demand tactic never really did much for me, so with my kids I took a different approach. I began to make agreements with them. I would share what I wanted from them and they shared what they wanted from me and we ended each conversation with the question “Do you agree to that?” Beside building trust and respect in our relationship, we know what is being asked of us and what we are asking for so we achieve results or make new promises. Making agreements for our family has reduced expectation and increased our joy and fulfillment making homework time fun time. We have all learned to interact rather than react!

A little focus on some new approaches can make homework fun work!

Good Luck from Conscious Parent Monika Zands www.consciousparents.info

Diet is absolutely an essential component of academic success, as well as enough sleep. I feed my son nutrient-rich, unprocessed foods. We have almost no processed foods in the house. We are not wealthy and I work from home, so I don't have any more time or money than anyone else. I've just made it a priority, and we do without many other things to ensure that we are as healthy as possible by using a good portion of our income to buy real food. We support a lot of local farmers and have stopped buying brand-name products, and we actually save money that way because health problems you pay for later are expensive. nourishing foods we feed our children are essential to their success, but they are also some of the only things we really have choices over.

You can read these entire responses and more at http://www.circleofmoms.com/survey_qa.php?view=1&question_id=1701110&trk=digest_featured_question&trk_info=1701110&email_enc=odWl1N2motqqzc7HytKPlqih&email_src=1331752328247d0927df81c18aa583fbb1e97eda29&template_name=digest_weekly_3&subject_id=3e39efd8990ec404b7fc6e0e6509e163%3A1&has_fb=1

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

21 Creative Consequences

Y'all, I am not saying that I am completely in favor of all the consequence ideas listed on this site, but they are certainly creative! I'm sharing them in case you like one or two, or in case they get your own creative juices flowing on other ideas that might work in your home. Hope you find them helpful!

http://imom.com/parenting/tweens/parenting/training/21-creative-consequences/

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Mother-Son Relationships

I posted a couple of weeks ago about books on raising boys, and then happened to come across this article a few days ago! It is about how research has shown that a close bond between mothers and sons seems to result in several positive outcomes for the boys. I pasted the best paragraphs of the article below.

Research shows that boys suffer when they separate prematurely from their mothers and benefit from closeness in myriad ways throughout their lives.


A study published in Child Development involving almost 6,000 children, age 12 and younger, found that boys who were insecurely attached to their mothers acted more aggressive and hostile later in childhood—kicking and hitting others, yelling, disobeying adults and being generally destructive.


A study of more than 400 middle school boys revealed that sons who were close to their mothers were less likely to define masculinity as being physically tough, stoic and self-reliant. They not only remained more emotionally open, forming stronger friendships, but they also were less depressed and anxious than their more macho classmates. And they were getting better grades.


There is evidence that a strong mother-son bond prevents delinquency in adolescence. And though it has been long established that teenagers who have good communication with their parents are more likely to resist negative peer pressure, new research shows that it is a boy's mother who is the most influential when it comes to risky behavior, not only with alcohol and drugs but also in preventing both early and unprotected sex.

If you'd like to read the whole article, you can find it here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577241610532233188.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Ways to "Reset" When Kids Are Having a Tough Day

Do you ever wish your kids came with a reboot button? So that, like your computer, you could just start over when things seem to be heading in the wrong direction? If so, I have good news! Over the weekend I came across this list of ways to "reset" the family dynamic and change things up when your kids are having a tough day. There are 20 things for parents and kids to do together to try to get back on the right foot and move beyond the grumpiness.

I hope you like some of them! I think my favorites are #20 "Slow Down," #14 "Hold Hands," #7 "Music," and #6 "Play A Game." You can read the entire list at the link below. If you have any other ideas that work well in your family, please feel free to share them by adding a comment to this post!

http://andreaparentcoach.blogspot.com/2012/02/20-ways-to-reset-when-kids-are-having.html

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Kids' Sleep Requirements

A study about how much sleep children need came out recently in the news, and apparently sparked a controversy among sleep researchers! The science still seems to indicate that children ages 5-12 should get 10-11 hours of sleep every 24 hours, and that getting less than that can have a wide range of consequences, including negative effects on learning, attention, mood, and behavior.


Here is a link to an interview with a an expert about the study that came out a few days ago and started the debates. She offers several websites and books for more information. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/02/14/146881838/how-much-sleep-do-kids-need-not-such-a-mystery-after-all


Here is a detailed page on children's sleep requirements: http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleep-topics/children-and-sleep


Here is a Harvard Medical School website on sleep: http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/portal/


If you want to read more, a great book on this subject is Sleepless in America by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. I really enjoyed it and learned alot. The author does a great job of  offering suggestions that can fit different families and different schedules.

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Ideas from French Parents

I saw this newspaper article this morning about some of the differences between French and American parenting styles, and thought it was really interesting. Now, please don't think that I have any illusion that parents in France are "superior" to us! I am 100% red-blooded American and very proud of our country and our families. I definitely am not suggesting that one parenting style is better and the other is worse. :) Instead, I share this with you in case pieces of some of the different perpectives, styles, and techniques described in this story might possibly be useful to you or fit your style, or just as an interesting read about how people in other parts of the world view discipline and children. For example, the article mentions that French parents tend to teach patience and the ability to entertain oneself from a very young age, just as parts of everyday life. It also talks about saying "no" authoritatively and with conviction instead of shouting. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

If the link above doesn't work, here is the full web address of the article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

Books on Raising Boys

Sometimes I am struck by things I see in the media. Well, okay, really that happens more than just sometimes. :) 

But, the other day, overhearing a TV show my husband was watching, it occurred to me how backwards our society can be when it comes to our view of males. In this particular case, men were riduculing other men for actions that sounded to me like basic courtesy toward important people in their lives, or turning to the unconditional love of their family in times of disappointment. Other times, I hear men in the media talking about actions like angry rages, violence, disrespectful words, and blatantly uncaring or hurtful actions as thought they are commonplace or even acceptable. You would think it was a nation-wide "backwards day" all the time!

Of course I know that it is a tough world, and we want to raise our children to be strong so they can cope with it. But, there is a difference between being strong and being scary/disrespectful. And sometimes being tough means having the courage, character, confidence, and internal strength to do what you know is right even when the rest of society thinks it is something to ridicule. I certainly realize that I may be more sensitive to this being a female with a counseling degree who works with kids, but it seems to me that we should be trying to encourage a higher standard (perhaps thinking about the kinds of males we'd like our sisters or daughters to marry). I personally will always prefer to see a man cry instead of punching or cursing someone.

Anyway, I truly am not writing this to sound preachy or soapboxy, and I hope I haven't offended anyone! What I really wanted to tell you is that if you are looking for guidance on raising boys in a way that balances masculinity and emotional well-being, I can recommend two books on the subject: Raising Cain by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, and Real Boys by William Pollack. It's been a while since I read them, but I remember really enjoying both.

For a similar book on raising girls to be strong and confident, I believe Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher is one of the titles most often mentioned. I have not yet read it myself so I cannot vouch for it, and I believe it focuses mainly on adolescents, but it seems to be well-respected. If you know of any other similar books focused on girls, please let me know! I may not be up-to-date on that literature!

Thank you for reading! We are glad you are here!

Points for Grumpy Discipline Idea

I was poking around for fresh new behavior intervention ideas the other day, and I found a few that piqued my interest. I'm sharing them here because I think they could possibly be useful at home too. If you're like me, you're always happy to hear creative ideas when the old ones seem to stop working! :) I could see some of these being especially helpful with sibling bickering or generally disrespectful behavior.

The basic idea behind this first strategy is that you have two coffee cans. One has your child's name on it, and the other says "Grumpy." You have a certain number of tokens (pennies, paper slips, any kind of counter) in your pocket each day. Every time the child is disrespectful, one of those tokens goes in Grumpy's can. At the end of the day, whatever tokens are left go into the child's can. You would have a "menu" of rewards that the child likes and a value assigned to each reward. The child can trade their tokens for rewards, but the ones that go to "Grumpy" are lost. For more details, visit this link:

http://www.interventioncentral.org/behavioral-interventions/challenging-students/points-grumpy

The second idea is a simple lottery, but you need more than one child to use this one. Each child has a certain number of slips of paper or tokens of some sort, but each child's tokens or slips need to be a different color. For example, Bobby has green slips and Suzie has yellow. Both children start the week or day with their full number of slips. Each time they behave negatively, they lose one slip. At the end of the week or the day, the slips they have left all go into a can, and you draw out one winner, who gets a prize. The more slips a child has in the can, the better chance he or she has of winning the prize. (This does pit children against each other, so if you don't want to make it competitive, you could abandon the lottery concept and just have all their slips add up to try to earn a joint reward together- see below. Or, the winner of the lottery could choose the prize for the whole family, so everyone is rewarded, but the lottery winner gets the choice of what everyone will do.) You can read more about this idea here:

http://www.interventioncentral.org/behavioral-interventions/challenging-students/response-cost-lottery

Lastly is a strategy that focuses on positive behavior, which for many kids may be more effective than focusing on negative behavior, or may be helpful in addition to negative consequences. It is called a marble jar. Every time one of your children demonstrates positive behavior that you want to encourage, you put a marble (or coin, token, whatever) in your jar. You can focus on just certain behaviors that you want to improve, or use the tokens for any positive behavior. When the jar is full, the whole family gets to do something fun, or the kids earn a reward. For more information, you can go here:

http://specialed.about.com/od/managementstrategies/a/A-Marble-Jar-Can-Be-A-Powerful-Tool-For-Positive-Behavior-Support.htm

Of course, remember that rewards do not have to cost anything! Doing something fun like building a tent in the family room can be even more motivating than buying a prize.

If you have other discipline ideas that work well in your family, please feel free to share them! I'd love to hear what you've found to be effective!

Thank you for reading. We are glad you are here!

Ask Questions to Create Thinking

Don't forget about the expert panel on ADHD at the university tonight! It is from 7:00-8:00 at the Bryant Conference Center on campus. If you'd like more information, you can find it here: http://training.ua.edu/adhd/adhd-agenda.html

We've finished our coping skills lessons in second grade, and I think the word scramble game was enjoyed by all! Today I start Safe Child lessons in first grade. If you are a first grade parent, I sent a letter home to you right after winter break with details about those lessons. If you didn't receive it or would like more information, please let me know!

And lastly, here's another blurb from the Love & Logic people. It is about helping kids become good thinkers by asking more questions and giving fewer commands. I don't know about you, but I often notice kids here at school who seem perfectly content to let me do all the talking and thinking when they have done something wrong! They know that if they just wait it out, I'll stop correcting them eventually and they will be on their merry way, just having been inconvenienced by a few minutes of babbling. They have quite a surprised look on their faces when I ask them a question, and indicate that I will wait for their response instead of just continuing to talk, no matter how long it takes them to come up with one. I don't have data on whether or not it cuts down on the wrongdoing, but I do feel good that the gears in their brains are turning and thinking is being done! (Just to be clear, I am referring here to issues like running in the hall, not serious concerns that your children need coaching or support to address. :))

At Love and Logic® we believe that kids are best prepared for the real world when we allow them to do as much thinking as possible. It's good practice for the real world, and it keeps the monkey off of our backs most of the time.

Here's the problem. Do you know kids who like to keep adults doing all of the thinking? Do you know kids who are good at tricking us into doing so?

How do we avoid falling into this trap? One strategy involves using plenty of questions!

The more questions we ask, the better thinkers our kids will become.

People who understand Love and Logic also understand that the human brain seeks closure. When we use plenty of questions, children's brains are so busy searching for closure that they have less energy left over for power-struggles.

The more questions we ask, the fewer power-struggles we will have.

Kids grow the healthiest and strongest brains when they're fortunate to spend time around adults who say things like:


"I don't know. What do you think?"


"Are you sure that's the best idea?"


"How do you think that's going to work out for you?"


"Would you like to hear what some other kids have tried?"


"Do you think that's going to work out well or ________?"


"What do you think you are going to do?"


"Which one of these is the best solution to your problem?"


"Do you have enough money to pay for any possible damage?"


"Is that a wise decision?"


Perhaps the quickest way to start giving children the gift of good thinking skills is to get into the habit of asking instead of telling.

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here.
Sharon

100 Inexpensive Rewards for Kids

I found this huge list of rewards the other day on a website, and thought I would share it with you. Most are for younger children, but some are for older kids too. With things like this, I always figure that many of the ideas probably won't appeal to everyone, but if you get one or two fresh and effective new motivators, they can have a big impact on your children's behavior!

The list is a pdf file. To view it, go to this website http://www.behaviordoctor.org/formsandtools.html, and click on the very top link, called 100 Free Ways Parents Can Reward Their Children. I hope you like it!

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here! Enjoy your weekend.

Families May Shape Bullies

I went to a workshop on bullying before the winter break, and it was very informative and also somewhat alarming. It is amazing how technology and societal factors have expanded the ways kids can pick on each other!

Bullying is when a child with more power intentionally hurts a child with less power over and over again. Bullying can be:

• physical (hitting, kicking, punching, etc)
• verbal (teasing, name-calling, etc)
• nonverbal or emotional (intimidation through gestures, social exclusion, or harming the victim's relationships)
• cyber (sending insulting or intimidating messages by email, test message, or other electronic means)

I know there is a lot of information out there about how to help your child if he or she is the victim of bullying, but some of the more surprising information from the workshop was about the bullies themselves. Some pieces of information that I thought I'd pass onto y'all today are the family factors that make it more likely that a child will become a bully. Children who bully are more likely than their non-bullying peers to live in homes where there is:

• A lack of warmth and involvement on the part of the parents
• Overly-permissive parenting (including a lack of limits for children's behavior)
• A lack of supervision by parents
• Harsh, physical discipline
• A model for bullying behavior (for example, the child knows that one or both parents hurt other people's bodies, feelings, property, or relationships, or attempt to get what they want by manipulation, force, cruelty, or violence)

Why should parents be worried that their child might become a bully? One reason is that it makes other antisocial or violent behaviors more likely, which can end up creating big problems for parents in the future with the police, peers, school, jobs, or the child's own safety. Youth who bully their peers frequently are more likely to:

• Get into frequent fights
• Be injured in a fight
• Vandalize property
• Steal property
• Drink alcohol
• Smoke
• Be truant from school
• Drop out of school
• Carry a weapon
• Have more than one criminal conviction by the age of 24

If you think your child may be bullying others, there is much you can do!

• Make it clear to your child that you take bullying seriously and will not tolerate this behavior.
• Develop clear and consistent rules within your family for your child's behavior. Praise and reinforce your child for following rules and use non-physical, non-hostile consequences for rule violations.
• Spend more time with your child and carefully supervise and monitor his or her activities. Find out who your child's friends are and how and where they spend their free time.
• Build on your child's talents by encouraging him or her to get involved in prosocial activities (such as clubs, music lesson, non-violent sports, etc)
• Share your concerns with your child's teacher, counselor, or principal. Work together to send clear messages to your child that his or her bullying must stop.
• If you or your child need additional help, talk with a school counselor or mental health professional in the community.

The above information is from www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov. They have more resources at their website if you'd like!

Some of the information we received at the workshop dealt with cyberbullying, which is bullying that takes place on a computer, cell phone, or other electronic device. I won't share much of that information here because I know that is probably not an issue for most of our young TPS students. Of course, if you would like me to send information home to you about cyberbullying, please let me know anytime!

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

ADHD Expert Panel at UA

For a few years now, the University of Alabama has hosted a great annual conference on ADHD here in Tuscaloosa. One part of the event is an hour-long question-and-answer session with a panel of experts. I've been to this twice before, and it has been interesting and informative to hear "experts" from different professions talk about many aspects of raising, educating, and treating children and teens who have ADHD. Even if you don't have any questions, you can just listen!

In the past the panel has included researchers, medical doctors, advocates for children with disabilities, parents of children with ADHD, counselors, and educators. This year it looks like there will definitely be a researcher and a medical doctor who specializes in ADHD, and I'm not sure if there will be other panel members as well.

If you would like to mark your calendar, the panel is scheduled for Thursday, January 26, from 7:00 to 8:00pm, at the Bryant Conference Center on the UA campus. If you'd like more information about the conference and the panel, you can go to http://training.ua.edu//adhd/.

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!

The Advantages of Arguing

Welcome back! I hope you and your families had a festive and restful winter break and enjoyed the time away from school.

I heard this story on the radio yesterday. The research is about teens, but it seems to me that you'd start laying this foundation much earlier in life.

The basic idea is that teens who argued with their parents were 40% more likely to resist peer pressure to drink alcohol or do drugs. "Child psychologist Richard Weissbourd says the findings bolster earlier research that finds that 'parents who really respect their kids' thinking and their kids' input are much more likely to have kids who end up being independent thinkers and who are able to resist peer groups.'"

"Almost all parents and teenagers argue. But it's the quality of the arguments that makes all the difference. 'We tell parents to think of those arguments not as nuisance but as a critical training ground,' the researcher, Joseph Allen, says. Such arguments, he says, are actually mini life lessons in how to disagree — a necessary skill later on in life with partners, friends and colleagues on the job."

However, not all arguments are created equal, of course. "Teens should be rewarded when arguing calmly and persuasively and not when they indulge in yelling, whining, threats or insults, he says."

You can read the whole story here if you'd like: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/03/144495483/why-a-teen-who-talks-back-may-have-a-bright-future?ps=cprs

If you are interested in reading more about raising independent, responsible thinkers, two books you might like are Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster Cline and Jim Fay, and Kids Are Worth It! by Barbara Coloroso. In short, those authors believe that parents should absolutely set the rules and take an authoritative role in the home, but if we go too far and teach kids to obey us without question, input, or thinking, we may find that when they are teenagers they stop listening to us altogether and start listening to their peers the way we taught them: without question, input, or thinking. Yikes!

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!