I was at my son’s school to check him out early for an appointment. While I waited for him, the school secretary commented on what a nice, helpful kid my son is.

“Really?” I replied, hoping she would say more.

“Oh yes, just the other day, it was raining and several girls forgot their umbrellas. Your son took his jacket off and held it over their heads while they were waiting in the carpool line so they wouldn’t get wet!” she said.

Smiling, I thanked her for the compliment, but I wasn’t surprised. I could picture my son doing that!

That’s when I realized his actions at school were the actualization of a lifetime of lessons that family, friends and teachers have gifted to my son.  We’ve worked hard to teach him to be helpful through conscious attention to teaching helpfulness as a skill.

Teaching kids behaviors like helpfulness is an endeavor that starts when they are babies and continues until they leave home, and it’s influenced by everyone our kids come in contact with. I suppose you have heard the saying “It takes a village”? How true that saying is!

That’s why it’s important to expose our kids to the people that will be the best role models. To give them age-appropriate toys and entertainment that aligns with your family’s values. To know who their friends are and the ideas they are being exposed to. And to give them the best education we can find.

Helpfulness is a wonderful character trait to teach our children. I’ve read that kids are like sponges; they soak up everything! You see, learning doesn’t start on the first day of school. Learning starts the day they are born! [Read more…]

Have you noticed how some children (and adults), when presented with a buffet of food, make a well balanced, mostly healthy selection?

While others pass over anything resembling a fruit or a vegetable and load their plates with as much fatty, sugary food as they possibly can?

Why is this?

How come some kids have healthy eating habits while others gravitate towards junk food? Is there anything we can do to nudge our children into the former group rather than the latter?

I still remember taking my son to a birthday party when he was about seven. He totally ignored the sandwiches and fruit kebabs, although he would happily eat both at home, and loaded his plate with crisps, cupcakes and sausage rolls. I wasn’t going to intervene – it was a party after all – but after the second full can of fizzy drink, I found myself stepping in and saying ‘no more’.

It bothered me because, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity affects 39.8% of adults and 18.5% of children in the United States. Obesity-related conditions, such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers are the leading causes of preventable premature deaths. [Read more…]

Imagine this –

A three-year-old boy gets angry while playing a game with his friends and hits another child hard and pushes him down.

The mom comes and gives the aggressive child a hug and asks him politely not to hit his friends, and then returns to her table where she was sitting.

A few moments later, the child repeats the offense.

These are the kinds of scenarios dreamed up by those who say positive parenting doesn’t work.

At the heart of their disdain for positive parenting is the ill-conceived belief that positive parenting is permissive parenting.

They believe that positive parents fail to set boundaries, let children make and break the rules, and decline any discipline whatsoever.

And they think we try to solve every problem with a hug, are afraid of upsetting our snowflakes, and just want to be our child’s friend.

I’m sure you’ve heard this rhetoric before.

Let’s set the record straight and define what positive parenting really is and how it differs from permissive parenting. [Read more…]

At the beginning of summer, when the weather was heating up, I walked into my 11-year-old son’s room to find his windows smeared with something gunky.

What craziness was this? I felt my eyebrows raise and then pinch together. My lips pursed.

Luckily, my curiosity as to what on earth he’d been up to won over my frustration over the mess he’d made.

So I asked him. “What have you done to your windows?”

He replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, “I put sunscreen on them.”

My face must have shown the disbelief and even the dismay I felt. He began to falter, noticing my reaction.“Would that not work?” His face fell. “Sorry, Mummy.”

I opened my eyes wider and hesitated for a moment, caught between anger and incredulity. I very nearly snapped, shouted, and made him feel small. Thankfully, in the nick of time, I caught myself, remembered my Parenting Superpowers… and smiled. [Read more…]

For weeks my children begged and pleaded to start karate. I finally caved in and signed them up for classes.

On the first day, the five-year-old stayed glued to my left leg for the entire 45-minute class, while the seven-year-old sunk to the back corner of his class and barely participated.

We went on this way for a WEEK!

They started asking to discontinue the karate classes, but I’d already paid for the first month.

I continued to take them.

And then slowly but surely, they started drifting to the middle of the class. They started remembering the moves and yelling their “HI-YAH” s along with everybody else.

Now they look forward to their classes and practice everywhere they go!

As parents, encouraging our children to have the courage to embrace their interests and helping them to try out new things they aren’t good at yet, isn’t always an easy task.

It is something we ALL have to do at some point or another, though.

It is a crucial step in helping our kids get comfortable in their own skin and having the fortitude to get past uncomfortable situations.

Here are a few other ways to raise kids who are comfortable in their own skin:

[Read more…]