This weekend, in my quiet neighborhood, just one block from my home, a 3-year old girl died in a backyard swimming pool. I do not know the specifics around how it happened, but I know it was a terrible tragedy and it deeply saddens me. Whenever these things happen it’s natural to imagine the hurt that you’d feel if you were the parent who lost a child. It is almost impossible to imagine because the hurt would be so tremendous it would literally tear you up inside. There is something about the proximity of these horrible things that make them worse. The fact that this happened one block from my house acts as an amplifier. That’s probably why it hurts so much just to even write these words. I feel so horrible for the poor little girl and her family.

I learned about this from my neighbor down the street. He told me as I was returning from the park with my two girls. My wife was out swimming, of all things, that morning (she does it every weekend). My older daughter heard my neighbor explain something to me and she asked me, “Daddy – what did he say?” I had to explain it to her. Her eyes welled up with tears. I was able to hold mine back for a bit, but not for long. I never want to have to explain something like that to my kids ever again, but I’d much rather they be upset by it, yet understand the danger.

I don’t know the facts around this particular incident, but most likely the toddler slipped into the backyard pool without anyone noticing. It only takes a couple of minutes for a tiny child’s life to be gone forever, and it’s a mistake that most parents could probably never forgive themselves for.

If you have young children, I urge you to take water safety seriously

I want everyone to understand just how easy it is to make a fatal mistake around water. Have you ever had a phone call distract you while playing with your kids? Have you ever day-dreamed while you were 10 feet away only to realize afterwards that you were not paying attention? It happens to parents all the time, but usually not around water. If it were to happen around water, it could be devastating. Heck, I was a lifeguard and swimming teacher yet I know that all of the lifesaving skills on the planet won’t make up for loss of attention.

So here are some massively important water safety rules for parents to keep in mind

Always be watching! If you are around water with your kids do not ever let them out of your sight. Danger is lurking and you are their protector. You are their ONLY protector. At the toddler age they don’t know better. You need to have both eyes on them 100% of the time.

Be aware of the potential for danger. Even if you are not playing in a pool, be aware if you have a pool in your yard. Be aware if you left water in the kiddie pool. You may not be playing around water with your kids, but if there is water around and the kids find it, it can spell disaster. You need to know what danger lies in the vicinity of your children.

Teach them to swim, or have someone else teach them. Children should be taught how to move around in the water as early as possible. As soon as they know how to swim the chance of an accidental drowning drops dramatically. Get your kids in swimming lessons and take them to the water (safely) whenever you can to allow them to learn to master this skill.

Make sure your kids know the danger. As you surely already know, kids don’t always listen to rules. But they do listen to their gut. If they know about the potential danger of water they will stay safe. You need to teach your kids that going in (or around) the water is very dangerous if they don’t have adult supervision. Having them truly understand this is better than just making it a “rule”.

Be a swimmer yourself. If you, the parent, are a non-swimmer, go take lessons yourself. I used to teach adult lessons and believe me, I’ve seen my fair share of adults who are scared of the water. You CAN learn, and you can do so comfortably and easily. If you don’t learn then your kids will see less value in learning how to swim. Don’t allow that to happen!

A life jacket is NOT a babysitter. I can’t emphasize this enough. Parents should never rely on a flotation device to protect their child. Although I agree that a life jacket is safest, because it will roll you onto your back if unconscious, you can never let your child swim unsupervised. Lesser-quality flotation devices include “water wings”, Styrofoam “noodles” or other support rings. Kids can fall off of those flotation aids easily. You need to be within arm’s reach of your child whenever they are in the water. That means, generally speaking, that you need to be in the water with them at all times.

Please take these “rules” seriously. I am quite sure that the parents of this little girl, who drowned in the backyard, did not realize the danger she was in. Perhaps they didn’t even know she was in the backyard. That’s the problem with danger. It strikes first, and you only understand it later. Don’t let that happen to your kids. Don’t let ignorance ruin your life. Water safety is a VERY serious topic.

To safety,
Chris Thompson

Hey, I'm Chris Thompson. I help stressed-out parents deal with toddlers. Grab the free lesson I've prepared for you. You'll love it. Email:

I just found out that you can get a copy of The Total Transformation Program for free. This is actually a pretty amazing offer, and I just hope I’m not disappointing anyone in case the offer is gone by the time you read this. They’re only giving away 1000 copies, which could go pretty fast considering how many parents seem to have trouble with teenagers, etc.

As a quick recap, you probably already know about my program, “Talking to Toddlers”, an audio course geared towards the terrible twos, and young children. I teach language strategies for dealing with the normal problems of parenting young kids.

James Lehman teaches you how to deal with much more serious problems of older kids. Problems like abusive behavior, serious defiance issues, verbal assault, etc. I’ve gone through James’ entire program (along with my wife) and we highly recommend it. If I teach language strategies, then he teaches thinking strategies to teach kids how to solve their own problems.

So how do you get it for free? It’s pretty simple. You have to be willing to provide them with feedback on the course. It sounds like this may actually take you a few hours of your time, in total, but that’s very minor in the overall scheme of things. It looks like they are simply looking to build up more feedback on the program, and you benefit by getting it for free. If you don’t provide the feedback then you will pay over $300. That’s still worth it considering the quality of the material, but if you have a shot at getting it for nothing I say go for it! Just be sure you are prepared to actually do the feedback portion.

I hope this offer is still available for those reading this. You can go check it out for yourself here.

I took my kids to the park last night after dinner. There are a few parks in the area, but we went to one that is a bit of a long walk, and geared towards younger kids. My 3-year old loves the baby swings and always asks me to give her an “underdog”.

Anyway, as we showed up we saw this INCREDIBLE amount of bubble floating around the playground. Turns out they were coming from a bubble machine that one of the Mom’s brought to the park. All of the kids were flocked around this thing chasing the bubbles. They were having an absolute blast.

I checked out the machine because it looked like so much fun. It looked like this one here. This is definitely something I’m going to look for in my local toy store. Unfortunately Amazon doesn’t ship this stuff to Canada yet. I read the reviews and it seems to be pretty popular. There are also some cheaper options available, but those ones seemed to break sooner based on reviews I read.

This week I bought myself a new toy. I’m a big gadget fan and I love to buy new electronics. But this time the “toy” has a real family purpose!

Check out this quick video I made with the Kodak Zi8. It was shot in 720P high definition video and snappily edited in iMovie ‘09 on my Mac.

I bought the Kodak Zi8 HD Camcorder as a replacement for my 5-year old bulky Mini DV camera. Camcorders have come SO far in the last few years! The old one had better optics (a real 10x optical zoom lens) but in every other way, this new Kodak is better.

And it cost WAY less.

The Kodak Zi8 cost me $150 over at Amazon. If you live in the USA you can get it for even less (last time I checked it was $129 and available here).

I love the Zi8 because:

• It’s really compact. It is about the size of a BlackBerry. yet it has a HUGE screen!
• It can hold up to 32 Gigs of flash memory for hours of recording per card
• The picture quality is outstanding. I use 720p mode mostly.
• The “macro” mode allows close zoom-ups of objects
• A child can figure it out. I gave it to my kids to make movies of me and they were easily able to use it.

I’m not the type to show my kids in a public movie so instead I made some sample footage outside and slapped together a quick video to show you why I love this camera.

If you’ve been holding off, I really recommend this camera. It has awesome picture and better sound than the ever-popular Flip Mino HD
cameras.

Parents should care about what they feed their kids. But they also want something that is easy to prepare. Breakfast is an important part of the day. Most parents feed their children too much junk food including processed flour and sugar. Here is a way to avoid that. Read the rest of this entry

One of the things I’ve noticed about parenting toddlers is that kids can be very demanding. Not only will they make demands of you, but their demands can get increasingly specific. It almost seems like they are doing it on purpose just to see how far they can push things.

My youngest daughters was a great example of this behavior. I remember when she was about 3 years old. She would wake up early and I’d take her downstairs to have breakfast together. She’d tell me she wanted cereal for breakfast, so I’d get out the Cheerios. Then she’d tell me, “No I want Raisin Bran”. After I switched cereals, I grabbed her a bowl. In a very whinny toddler voice she’d say, “No I want the yellow bowl, not the orange one” How can you ever win? Read the rest of this entry

I think that a lot of parents realize that too much juice is a bad thing. So if you catch yourself saying wondering how to reduce the amount of juice your toddler drinks, I’ve got an idea that works really well in my household, and I’m happy to share it with you.
Read the rest of this entry

Over the last few years I’ve come across countless situations were parents feel like they don’t know how to deal with toddlers and preschoolers. Parents get stressed out because of the “bad behavior” and I’ve received plenty of emails from those who feel that they’ve failed at being a parent. If this describes you then I’d like to invite you to enter my world and learn more about how you can take advantage of language as a toolbox for change. Parenting toddlers and preschoolers can go back to being fun again. All you need is a willingness to learn, and an appreciation for new advice.
Read the rest of this entry

As parents, we all run into the occasional night where are toddlers or kids resist bedtime.

They just don’t want to go to sleep, and even if we have a routine established, they put up a fuss. If you had a bad day and are short tempered, you can easily let it turn into a fight with your kids. If you are more relaxed about it and flexible with your thinking, you can often just turn the situation around before it ever evolves into something difficult. Read the rest of this entry

It’s so easy to label something that your child does as “bad behavior”, isn’t it? Sometimes it isn’t what your child does, it’s what they don’t do. You tell your toddler to go do something, he or she refuses and you get mad. You raise your voice, your child cries, and you’re all having wonderful fun, right?

Let me share a little secret with you. Read the rest of this entry