Some kids love to take baths. But with other kids, some parents feel like they’re asking their kids to open wide to have teeth pulled out. What can you do, as a parent, to get kids to take a bath?

Before I give you a few solutions, I thought it would be fun to share some of the moments that made my wife and I laugh over the last couple of years. My personal favorite is when our two daughters were taking a bath together. Our older daughter said to the youngest, “Sweetie, don’t drink the water because I peed in the bath”. We were both just about rolling on the floor when that came out of her mouth. Another time, when my daughter was about 3, I was taking a bath with her while my wife was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. My daughter looked at my wife and said, “Mommy, did you know that Daddy has a tail?” I think the neighbors must have heard us laughing at that one.

When we give our kids baths in our home, it has been programmed in their minds that bath time is fun. We laugh. We sing. We play with toys. We talk about anything. Both of our kids love taking baths because they see it as a really good time. I think that this is the key to making sure your kids are willing participants when it comes to getting squeaky clean.

Here are a few tips to get you going in this direction:

• Let your child sit in the bathroom while you take a bath. Put a few bath toys in the bath and play with them yourself. It seems weird but you might just get your child interested enough to want to join you.
• Get in the tub with your kids! In the toddler years this is a normal and healthy thing to do. Splash around with your kids and take turns dumping water on each other. Laugh about it.
• Get your child to pick a favorite toy to bring into the bath. In a really difficult situation have the child actually pick the toy out at the store him or herself, but only allow the child to play with this toy in the bath.
• Sing songs in the bath together.
• Give your child a straw to blow bubbles in the water with. This simple “toy” seems to really give kids a ton of pleasure. Just make sure they aren’t using it to drink the bath water!
• Last but not least, use the language tools that I teach in the “Talking to Toddlers” audio course. Presuppositions, double binds, yes sets and reframing techniques are just a few of the tools you’ll learn in this program. They are designed to get your toddlers to agree with your requests without resistance. They really do work!

Whatever you choose to do, make sure that you understand this one simple thing – getting your kids to take a bath is best accomplished by making it fun for the child. Every child is different, so find something that works for your child. Whatever you do, remember to be flexible and try new things.

Enjoy your children,
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:

Lots of parents wonder how to get their kids to transition from a crib to a toddler bed. It usually happens around the age of two, but sometimes a bit later.

I’m going to provide a series of tips to help you get your toddler adjusted to a bed rather than a crib. But before I do, let’s talk about why your toddler might resist this transition. It’s pretty simple. People tend to resist change. Once we are comfortable with something the way it is, we don’t like to change it. Toddler behavior tends to align with this basic rule of life.

Change will be accepted by a person when:

1. The new action / behavior is clearly superior;
2. The old behavior / action is unavailable and the new one is the best available option;
3. Change is forced upon them until it becomes a new habit.

Obviously option #1 is the best approach to use with children because it creates no disruption. It’s like offering a child a chocolate cookie for dessert instead of a stick of celery. They will go for it instantly with no hesitation. To get a toddler into a toddler bed, your goal should be to associate lots of positive attributes to the bed.

In the case of switching to a toddler bed, Options 2 and 3 on the above list are essentially the same. You are taking away choice (i.e. you are taking away the crib) and the next best solution is the toddler bed. Specifically, you are taking away the crib without getting agreement from your child. This can cause your child to be upset, but eventually he or she will get over it and the toddler bed becomes a new pattern.

So how can parents get toddlers to willingly switch to a toddler bed? Here are a bunch of ideas for you to try out:

• Go shopping with your toddler. If you can get him to pick out his own bed, chances are that he will pick something he likes (people rarely pick stuff that they hate, right?). This will immediately boost your chances of getting your toddler to actually enjoy sleeping in the toddler bed.
• Setup the toddler bed in your child’s room. Leave it there for a week or more before you take away the crib. If space is an issue, maybe this isn’t something you can do, but if you put the bed there, the child will start to see it as normal. Just introduce it as another piece of furniture and perhaps don’t even mention that you’ll be taking the crib away. If you get huge resistance and are unable to get your child to willingly change to the new bed, you may just have to remove the crib by surprise.
• Play quiet games on the new bed with your toddler. Those toddler wooden puzzles and shape matching games are great things to do on the new bed together. Read books together. Snuggle together and tickle your toddler into laughter. This will ‘anchor’ positive feelings to the new bed very quickly. Anchoring is something I teach in my Talking to Toddlers Audio Course, which all parents should consider for dealing with difficult toddlers.
• Actually tell your toddler that they have a choice as to where they will sleep at night (or at nap time). Then make the bed appealing by offering a “big boy/girl pillow” for when they are in the new bed. Or simply create a reward scenario where the toddler gets stickers for having a nap in the new bed. At this point it should be offered as a choice, not a forced issue. You want to get your toddler to decide, on his or her own, to sleep in this new bed.

If these tricks still don’t work, then you have to resort to taking away the option of a crib altogether. But remember – you don’t need to rush this! You might bring on a screaming fit if your child suddenly finds his crib gone, and a toddler bed in its place. That’s why I think introducing the bed by the crib side makes for an easier transition.

When and if you have to take away the crib, I highly recommend the “it’s broken” excuse. With our first daughter, we were not only moving her into a big girl bed, but also into a new bedroom! We told her the crib was broken. We took the mattress out and put it on the floor of her new room beside her new bed. We let her choose where to sleep. She picked the mattress on the floor, but was curious about the new bed. We let her play on the new bed and lie down on it if she felt like it. We read books together on the new bed. Whenever she asked about her crib we told her it was broken. No arguments.

Within 2 weeks she was sleeping in her new bed. The clincher was this: we took her to the pet store and showed her all of the fish. We bought a small aquarium kit with some pretty (but cheap) tropical fish. We placed the aquarium on her dresser, which could only be seen if she lied in her new bed, not from the mattress on the floor. We cuddled on the new bed at night with the aquarium light on. She loved watching the fish as she fell asleep. It worked perfectly.

If you want to be able to understand how to solve these kinds of problems, check out the Talking To Toddlers Audio Course.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

I’m writing this post during the week between Christmas and New Years, with no access to the Internet, so it will be published when I get home. Every year at this time, our family goes up north to my in-law’s cottage on a small lake. It’s a really great cottage to vacation at, and I’m lucky to have such great in-laws who share this little slice of heaven with us pretty much as often as we like.

You know those days when the weather is really crappy and you feel “stuck in the house” and totally bored? Your kids get in a bad mood, and the whole family just interacts poorly? Imagine being up here at the cottage and doing that for a week solid. It would drive you totally nuts. So how do you prevent it? It’s easy … get outside a lot! I mean ever single day, hopefully twice per day, for at least an hour at a time.

When we go outside we do all kinds of things. If the weather has been cold enough for long enough, then the lake is safe to walk on and we can walk all around the lake. Sometimes we’ll just pull the kids in a sled. We can also build snow forts and tunnels of all kinds … the time just flies by when we are building things in the snow. And then there’s the trips out to the wood pile to gather firewood to keep the cottage warm. But my favorite part has to be taking the kids over to one of the cottage roads, which becomes a sledding hill when it’s covered in snow. What makes these activities fun is that I get to pretend I’m a kid again. My first responsibility is to take care of my kids and make sure they are safe, but beyond that I like to dig tunnels, go sledding and slide on the frozen lake.

When we play outside, we are all happy. If we dress appropriately we stay very warm. We get a ton of fresh air and we all feel great. We’re all getting plenty of exercise too, which is a lot better than parking our lazy butts in front of the TV all day.

We can’t get outside every day. For example, this week we actually had two solid days of rain. The first day it was more of a mist and we could go outside for only 20 minutes before getting too wet. But the second day it literally poured for hours. That was an inside day. The kids got cranky and so did the parents (yup, nobody is perfect). We ended up playing indoor games and making crafts, which was fine, but for a while we were all just miserable.

The whole point of this post is to provide some perspective on keeping healthy and happy. My opinion is that by getting outside and playing with your kids, you’ll benefit from health and happiness. Those are two priceless “features” that any parent can add to their own life by acting like a kid again, in the presence of your own kids. Try it. It’s also worth noting that to play outside has a price tag of zero. Last time I checked the world was in a major recession (some say depression) … so cheap is good.

If you have a hard time convincing your kids to get outside in the winter weather, I can recommend a great audio course for parenting toddlers that will teach you some fantastic language tools to help influence them. But I’m a bit biased since I wrote the course.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

Merry Christmas to everyone!  It’s December 24th and my whole family is buzzing with Christmas spirit.  I’ve got iTunes on my Macbook streaming holiday cheer over to my favorite tech gadget, the Airport Express, which connects into the stereo.  My oldest daughter is helping my wife set the table for the huge family gathering that we’ll be having tomorrow.

I was just out doing some last minute shopping for Turkey-cooking stuff that we needed (Aluminum foil, etc).  This made me think of all the parents who are going to be dressing their kids up in their best clothes tomorrow (and tonight), only to see those clothes soiled with all kinds of stains such as gravy, chocolate, and other “guk”.

Let me share my favorite tip to remove these.  If the stain is from something organic (i.e. food), then get yourself some Baby Oxy spray.  There are often no-name equivalents.  This stuff is great.  It’s the same ingredient as what is in a Tide pen, but you get way more for way less money.  It won’t wreck fabrics and it will remove almost any food related stain including red wine.

If you don’t have a spray solution at your grocery store, pick up some oxygen bleach.  Not the chlorine kind!  Make sure it is oxygen bleach.  Then just dilute it to whatever strength you need, put it in an empty Windex bottle and presto!  You have stain fighting power to help you salvage your kids best clothes this holiday season.

I want to wish everyone a happy holidays, whether it be Christmas or any other celebration that you’re enjoying.  The important part is that you are with family.

Enjoy your children,

Chris Thompson

If you have kids, then no doubt you’ve yelled at them.  You’ve probably yelled at them a lot.  I know I’ve yelled at my kids plenty over the years.  But many parents are wondering how they can stop yelling at their kids.

Is there anything wrong with yelling at your kids?  This is sort of like asking if there is anything wrong with eating french fries, drinking alcohol or watching TV.  None of these things are “bad” unless you do them too much.  Too much of anything is never a good idea, and the same thing goes for yelling at your kids.  For that matter the same thing goes for yelling at anyone!

I personally think that we (parents) tend to yell at our kids because we are frustrated, and we expect our kids to behave differently.  If you buy into my theory about frustration and expectation of better behavior, then there are only three ways to change the yelling habit.

1. The first solution is to lose the frustration.  If you are not frustrated, you won’t yell.
2. The second solution is to change your child’s behavior.  Obvious.
3. The third and final solution is to change your perception of acceptable behavior.  If you don’t define the behavior as “bad”, then you won’t yell.

The caveat to all of this is that if the first three “rules” don’t work, then maybe you should be yelling!  I’ll never tell you that it’s a bad idea to yell, it’s just that you need to make it effective when you do it.  If you abuse your “yelling power”, it will lose its effect.  Your kids will start to ignore you and you’ll just be an annoying and ineffective parent.  Besides, you’ll damage your relationship with your kids, add stress to your life and be in a crappy mood more often.  That is not a recipe for a fun life.

So what are some of the solutions?

1) To lose the frustration, you often just need to have a more effective way of dealing with your kids.  This is why I’m such a huge advocate of using language as a tactical tool to influence (read:  gently manipulate) your children into doing what you want them to do, and stopping what you don’t want.  I’m not going to give away the tricks here.

2) Ask yourself if your expectations are reasonable.  What is the risk of changing your expectation?  If your child insists on running over to the sofa with a cup full of purple grape juice, you have a right to expect better.  But if you are getting angry because your 3-year old won’t stop talking, you really need to ask yourself if such behavior seems normal for a 3-year old.  In this case, it’s normal and the “risk” to you of deciding that this behavior is acceptable is pretty much zero.
Take a moment and pretend that you had a friend, spouse, or a boss who yelled at you as much as you yell at your kids.  Vividly imagine this scene in your mind.  If, while doing this, you conclude that you would be really upset with the other person,  then you ought to take this as a clear sign that you are yelling too often.  Find an alternative or risk the long term consequences.

Whatever you decide, make sure you decide to keep the yelling under control.  If you overdo it then you can be absolutely assured that your yelling will lose its power, and have a massive negative impact on your relationship with your kids.

Enjoy your children.

P.S.  In my audio course for parents you’ll find all sorts of great language tools for dealing with the terrible twos and improving child behavior.

The often asked question of how to get your child to listen …

I’d like to give you a few ideas to work with to help you to get your child to listen to you.  First, let’s start with why the are NOT listening.  There is usually one major reason – rapport!  If you are not in rapport with someone, it is very hard to get them to listen to you.  This goes for adults, children, or anyone you are talking to.

To get into rapport you need to engage in some sort of meaningful interaction.  Just imagine what would happen if you walked up to a stranger (a case of zero rapport) and asked that stranger to do something.  Most of the time you’d get a puzzled look and a response such as “get lost”.

You tend to have more natural rapport with your kids if they are young.  With toddlers all you need to do is to enter their world (an expression I use often) and THEN migrate over to whatever you are going to ask them to do.  If they are busy watching TV or playing with their toys, or playing with friends – you are not going to just be able to go up to them and ask them to switch gears on a moment’s notice.

To enter your child’s world, try doing any of these things:

• Ask your child if you can join them
• Ask your child to tell you what they are doing (with enthusiasm)
• Ask a specific question about what they are doing
• Tell them something interesting that relates to what they are doing
• Tell them something funny and relate it to what they are doing

By doing any of these things you will have engaged your child in some kind of interaction, and you won’t be some foreign body trying to push them in a new direction.  Here’s a simple metaphor for you:  How would you like it if you were cozy in bed and somebody came and pulled the covers off, exposing you to the cold air?  If you want to get someone to listen to you, don’t pull off the covers.

I don’t specialize in dealing with older children, but I can tell you that the concepts are the same.  If you fool yourself into believing that your teenager will listen to you just because you are the “older, wiser and more experienced Mom or Dad”, you are going to be in for a sad day.  Build relationships.  Build rapport.  Get into your kids world.  You’ll have MUCH more success.

Learn to make graceful steps and your kids will listen to you.  You’ll see improved child behavior.

I encourage you to check out my audio course for parents.  You’ll love it.

So your toddler won’t eat, and you don’t know what to do?  First, let me clarify by saying that this post is intended to deal with situations where your toddler just doesn’t want to eat.  If your child is sick, that’s another matter.  Parents – remember the last time you were really sick?  You probably didn’t want to eat either.

Before we jump into any solutions, let’s think back to when we were kids.  If you were playing outside with a group of friends and your mother or father opened the front door to shout, “Johnny – come inside for dinner right now!” … did you feel like eating?  Of course not!  You were having too much fun doing whatever else you were doing.  Your toddlers or older children feel the same way that you did back then.  If they are busy with other things, they don’t want to eat right now.

So how do you change this?  With toddlers it can be pretty easy.  All you need to do is distract them from what they are doing through questions or actions.  Once distracted, you can start to lead them in any path that you want to, so long as you keep their attention fully engaged.  Remember – the LAST thing you should do is simply start demanding things such as “get to the table right now, it’s time to eat”.  That just won’t work.  You’ll be inviting a fight or a tantrum.

Always always always use more graceful language tactics to get your way with toddlers.  It’s just easier.  You can learn all about my methods by checking out my audio course.  That is if you are interested in improving child behavior.

Have you ever noticed that when kids are cooped up inside too much, their mood goes sour quickly? This makes parenting more stressful.

Well guess what? Winter is coming for those of us in the northern hemisphere. I sent an email to a friend in Australia recently telling him how jealous I was of their upcoming summer. I’m not a huge fan of Winter. Where I live, the snow starts to fall, it gets really cold, and people easily find themselves in a state of misery. At least that’s what happens to adults.

What about children? We bundle them up tightly when we take them outside, and they absolutely LOVE it. They are toasty warm and they could play outside for hours. Us parents, on the other hand, tend not to dress warm enough to actually enjoy the outdoors. We just put on enough clothing to endure it.

Because we adults tend to only endure the weather, rather than enjoy it, we like to stay indoors. We don’t get enough sunshine (which gives us Vitamin D), and we feel more depressed because we are cooped up inside of the house. If we are cooped up, we tend to keep our kids cooped, up and then pretty soon everyone is in a bad mood.

There is a much better way to live. About one week ago my parents came into town to visit with their grandchildren, along with visiting my wife and I. We were starting to get bored of being in the house so we went out for a walk. It was actually a really cold day. Initially, I just put on boots and a winter coat, but the kids were in full snow suits (snow pants and all).

I walked outside and felt the wind nipping at my legs through my jeans. I quickly decided to go back in the house and put on a pair of athletic pants under my jeans. I put my boots back on and rejoined the family outside to begin our walk. What I observed is that this small change in how I dressed made a massive difference in my comfort. I was completely warm and comfortable now, despite the “crappy” weather.

We really enjoyed being outside and the kids went from being crabby to being totally energized and excited. They smiled and laughed. It was an incredible change.

So when the weather gets crappy in your area, just get outside anyway! Dress appropriately and enjoy the outdoors. Your kids will love it and by making small changes to how you dress, you’ll enjoy it too.

When your kids are in a better mood, you’ll enjoy being their parents much more. This is just one more simple way to improve child behavior. Unlike what I teach in my audio course, this is a simple change that you can make which has nothing at all to do with language skills. But the end goal is the same – parents want to keep their kids in good moods to avoid stress.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

I just finished putting my girls to bed tonight.  Like most parents, we read to our kids at night.  Kids often have their favorite books that they like to have read to them over and over again.  That’s fine – it goes back to establishing a pattern at bed time, which we talked about in a prior post.

When you read to your kids, you probably notice that almost every kids story book has a theme, or a message in the story.  Sometimes it can be tempting for a parent to analyze that message in a discussion with the child.  I’m here to tell you that this is a bad idea.

You need to realize that most learning is actually done unconsciously.  That is, with the unconscious (or some people say sub-conscious) mind.  Almost everything that you have learned in life was learned in this unconscious way.  You learned it before you became consciously aware of the learning.  Kids learn this exact same way.

If you explain a story to a child, then you are messing with the process of unconscious learning.  Don’t turn an unconscious process into a conscious process.  Trust me, it is a mistake.

I have been studying Ericksonian Hypnosis for a long time.  The late (and great) Milton H. Erickson was probably the best hypnotherapist that ever lived.  He was a truly incredible man.  He often performed “hypnosis” by telling stories.  These stories would be told to adults, and the hidden message within the story would serve to teach the patient something at the unconscious level.  Milton never explained the stories – because he knew that this would totally wreck the therapeutic results (i.e. the learning would be interfered with).

Hypnotic stories are really no different than the kinds of stories that we tell our children.  In fact, Milton Erickson often told stories to his children.  I wasn’t there to see how he did it, but I’m sure he never explained them.  He let them work their magic below the child’s conscious awareness.

Learn from Milton.  Read stories, tell stories and never explain them.

If you enjoyed this post you should check out my audio program for parents of toddlers.  It will help you to solve child behavior problems and enjoy a less stressful parenting career.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

When your toddler doesn’t want to go to bed, it can be stressful for parents. In my last post, I talked about what to do in the case of a toddler who simply feels he or she will be missing out on the fun of staying awake. This post will talk about what to do if your toddler is scared of bedtime.

Why would a toddler be scared of bedtime? It could stem from a fear of the dark, fear of separation from the parents, fear of not waking up, or the all-too-common “there are monsters under my bed!”.

But I want to tell you that worrying about “why” your toddler is scared is the wrong approach. Parents should instead focus on what and how the fear manifests itself in a child. Fear comes from the pictures we make in our minds and the things that we say to ourselves. If we change the pictures (make better movies in our minds) and if we say more useful things to ourselves, we won’t be so scared.

With a young toddler, you can’t always explain this directly. So instead, you need an indirect approach. You need to teach your toddler, in an unconscious way, that bed time is safe, cozy, comfortable and fun.

Yelling at your child to stay in bed is not the answer! I hope this is clear by now. If you do yell, you simply add one more “scary” thing to the laundry list of issues that might be causing fear for your child.

If your toddler tells you he is scared of the dark, you need to make the dark seem more fun. I’ll give you two examples of how to do this without trying to directly tell your child “the dark is fun”. Because that direct explanation is too logical for an emotional problem. You need to correct it by causing your toddler to give himself different internal messages about what “darkness” means in the context of his own bedroom.

Method 1: Put glow in the dark stickers on your child’s wall and ceiling. Then, after leaving the lights on to let the stickers “charge up”, lie in bed with your toddler after the lights are off. Tell him a story about how you love to just pretend you are in a wonderful, safe forest looking up at the stars on a beautiful clear night. Now, if your child is scared of the forest, then say something else! But this type of “story telling” combined with something new (the glow in the dark stickers), can create an instant change in the way your child perceives bed.

Method 2: GIve your child a small flashlight to shine around the room. Lie with him and let him shine it around the ceiling. Show him how fast movements of the flashlight will create a tracer effect. This will interest almost all children and they will become so entranced with the flashlight that they forget about how they used to be scared of the dark.

These methods both serve to “anchor” a safe feeling or a fun feeling to being in bed in the dark at night. There are plenty of other methods that will work as well, and if you listen to my Talking to Toddlers audio course you’ll gain enough knowledge to make up your own methods that will be perfectly suited to your own child, and help you improve child behavior.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson