I’m not sure why I remember this, but I have fond and fuzzy memories of my father playing games with me like “This little piggy went to the market”, “Round and round the garden” and so on. There is no way I was older than 4 at the time he played those games with me, but the feelings are perfectly intact and its no wonder I played those same games with my own kids.

You can play all kinds of games with kids that will make them laugh. When your kids are already in a great mood it’s not a heck of a challenge to get them laughing. But I also want to emphasize that games can take a bad mood and turn them into a good mood. A game can quickly take a mad toddler or child and turn the anger and frustration into laughter.

Here’s one game that I made up based on the concept of a pattern interrupt. Whenever my daughter starts crying over something that doesn’t justify the crying, I’ll pick her up and hold her upside down. I’ll playfully tell her that she can cry as much as she wants but she has to do it upside down. The first time I ever did this to her it was a spur of the moment idea. It worked really well. She couldn’t help but start laughing instead of whining and crying.

Ever since then I’ve used this same tactic over and over again. It has become anchored as a behavior that creates a positive mindset almost instantly. I don’t even need to lift her upside down anymore (but I often do because I like to make her laugh). I just have to ask her, “Honey, do you want to keep crying because I can lift you upside down so you can keep doing it”. I have to say it in the right tone of voice. It’s not a serious tone. It’s a playful tone. I tell you it works wonderfully.

I’m sure you can use this idea to create your own games to deal with child behavior issues. It’s a lot of fun to turn negative emotional states into positive ones.

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 got a really nice email the other day.  It said, “Good day Chris -  Thanks a lot for the great tips.  I’ve been using them and I can see a difference already.”

This was one of those emails that makes you smile.  If you are not already on my email list just take a look to the sidebar at the right side of the page.  You’ll see the sign-up form.  It’s free.  I send you a free audio lesson and then (unadvertised) I send you a bunch of daily tips to get you started down a better path with less parenting stress.

Sign up!  You have nothing to lose and there is an “unsubscribe” link on every single email (I respect your privacy!)

This weekend I was at the park with my two daughters while my wife was out for a few hours. The temperature is starting to get warmer in Toronto, but it was still barely above freezing. It was 3 degrees Celcius (37F). I had the girls dressed in winter coats, thin mittens, and thin hats.

It wasn’t the nicest day outside. It was pretty cloudy and wet. Besides us, there was only a father and his two sons at the park. The boys were probably 5 and 7. They were running around and happy.

But I noticed something odd. The younger boy had no coat on. He was running around with a short sleeve shirt and a pair of jogging pants. My assessment is that the father probably realized this was a bad idea. But I’m betting the kid would have thrown a tantrum if the father forced him to keep his coat on. So the father caved, and opted to instead risk his child get sick from exposure to the cold.

I realize that sometimes kids can be a handful. But let’s think about this trade off. Here we have a parent that consciously chose to allow his child to freeze in order to avoid a fight. That’s a bit crazy if you ask me.

Why am I so sure this was the trade-off? Because a few minutes later, after the boys stopped running around, the younger boy sat down on the slide. The slide was wet from the prior night’s rain. His pants got quite wet, and he started to complain. Then he started to cry that he wanted to go home. It was evident to me that this boy used the same tactic to get his Dad to let him take his coat off.

As someone who has studied hypnosis and NLP I’m taught to be observant of physical changes. This boy’s body position had changed and he was visibly cold. His skin color was more pale than a few minutes ago. He was holding his arms close to his body.

Did the father offer his son a coat? No. Instead he just (understandably) complied with the boy’s request to go home. But then the young boy said to his dad, “But I want to come back after I change my pants”. To this, the father said “No – we are going home and we’re staying home”. At this point, the boy’s crying turned from gentle sobbing into all-out screaming.

This was one of those times I wish the father had my audio course. He would have understood that there are easier ways to handle the situation. I always teach parents that saying “No” is a rapport-killer, and amplifies whatever negative state the child is already in. There are better ways to get the kids home without standing in the cold having a debate about whether you’ll all return to he park after changing. It would have been easy for the father to simply shift the conversation away from this debate.

In looking at my traffic on this blog, I see lots of traffic but not enough comments. I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts. What would you have done differently?

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

When it comes to parenting toddlers, one common problem is that toddlers like to take their toys out, but they are not so keen on putting them away.

The reason is very natural.  Clean-up time is just not a whole lot of fun for anyone.  At least that’s the way your kids (and probably you) have been conditioned.

In my house we’ve changed this by anchoring a positive feeling to the whole cleanup process.  When I say “anchoring a positive feeling” I mean that we have established a ritual that is fun for the kids, so it makes them feel good.  Since the fun is connected to clean-up time it literally programs their brains to enjoy clean-up time.

What do we do?  We play a particular song and sing along while we put away the toys.  The song is “Dreamer” by Supertramp.  It’s a fun song and we’ve come up with our spoof version of it at home.  Basically we substitute the word “Clean-up”  instead of “Dreamer”. Really complicated (not!)

“Clean-up …everybody clean-up… Put Your hands in the air oh oh …”

The kids probably think that these are the real lyrics.  We call it “The clean-up song” at home.  When my youngest daughter was just learning to speak she would shout out at the “oh oh” part because she could not sing the rest.  And she did it with such enthusiasm and excitement!

One day I’ll teach them the real lyrics so they don’t get made fun of when they are older.  It reminds me of this one “Saturday Night Live” skit where they talk about songs that are commonly sung with the wrong lyrics.  “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix was on the list because some people sing “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” instead of “Excuse me while I kiss the sky”.  What a laugh!

Anyway back to the point of all this:  My kids enjoy the clean-up process because we (parents) are actively involved and we’ve turned it into a fun activity with an attached feel-good song.  That’s why it works.  There are no fights.  I just put on the song and start singing.  You can do this with any activity and make it fun.

I teach you how to use the process of anchoring in my audio course on dealing with toddler behavior.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

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

Based on my research, one of the most common problems parents face is that their toddler doesn’t want to go to bed. I’d like to explore this problem and discuss ways that you can solve it more or less permanently. I say “more or less” because patterns that you get your child into will always be in flux, but once you get the pattern installed, it’s just like driving. All you need to do is keep your eye on the road and adjust the steering wheel when needed.

When toddlers don’t want to go to bed it is usually for one of a few simple reasons. Either they think they are missing out on the fun that happens when they sleep, or they are somehow scared of their bedroom, or of the dark.
In this post, we’ll tackle only the first scenario. This is, in my experience, the most common. Kids are simply having too much fun and they don’t want it to end. If you were to ask (or give them the option), they’d tell you they want to stay up all night. They just don’t know any better, and it’s kinda cute if you ask me.

So how do you deal with this? You need to establish bedtime as something that is also fun. In fact, if you can make sure that bedtime is actually more fun than whatever else is going on, you’ll have even better success.

Here are 5 quick tips you can use to make bedtime more fun and less of a fight:

1. Make the process of going to bed into a game. With my monkey-girl, we regularly get her to “go hide” under her sheets, and then we pretend we can’t find her for a minute or two. She lies there giggling, just waiting for us to find her. It is so cute and she loves it.
2. Do an activity together. Reading books, telling stories, or playing make-believe are all great. My daughter loves french toast, and we’ll often lie in her bed together pretending to make french toast with an imaginary frying pan, imaginary toast, eggs, etc. Then she eats it up and we kiss goodnight.
3. Talk about fun things. Get your toddler in the habit of looking forward to tomorrow. Talk about what will be fun to do tomorrow. Especially when the kindergarten years approach, looking forward to school will be important to establishing a pattern of really enjoying learning.
4. Get good at using your soothing voice when you’re tucking your child into bed. For most parents this is already automatic, but if you are in the habit of tucking in your toddler using your normal daytime voice, change this immediately. You want your night time voice to condition a night-time response from your child.
5. Recognize that patterns will change with time. Once you get your child into the habit of enjoying the bedtime ritual, you are in great shape. But the actual specifics of the ritual will (and should) change over time. Story books and activities change. What we talk about changes. The games we play to get into bed vary. Change is the only constant in life, and this is even more true with kids!

Next post we’ll talk about what you can do if your child is scared of bedtime for whatever reason. Until then, enjoy your children. If you enjoyed this post, then you’ll love my parenting audio book.

Chris Thompson

If you have a toddler in your house, then I’m sure you are familiar with the terrible twos. This is my first blog entry in what I expect to become a busy blog with loads of postings and user comments. So I thought it would be great to get the ball rolling by posting something that will help parents, and by giving a perspective not often found in the parenting community.

I have two beautiful daughters, but I would be lying if I said they were perfect little angels all the time. Of course they aren’t! We have nicknames for our girls. The oldest is “Monkey”. This was given to her when she learned to crawl in the early years. The youngest is “Kit Kat”, which was invented by my wife’s loving Aunt. It just stuck instantly!

Monkey and Kit Kat do their fare share of things that make us want to leave them with a babysitter for a few days! Most of the time my kids are quite well behaved, but they are normal – they get mad, they fight, they scream, and they throw the occasional tantrum. But it never lasts long and we always have a massive bag full of tricks to deal with these situations. The result is far less stress for my wife and I. We just roll with the punches. My 15 years of experience in NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis certainly helps, but the strategies I use to deal with toddlers can be learned by anyone very quickly.

What I want to focus on in this blog post is the need to start with yourself before you worry about your child’s behavior. How you behave on the outside is critical because your child will model you. If you scream and yell at your child then your child will scream and yell back at you. Even worse, your child will learn that this is actually something they should do when mad. Believe me, this is NOT what you want your kids to learn!

Now let’s say that you don’t scream at your kids when they misbehave, but you get really mad on the inside, yet you manage to control yourself. This is better, but kids (and all humans/animals) will pick up on your non-verbal signals. The vast majority of communication is non-verbal!

The redness in your face, the heavier breathing, the tension in your muscles and the pace of your speech will serve as non-verbal cues to your child that he or she is succeeding in pushing your buttons.

In another post I will talk about how to actually deal with your children when they misbehave. But for now what I want to get through to you is the concept of relaxation. If you are relaxed and comfortable, your non-verbal communication to your child will be far more effective.

Your inner psychology is directly connected to your outward physiology. Because of this, it is very easy to change your psychology by adjusting your physiology. This direct link is extremely useful to you because you can take specific steps to relax and stay calm when dealing with your kids.

Here are some steps you can take:

1. Take a deep breath and exhale in a controlled, calm manner.
2. Say something out loud in a very casual tone of voice. It doesn’t matter what you say, so long as you use the same voice you’d be using when talking to a close friend. Pick a phrase that you can use consistently, such that it becomes an “anchor phrase”. An example of this would be, “It’s nice to know you can always relax whenever you want to”.
3. Recall a past memory (anything that comes to mind) when you were totally relaxed. For a few seconds, just remember what you saw, what you heard, and how good it felt. This will get you back into that same state very quickly.
4. Take note of any remaining tension in any parts of your body (you’ll begin to notice where tension builds up for you during moments of stress). As you notice where the remaining tension is, take a moment to visualize calm, soothing white light shining on those spots of tension in your body, and just imagine that the light is melting away the tension. Pretending it is happening is no different than having it really happen – your unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference!

This whole process may take you 10 seconds. It’s purpose is to completely alter your physical and emotional state so that you’ll be in a more resourceful state to deal with the “problem child”.

When your kids are misbehaving, 10 seconds can seem like eternity. But you know better. Believe me this is 10 seconds well spent. Now, when you deal with your children, you’ll convey a stronger and calmer message, you’ll get better results, and you’ll feel better about the outcome.

Enjoy Your Children,
Chris Thompson