Last week I sent out an email to everyone who is subscribed to my newsletter.  It was a pretty simple rant.  The bottom line is that too many parents are unaware of the dangers of feeding their kids too much crap.  And make no mistake – most food that comes in a package these days is crap.  Most of it is laced with way too much sugar, processed wheat, or other cheap ingredients that wreak havoc on our body’s immune system.  They spike up insulin levels and promote obesity.

On the flip side, too many parents seem to be unaware of the need to eat healthy fats.  Fat does not make you fat.  Excess sugar and processed carbs make you fat.  Focus more on quality protein and fat, and get your carbs from healthy sources.

In the email I asked for your replies.  TONS of you wrote back to me thanking me for the healthy desserts book recommendation.  I bought this book a couple of weeks ago and love it.  But you also asked for me to publish some of my own ideas.  So here goes:

Ice cream is a health disaster.  Yes it tastes amazing, but commercial  ice cream is made from sugar and unhealthy fats (mostly).  It also comes in gigantic containers, prompting us to serve ourselves (and our kids) way too much!

Making your own Healthy and Thick Chocolate Fruit Smoothie Dessert

The picture at the top of this post is one I actually took using my phone, last night.  My kids devoured this dessert and have come to expect such creations.  They never complain about dessert, and they never feel they are missing out.  Hint:  They aren’t.

Ingredients

• One frozen banana (peel before freezing, it’s easier!)
• A handful of frozen mango and blueberry (combined total fruit is about 1.5 cups)
• 1/4 cup coconut milk.  Buy a brand that is sulphite free.  
• One heaping teaspoon of cocoa
• Enough water to allow it to blend into a thick smoothie.  
• A bit of chocolate chips (the only junk part) to decorate the top

Directions

1. Break the frozen banana into chunks, and combine with mango, blueberry into a container. The exact amount of fruit is not important. 
2. Add the coconut milk, cocoa and eyeball the amount of water you’ll need to allow it to blend.
3. Blend.  I use an immersion blender, but a proper kitchen blender will be faster.  You’re dealing with frozen fruit, so if you use an immersion blender, expect it to take a minute or so.  Go slowly as you pulverize the fruit!  Add extra water if needed.
4. Scoop it into small bowls and decorate with some chocolate chips

Some of the important things to understand

What’s really in this?  Whole fruit, some cocoa (which is a healthy ingredient on its own), and coconut milk.  The chocolate chips are there for misdirection.  They make it look more like a junk food.  There aren’t enough of them to make this dessert unhealthy.

Coconut milk is an incredibly healthy food.  The fats in coconut oil are what “medium chain triglycerides” (MCT).  They are processed as energy by the body very easily, without spiking blood sugar and generating a huge insulin release by the pancreas.  I use coconut oil and coconut milk in many recipes.

The size of the bowl matters.  You can’t really tell from the picture, but these bowls fit in the palm of my hand.  They are about 3 inches across.  They don’t hold much.  This allows me to fill up the bowl all the way, and it appears to be a much larger dessert than it really is.

If all you do is cut down on the serving size of store-bought junk by using smaller bowls, your family will be healthier.  But of course I’d like to see you take it a step further by making healthier treats.

Next time I make this recipe I will probably add in a scoop of high quality Whey protein powder.  This will give the dessert some added protein with almost no change to the texture or flavour.  Try it and tell me what you think.  Drop a comment.

This was my own recipe.  But if you want a whole book full of healthy recipes I highly recommend Guilt Free Desserts.  Brownies, chocolate cakes, cupcakes, and even a copycat of peanut butter cups made from healthy ingredients. We made them and they are awesome!

To your health, and enjoy your children.

Chris Thompson

(Picture of my daughter and I from a few years ago …)

This is a story about fixing tears by asking good questions and being a bit creative.

As I write this, it’s the middle of winter here in Toronto. We’re having a warm spell, and it’s hovering a few degrees above freezing. But it’s raining, which just makes being outside miserable. Looking outside just now, it reminded me of something that happened a few months ago, in the fall. I think it’s a nice story to share, and I hope it give all you parents some new ideas and insights.

This past fall, as the leaves started falling from the trees, our green grass was being hidden by a thick blanket of beautiful colours. When I was a kid I used to go outside with my friends, rake up a huge pile of leaves and then we’d take turns having running jumps into the pile.

Naturally, I shared this same experience with my kids. The first time we raked up a pile of leaves for the big jump-a-thon was a few years back. Clearly my youngest daughter remembered how much fun it was. I say this because, this fall, she asked me if we could do it again. I promised her we could.

Lesson 1: Don’t make promises when outside factors could screw you up and make you look like a liar. We had a lot of rain over the next few weeks and the leaves were never dry. So raking them up wouldn’t give us a nice fluffy and safe pile to jump in. It would be compact, wet, and cold. No fun.

So one day, on a Saturday morning, my daughter Liz says to me, “Daddy when are we going to be able to jump in the leaves”. She sounds sort of sad, because I (meaning the weather), have kept her waiting.

When I told her they were still too wet to jump in, she started to cry a bit. She was just upset by what she’d been told. Of course no parent wants to see their kid cry. It sucks. And as a result, I asked myself an important question. That question was, “How can I creatively solve this problem and have fun doing it?”

The first step was to elicit information from my daughter, but in a way that would change her emotional state. I got down to her level and spoke to her in a curious tone. I asked her, “Sweetie – what do you like best about jumping in the leaves? What part of it is your favourite?”

I figured the answer would be self explanatory, and it was. But it forced her to go inside her mind’s eye and make a mental movie, and feel the feelings that she’d be feeling if we were outside playing in the leaves. The fancier way to say this is that I was helping her to revivify a past experience.

Liz gave me a simple answer. “I like the ranking and the jumping”.

I cornered in on the idea of jumping. I started to pace her experience by saying things like, “The leaves are pretty soft, aren’t they?” Then I started to lead more instead of pace. I said, “What else is really soft that we could jump in?” She started naming things like blankets, pillows and stuffed animals (or “stuffies” as they are called in my house).

So I proposed something new. “If we can’t jump in the leaves, how about we make a huge pile of blankets, pillows and stuffies in the basement? We can jump in that!”

She totally went for it. Loved the idea.

My wife? Maybe she didn’t appreciate me grabbing every pillow in the house and carrying them all to the basement, but I put them all back. I swear. She has me well trained to clean up after myself.

So for about 15 or 20 minutes (until we were all pooped from the exercise), my two girls and I jumped in this massive pile of everything soft we could find in the house. The foundation of the pile ended up being a huge bean bag chair that I bought online at BeanBagBoss.com (absolutely LOVE these bean bag chairs). Between that, a dozen pillows, every extra blanket I had in the house, and a pile of stuffed animals, we had one gigantic (and soft) pile.

My wife even came downstairs for a few jumps while we cheered her on. And she admitted it was fun!

What does this all mean?

To me, as a guy who teaches parents how to communicate with kids, I think it’s really important to remind you all that getting into your child’s state of mind is important. If you don’t really understand how they feel, you won’t be able to relate, or to help. You can “get there” by asking good questions.

Then, think outside the box. My daughter thought she wanted to jump in leaves. But she really just wanted to do something that resembled it, while hanging out with her Dad. Making a big pile of soft stuff was a perfect solution, and all it requires was a bit of creativity.

I’m not the most creative guy on the planet. I’m a math and science geek. If I can solve these sorts of problems by asking myself empowering questions, you can too. I know you can.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

Not to far from my home in Toronto, a woman is trying to convince the local school board to remove all of the oak trees near her childrens’ school. You can read the story from our local paper here It’s bordering on nutty, in my opinion, and I’m not afraid to say so.

Here’s the deal: The woman has two teenage children who suffer from anaphylactic reactions to certain foods due to allergies. She’s worried that the acorns, the hard nuts that fall from oak trees at this time of year, pose a threat to her kids and others who suffer from severe allergies.

So she’s gone ahead and asked the school board to remove the trees.

Seriously?  Medical experts are saying that you’d literally have to eat these acorns to cause any kind of allergic reaction.  And people don’t eat these things.  Squirrels eat them.  People with severe allergies could handle the acorns and not suffer any reaction.

What can parents learn from this kind of behavior:

1. It’s easy to get emotional about a situation and over-react.  Who knows what caused this woman to suddenly want to take action against the oak tree “danger”.  It’s easy to us to say that this woman is being irrational, because she is an adult.  But remember that when our kids are irrational, we often try to use logic to persuade them to take a different view.  Logic rarely works.  Parents should focus on dealing with the emotional states, which drive the behavior.

2. Helicopter parenting is the phrase used to describe parents who watch over their kids WAY too closely.  Avoid becoming one of these hovering parents.  Unless there is real danger, let your kids make their own decisions, let them explore the world (or playground, or toy box, or whatever) and stop micro managing.  It doesn’t help.  My guess is that this woman, petitioning to kill the oak trees, has not even bothered to ask her kids if the acorns worry them.

So she’s likely making a problem where there is none to begin with.  If the so-called “problem” affects the kids, then ask them about it.  See what they think.  This should remind all parents that your kids are pretty smart.  When you have an issue and don’t know how to handle it, and it involves them … ask them!  Ask your kids what they think?  You’ll be surprised sometimes at what you learn.

Enjoy your children (and leave the oak trees alone),

Chris Thompson

“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” – Jacqueline Kennedy

Reading is something that almost every child eventually learns.  Our schools do a pretty good job of building a child’s basic reading skills.  But that’s not what this article is about.

This is about teaching kids to really enjoy reading.

Personal story:  My oldest daughter, Anne, was born very late in the calendar year, meaning that she started school as one of the youngest kids in the class.  She’ll always be very young compared to her classmates.  In the junior grades, a year is a big deal.  She was slower to learn to read.  But after Grade 2 she suddenly fell in LOVE with books.  She devours them.  She reads nearly a full chapter book every night before going to sleep.

When you enjoy reading, you get smarter faster.  You end up being more successful.  Who doesn’t want that for their kids?

The Benefits of Reading Include:

Better vocabulary. When a young reader comes across unfamiliar words, he’s more likely to ask what it means or look it up in the dictionary (or in Google these days!).  This helps kids learn new words.  Or if they don’t look up the word, they eventually learn it through context, just as we learn language by speaking.  Nobody tells us the meaning of words.  We learn them by hearing them and figuring out their meaning.  Reading exposes kids to new words.

By the way, some some people think only writers benefit from an increased vocabulary.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  The writer rarely looks up new words.  Se writes from her existing vocabulary.  You learn new words by reading, not writing.

A faster brain.  Reading is very much like a workout for the brain. Reading (and comprehending) makes your brain focus on the words.  But to make sense of them inside of the brain, the reader has to turn them into a visual representation (like a mental movie) or imagine the words being read aloud.  When the brain learns to focus, kids can think on their feet and learn quickly.

A powerful imagination.  Reading lets your imagination soar without the over-stimulation of TV.  When you watch a movie or a television show, your imagination is limited to what you’re seeing.  If Edward Cullen is shown with Robert Pattinson’s face in the Twilight movie, then that’s all that you’re getting. You’re force-fed the full visual and auditory sensations.  With a book, the human brain gets to create whatever scene it wants.  The words get turned into a wonderfully imagined movie complete with sounds and feelings.  Modern TV is problematic because the scenes change so fast.  It is designed to over-stimulate our minds.  It is not restful.  Reading is great before bedtime.  TV is not.

Quality entertainment.  You can let the hours float by while reading a book.  Once kids move past basic reading, a good chapter book can last for hours.  Compare this to a TV show or movie that has a much shorter duration.  Books can be enjoyed longer.

Flexible thinking and being open to new ideas.  Reading is fantastic for letting you learn from stories.  Kids get to discover conflicts of opinion, emotions and different ways of solving problems – all by reading someone else’s experiences!  When kids learn to see both sides of a story it helps them to be more emotionally intelligent.

Better discipline. Kids who read benefit from the skill of focus. Kids who can focus on tasks require less discipline. And for those times that discipline is required, they’ve got the skills to cope.

Better performance in school. I put this last because I don’t think we should measure our kids based on grades. But it sure is nice when they do well on their report cards. Kids who read will be better problem solvers. Surprisingly, they’ll do better in math and science compared to kids who don’t read. My own daughter started getting amazing math scores ONLY after falling in love with books. As a father who’s first university degree was in engineering, I really want my kids to learn to love math, so I was proud!

How to Raise Kids Who Love Reading

Ok, so we agree. A love of reading is one of the most amazing gifts we can give to a child. It’s also budget-friendly. You’re giving your child the power to visit castles, islands, rivers and oceans. They can dance with kings and sail with pirates, or travel to outer space. Reading allows your child to experience a lot of things without having to be there. It’s a rare magical feeling that only people who read can experience.

How do you make it happen?

Read in front of your kids. Kids love to copy their parents.  So even if your child can’t read a single word, go ahead and show your kids that you read books.  Curl up with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning and enjoy a book.  Have some kids books (picture oriented) in the same room.  Your goal here is simply to show your child that you love reading.  No pressure.  You can even encourage your child to sit beside you and pretend he’s reading too.  Children are such great copycats.

Here’s a part of an email sent to me by my reader:

“I’ve always been a wide reader myself, and I never specifically intended to teach my children to read but they’d always see me with a book. They started just sitting with me while I read until they ask for their own books when we go to the bookstore and now they’re both readers themselves.”

Everyone says this, and it’s true:  Read with your child from an early age! Make reading out loud to your child a part of your daily routine. Studies have shown that listening to sounds is one of the earliest ways a baby can learn, especially when the sound they hear comes from their parent. When you read to your child, you are not merely talking but you are also incorporating a visual aid (by pointing to the pictures). Learning is just much easier when you’re both listening and watching at the same time.

Keep books all over the house. Give your child easy access to books by having books around the house. Have a couple of books on her bedside table, in the living room and other places she frequents. Exposing your child to books is one of the best ways to develop her interest in reading. Don’t be surprised if your child has a favorite and wants to keep coming back to the same book.  That’s fine!  The point here is to ENJOY the reading.  If your child is picking a book himself you’re winning at this goal!

Let your child drive the bus.   It would be helpful to have your child choose which books she likes when you go to the bookstore. Engaging your child in decision-making when it comes to books/ reading will make her feel that you are asking for her approval and not merely pushing her to read books. You can also have your child flip the pages of the book and make sure to give her enough time to look at the pictures and ask questions.

Interactive reading makes it FUN.   Young children have short attention spans, so you need a couple of things on your side.  First – pictures!  Kids love pictures, and the visual stimulus helps hold their attention.  Second – use interruptions to reset their attention!  Stop the story after a couple of pages and ask questions about what’s happening, or talk about the picture.  Resetting a child’s attention helps re-establish focus after, while keeping it fun.

Choose books according to your child’s interest. Children always have something that they’re crazy about – dinosaurs, dolls, Dora the Explorer. Choose books that you know your child will be interested in reading. It will be easier to interest them in a book about dinosaurs, if that’s what they’re into, instead of making them read books about planets.  My own daughter is a MAJOR dog lover.  She started reading a series of books called “Puppy Place”, and they never grow tiresome for her.  Every book has beautiful pictures of dogs on the cover.

But Be Careful About…

Immediately correcting your child. While teaching a child to read, be careful about correcting mistakes.  Remember that your goal is to establish a belief in your child’s mind that reading is FUN.  Anything you do to wreck the fun will wreck the formation of this belief.

Proper lighting.  Read with enough lights on, or in daylight.  You don’t want your kids reading in the dark, straining to see the pages. I’m no doctor, but I got this advice directly from our eye doctor.

Being pushy and setting expectations.  Nothing good ever comes out of pushing a child to do anything – the more pressure you put on your child, the more it will make her want to fight you.  You’ll get more flies with honey than with vinegar (as my mom always taught me).  Keep your child interested by making sure that reading is an unconscious cue for a positive emotional state.  If reading is fun, your child will want to read.  The fun is attached not just to the books and the words.  It’s attached to everything that contributes to their feelings.  How YOU act is perhaps the biggest factor here.

Books We Recommend

0-2 Years Olds

Squishy Turtle and Friends – Squishy Turtle and Friends is a Cloth Book, popular for integrating cloths of different textures into the drawings which help toddlers and babies develop sensory awareness. What parents love most about this book is the rhyming text which helps kids improve their listening skills.

Pat the Bunny – Pat the Bunny is a classic, and you can never go wrong with classics. Pat the Bunny is an interactive book which encourages toddlers to do different activities like patting the bunny’s soft fur, playing peek-a-book and look in the mirror.

Goodnight, Good Night Construction Site – There’s something big machineries that children love. This book has such great illustrations of trucks and bulldozers that children from all over the world adore it. Hey, it didn’t become a bestseller for nothing!

3-5 Year Olds

Where the Wild Things Are – Where the Wilds Things are is one of the most popular children’s books of all time, and it’s time that you pass this gift to your child. The illustrations are amazing and it’s a great way to inspire imaginative play in your kid.

Have You Filled a Bucket Today? – Through simple prose and vivid illustrations, this heartwarming book encourages positive behavior as children see how rewarding it is to express daily kindness, appreciation, and love. Bucket filling and dipping are effective metaphors for understanding the effects of our actions and words have on the well being of others and ourselves.  As all of my Talking to Toddlers audio course customers know, metaphors (stories) are a powerful way to change someone’s behavior.

The Going to Bed Book – For a little one who is reluctant to go to bed, sometimes a silly book is just the ticket. And when it comes to silly books, Sandra Boynton is the undisputed queen. In The Going to Bed Book, an ark full of animals watches the sun go down and then prepares for bed. They take a bath (“in one big tub”), find pajamas, brush their teeth, do exercises up on deck (imagine an elephant jumping rope, a moose lifting weights, and a pig doing handstands), and finally say good night.

Just how important is sharing anyway? And how do you teach sharing?

The Importance of Sharing

We don’t always want to share things. Admit it. Do you really want your friend borrowing your clothes, or driving your car? Most of us don’t. We want our things to stay in our hands. It’s natural.

Have you ever noticed that toddlers and kids are 100% honest about their feelings? If they don’t want to share they are very clear about their feelings. We shouldn’t try to get our kids to ignore their feelings. Instead, we need to work on changing how our kids feel towards sharing. Just keep in mind that selfish behavior is totally normal.

Sharing Feels Good (this is the magic)

In March 2008, three professors published an article in Science magazine entitled, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness”. This shouldn’t really be much of a surprise, but their research showed that people feel good when they spend money on others. Now, we’re not talking about millions, thousands or even hundreds of dollars here. We’re talking about as little as sharing $5 – the amount used by the group in their final study.

Here’s another cool example. Doug Eaton celebrated his 65th birthday by doing random acts of kindness. He stood on a street corner and gave out money to complete strangers. He “spent” $375 and if you watch the video below you’ll see how it made him feel. Imagine taking a depressed person off their anti-depressants and instead “prescribing” random acts of kindness?

This is why we want our kids to learn how to share. It simply feels good.

Sharing and the Feel Good Hormone

Doing things that feel good causes your body to release a hormone called Oxytocin. Paul Zak, the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, showed this in his research. People feel good when they share, and their bodies release Oxytocin, helping relieve stress and boosting immune function.

But here’s the cool part: When you share with someone, you make them feel good too. They get an Oxytocin release. They get the same health benefits from the social interaction.

These are just few of the benefits of sharing. I could go on and on and on, but we’d run out of space.

Sharing Among Kids

It isn’t easy to get a young child to share. Here’s an adaptation of a common joke about toddlers when it comes to possessions:

If I like it, it’s mine.
If it’s yours, it’s mine.
If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.
If it’s in your hand, it’s mine.
If it looks like it could be mine, it’s mine.
If I’ve EVER come in contact with it, it’s mine.
If I can touch it, smell it, see it, taste it, hear it or think about it, it’s mine.
If it’s mine, it must NEVER appear to be yours in any way.
It it’s mine, it’s mine FOREVER.
 
Toddlers are developing their sense of self, and they tend to see their things as an extension of themselves. This is why they are overprotective of their belongings. Sharing their toys or food is like giving away a piece of themselves, and that’s not really an attractive idea for anybody.

According to Tovah Klein, Ph.D, director of the Barnard Center for Toddler Development of Barnard College:

“Even though it’s sometimes hard for parents to accept, there is a developmentally appropriate time for children to be selfish, and this is it”.

So, in case you’re wondering, yes, being selfish at 2-3 years old is perfectly normal.

Now that we know that being selfish is embedded into your child’s brain at this point in his or her life, is it possible to teach a young child to share at all?

Teaching Kids to Share

Until your child is at least two-and-a-half, it might be fruitless to teach the child to share. What you can do is to slowly introduce him to the concept of sharing.

It’s also important to remember never to push or punish a child for not sharing. You should never force your child to share. It really does have to be something they do on their own. Otherwise, it won’t feel good and the benefits completely disappear.

Slowly help your child understand that just like how some things belong to him, some things belong to other people too. Demonstrate through your own actions that sharing feels good. Teach through example.

Here’s a story one of my readers sent in. I think it’s worth sharing with you.

“I wanted my kids to learn how to share toys. So I bought two big boxes and wrote one child’s name on each box. I made sure that the boxes had different designs to avoid confusion. I explained to the kids that each of them was the owner of their toy box. Everything in the first box belongs to child # 1, and everything in the other box belongs to child # 2. If you want a toy from the other box, you have to ask permission from the owner first.

Did it work right away? It didn’t. In fact, it took me a couple of times to explain to them that ‘This box belongs to you and the other belongs to your sister.’ After about a hundred explanations though, they finally got what I meant.” 

Teach by Example

Kids learn by imitation, so you have to be a good example. Take every opportunity to share with your child. Ask him if he’d like to share your sandwich with you, ask him if he’d like to help mix the batter for the pancake, or if he’d like to play on your iPad. Make sharing a common practice in the family.

Use Selfishness as a Tool for Good

Here’s a crazy theory: People are selfish 100% of the time. I’m totally serious. Even if we do things that appear selfless (giving), we’re doing these things to feel good. We enjoy the rush of Oxytocin that we get from giving. And that’s good! Just ask Doug Eaton, the man who gave $5 to strangers on his birthday. Giving is selfish because we (the giver) get something out of it. And that’s fine! It’s a good thing. Encourage it.

So teach your child to share because of the good feeling they’ll get. This is the emotional reason to give. This is so much more powerful than justifying sharing as “the right thing to do” or anything based on logic.

You want you child to share? Let them experience how good it feels! Then they’ll do it to be “selfish” in a good way, right?

You can’t make this happen by forcing a child to share, that’s for sure.

Positive Reinforcement by Emotional Coaching

When your child does share, what should you do? I suggest you ask questions to amplify the feel-good emotional state. This is a heck of a lot better than saying, “Wow, I’m so proud of you for sharing”.

Let’s say my daughter, Anne, shares a toy with her playmate, Kaitlyn. I might later say to her, “Anne, that was very nice of you to share your toy with Kaitlyn. Did you notice how she smiled when you did that? …How do you think she felt by what you did? …And how did that make you feel?”

By doing this you’ll help your child to connect the act of sharing with great emotional feelings. This is the absolute KEY to teaching your children to share.

Sharing Among Siblings

Getting a child to share with a brother or a sister may just be one of the hardest things to do as a parent. But the same principles apply. Kids will share only when they want to. And they’ll want to share because it feels good. Always remember this!

Find what works for you and your kids. Here are some examples you can follow:

Set a “safe zone”. Assign a safe zone for each child where everything in it is his and everybody else have to ask permission before they can play with it. Ideally, it’s the child’s bedroom but if they don’t have their own rooms, it can also be a closet, a toy chest, etc. If it’s in a common area like the living room, then the item is for everybody and it’s strictly “first come, first serve”.

Take turns. If more than one child wants to play with a toy, set a timer for five or ten minutes. When the timer rings, the child playing with it should give it to the other child – no extensions and no excuses. In the long run, one of the children will get tired and find another toy to play with. But when toys are new and neither child wants to share a jointly-owned toy, a rule like this can keep the peace.

Play nice or lose the toy. With shared toys, there is now owner. My daughters have doll houses and all sorts of dolls that they love playing with. Most of the time they play amazingly well together for hours. But when moods turn sour, they fight over who “gets” to use the toys. What do I do? I just remind them to solve their own problems. If they can’t solve the problem on their own then I solve it by taking the toys away. They always get fair warning, and they’ve learned that the natural consequence of fighting is to lose whatever they’re fighting over.

Schedules. If the item being shared is something that they can’t use together, you might need to establish a schedule. An example could be an electronic gadget like an iPad, where each kid wants to play a different game, or watch a different show on Netflix. Involve your kids in creating the schedule. This establishes their buy-in to the solution.

The Bottom Line on Sharing in Toddlers and Kids

Getting a child to share takes a lot of patience, and a lot of people can attest that the earlier you start your child on it, the easier it will be. Just like everything else with a toddler, expect a few snags along the way. Stick to the simple rules and ideas I’ve outlined here and you’ll do well.

• Realize that sharing is not a natural skill. Until your toddler is 2-3 it’s probably not worth spending a lot of time on this beyond teaching by example.
• Teaching by example is THE place to start. Be a good role model.
• Encourage kids to realize how good it feels to share. This is the only reason people enjoy sharing!
• Don’t force kids to share their things. This works exactly in the wrong direction in terms of motivating your child to share.

Good luck, and enjoy your children!
Chris Thompson 

Playing games with toddlers and school-aged children can be SO much fun for you and your kids. I really encourage you to get creative. This post has some ideas for you.

In my family we like to get outside for fresh air and exercise. I always find my kids are WAY better behaved when their bodies are moving, and they are breathing fresh oxygen. But a big part of this is simply attention. When kids get bored, they find ways to eliminate the boredom. Misbehavior is a common “solution”.

Your job as a parent is to head-off the boredom. Get out there. Play with your kids. Make the time to do it. It’s good for you too. Have you ever stopped to realize just how often kids smile and laugh throughout the day? I bet they laugh 10 times more often than us adults. That’s sad!

So get out there and play games. Laugh. Have fun. Your kids won’t stay young forever and you will treasure these memories if you make them NOW.

I love inventing new games to play. I think I do this because I get bored of playing the same old games. Hide and seek is fun, but we run out of places to hide. The school yard playground only has so many trees, slides, and other obstacles to hide behind.

Sneak Attack Hide and Seek

Recently I came up with something my girls absolutely LOVE. It’s called Sneak Attack Hide and Seek. In fact, all the kids at the park love this game and we end up with everyone joining in.

Here’s how it works: The person who is “it” closes his (or her) eyes and counts. Everyone else runs to hide as per normal. But the “it” person has to sneak up on those who are hiding. He has to sneak up and yell “found you” before those who are hiding notice.

If the person hiding notices the sneak attack coming, he can announce “I see you” and get another chance to go hide again.

In the playground this works really well. There are tunnel slides to hide in, and all sorts of other places. The trick is for the person doing the seeking to stay as hidden and as quiet as possible so he can launch his “sneak attack” and catch the people hiding. It doesn’t work well in the house. It’s too hard for the seeker to stay hidden.

Sneak-up Tickle Attack

Here’s another game I came up with after being tired from playing all day. I literally just wanted to lie down anywhere. But oh, no. The girls wanted to play a bit more.

Unconsciously I must have been thinking, “How can I come up with a fun game where I don’t have to move?” Well, the answer was “sneak-up tickle attack”.

It works like this: I find a spot at the end of a hallway where I can lie down on my stomach. I put my head on a pillow, and I put hold another pillow (or soft blanket) to cover my head. It also blocks my hearing just enough to make the game fun.

Now the kids take turns. One at a time, they start at the other end of the hallway. They must sneak up on me and tickle me under my arms without me catching them. I catch them if I hear them coming. When this happens, I just take my head out from under the blanket and announce, “I hear you!”. They switch, and try again.

If you find it too easy to hear them, block your hearing more with the blanket. If you can’t hear them at all, lighten up a bit.

This game is tremendous fun. Even if I can hear them coming, sometimes I just let them tickle me. They think it’s hilarious!

Truth be told … so do I. I think I laugh harder than them.

What are your creative games?

I hope you agree with me that playing with your kids is important. Laughing is important. What better way to do this than to play games. When you run out of games ideas, make up new games.

What are your favorite games? Do tell! Drop a comment below. I’m always looking for fun ideas.

One parenting book that I’ve come to enjoy is 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12 by Thomas W. Phelan. He has a doctorate in child psychology, but his writing is very down to earth. That’s what “sold” me on his book and the main reason I recommend it.

1-2-3 Magic is a very easy read. There are lots of short chapters. Each one has simple bite-sized nuggets of advice to make your parenting life easier.

You can get this book at Amazon, or you can probably find it in your local library to borrow for free. Since it’s not expensive, I recommend owning a copy so you can refer back to it later.

What’s 1-2-3 Magic all about?

The first half of the book teaches a technique that Phelan calls “counting”. The core of 1-2-3 Magic is about counting. When your child is doing something you want to stop, you count.

One – First warning that you want them to stop.
Two – Second and final warning.
Three – Timeout. No negotiation, no discussion. (See my comments below)

Counting is used for what Phelan calls “stop behaviors”. These are the things you want your children to stop doing. Examples might include whining, begging, yelling, jumping on the sofa.

You do not use this method for “start behaviors”, such as asking a child to clean his room or do his homework. Instead, Phelan teaches multiple other methods to deal with start behaviors.

YES, counting does work. I’m a fan of this tool.

When you implement this tool, explain it to your kids. Do this once and only once. You tell them you’ll be giving them two warnings (the one and two counts) to fall into line. If you get to three, it’s time for a consequence.  Phelan really focuses on the concept of a timeout.  But I encourage parents to cast a wider net and consider all sorts of other logical consequences.

When you are going to use a timeout, there are a few simple rules to make this work. The timeout isn’t a punishment. It’s a timeout. It’s a time for the child to calm down. You need to adopt this view for it to work.

If your child is jumping on the couch, and won’t stop, a timeout is a good option.  It’s a time for the child to calm down, and essentially be kicked out of the room, unable to enjoy company of the family for a while.  But let’s say you’re asking your child to turn off the TV.  First of all, I don’t think you should just spontaneously tell a child to turn off the TV.  You should have established family rules (during a family meeting) about appropriate TV use.  Then if the time for the TV to go off is approaching, you can give the child a polite reminder.  Then, say the time comes that the TV should be off – you can implement 1-2-3 Magic for counting.  But if you get to 3, there is no timeout.  There is a logical consequence instead.  In this case, the consequence that fits would be for the child to lose TV privileges for a  certain amount of time (the rest of the day, perhaps).

Also, when counting, you ONLY count. You do not get emotional, nor do you repeat your request for the child to stop doing whatever you want them to stop. You ask once, then you count without emotion. When you have to implement the timeout, again, you keep emotion out of it. Phelan calls this the “no talking, no emotion” rule. Without this, 1-2-3 Magic will fail miserably.

I’ve been using the counting method in my family for quite some time. I can personally attest to the fact that it works. It’s super simple, and it is just one of those tools that all parents should have.

I’m a big fan of this method because I have been teaching parents to stay unemotional for a long time! It’s a core part of my teaching in “Talking to Toddlers”. Thomas Phelan has done a great job of making this concept simple to understand.

What’s missing or “bad” about the book?

Just like ANY parenting book, 1-2-3 Magic isn’t a total solution to every problem you will ever have. I say the same thing about my Talking to Toddlers audio course. Parenting books (good ones, at least), give you frameworks to help you fix problems. They give you a model to follow. They give you lots of examples. They give you choice.

I think Thomas Phelan teaches some wonderful tools. That said, like with most parenting books I’ve read, there is no section on how to talk to a child. He does not talk about the reasons that kids behave the way they do.

I really think parents need to understand that emotions drive behavior. Discover how to change your child’s emotional state. Then you have fewer behavior issues to solve. Pretty simple.

That’s why my course is so important for parents. It adds a set of tools that most other parenting experts completely ignore.

But regardless, 1-2-3 Magic is a fantastic book and you should own a copy.

The Bottom Line

I highly recommend this book. Learn the counting technique and use it. It will make a huge difference to you. But keep your mind open to using other tools. Counting should not become your only way of dealing with “bad” behavior.

On top of dealing with “stop behaviors”, Phelan has great tips on how to get kids to start doing things (homework, cleanup, etc).

I also enjoyed (and agreed with) his comments on topics such as getting kids to stay in bed at night, and holding family meetings.

If you get this book and read it, I think you’ll be way ahead of most other parents. Combine it with my course, Talking to Toddlers, and you’ll be an expert in no time.

Enjoy your children, (Click to tweet this message)
Chris Thompson

Today is a simple Wednesday. Yet there is something my kids are really looking forward to and it isn’t costing us a penny.

Special family bonds are not created by big luxurious cruise vacations or buying your child a new toy, bicycle or fashionable outfit.

Great families are formed by making time for each other, and by listening and caring. The good news is it costs absolutely nothing to do these things. That’s nice to know in an age when everyone is connected to digital devices, and hardly has time to look up from the breakfast table.

Last weekend my kids and I were sitting outside the front steps of our house enjoying some sunshine after washing the car and playing with the neighbour’s kids. As we sat there I had an idea that I thought would be fun.

“Anne – usually on Wednesday you come home from school for lunch. What about having a picnic in the park instead?”

Both Anne and Liz literally lit up and smiled. “Yeah, Daddy! Then we’d even have more time to play in the school yard after!”

So that’s our little plan today for a simple Wednesday. I hope it will become one more of a huge collection of special family moments. Moments where we make time for each other and do something special together.

A picnic in the park is something that works for us. My kids go to school close to the house and I work from a home office. I’m not saying that you should do exactly the same thing. It might not fit into your family situation. But something WILL fit, and it’s up to you to find out what those things are and do them.

Then keep doing them. Find special things that you can do with your kids. Go out of your way to look for things that DON’T cost any money. Those things are probably more special!

Make it a habit. You’ll love the results. When your kids are older they won’t remember the iPad you bought them, or the 22nd stuffed animal for their collection. They WILL remember the time you spent with them.

Enjoy your children, (Click to tweet this message)
Chris Thompson
Talking to Toddlers: Dealing with the Terrible Twos and Beyond

For further reading, you might want to check out Using Distraction to Change the Focus of Behavior in Children and Successful Parenting.

This morning I woke up at 5:45 and spent some time working for about an hour, followed by a nice jog through my neighbourhood. I had a nice experience doing a good deed for someone, which I’ll get to in a moment.

But the real point of this post is how I used my story (how I helped someone) to change the emotional state of my kids.

Last night, my youngest daughter, Elizabeth, went into her older sister’s room and took a stuffed animal out of a little basket where many of these “pets” sit as decorative friends in her room.

It was a little fluffy pink piggy. It had pretty much never been used, and Liz decided to take it and snuggle with it at night, in her bed.

In the morning, Anne noticed Liz holding “Piggy”. She realized it had been swiped from her room. They started fighting about it instantly.

I had just gotten home from my jog and needed a shower. So I took Piggy and told the girls I’d be hiding him for a bit, until we all go downstairs to have breakfast and talk about it. I explained that Piggy would return as soon as they get calm, and we all talk about it.

I took my shower and headed downstairs for breakfast. We discussed what happened, and told Liz that she can’t just go stealing stuff from her sister’s room. I gave Piggy back to Anne.

Now, what do you think happened here? Of course Liz was pretty ticked about this. She sees it as belonging to her even though it doesn’t. She was pretty upset about it, tears and everything.

Watching this whole thing unwind, it was obvious that both of the girls were going to continue to misbehave until their emotional states changed. Keep in mind that this is what I teach to parents every day! The emotional state of someone is what drives his or her behavior.

How do you change someone’s emotional state? Stories are FANTASTIC tools to accomplish this.

My kids love dogs. Especially puppy dogs. And I had the perfect story to tell. It had just happened that morning on my jog.

I interrupted their argument and told them to come closer to me, because I had a story to tell them about something that happened to me while jogging earlier this morning.

The key in telling a story is to really build up the events so it has an emotional impact, so keep that in mind as I tell you what happened.

In short, as I was finishing my jog, I came across a young woman who was clearly trying to break into her own car. She had a wire coat hanger in hand, and was trying to get the door open. It took me a moment to realize that she may need to call someone for help.

I stopped and asked her if she was locked out. Not only was she locked out, but her little puppy, a cute Black Labrador, was locked inside the car.

The window was open a couple of inches, and she was trying to use the coat hanger to pull the door latch from the inside of the car. She wasn’t having any luck.

I casually said to her, “I can get the door open for you. Can I have the coat hanger?” She handed it to me. It took me only a minute, but I was able to bend the hanger into a more rigid shape, allowing me to pull with enough force on the door latch.

The door popped open and the young woman let out a HUGE sigh of relief. Her puppy jumped into her arms. She wass thrilled.

… and I felt like a tiny bit of a hero. I think I made her day.

The effect on my girls, and the secret agenda

This story completely changed the emotional state of my kids. They love dogs, and the idea of me “saving” this little puppy was fascinating for them. So it put them into a pretty happy mood.

My youngest daughter, Liz, didnt forget about the Piggy situation. But she was behaving better. She was starting to ask nicely if they could perhaps share the stuffed animal.

Anne got another idea. She wanted to keep it a secret from Liz. She whispered in my ear that she was going to GIVE Piggy to Liz after school today. As a present.

I smiled.

My story obviously didn’t have anything to do with good deeds, helping others, and begin selfless, right? No, of course not

As many of you know, I’m trained in NLP and I’m a certified master hypnotist, having trained under Dr. Mike Mandel. Often, people react as if hypnosis is some kind of Voodoo. It really isn’t.

What I did with my girls (story telling) is essentially hypnosis. It’s covert, conversational hypnosis. The trance occurs when you occupy someone else’s attention with interesting content. The change occurs when you give the unconscious mind suggestions, which are more easily accepted because the conscious mind is not in the way trying to act as the goalie, keeping the puck out of the net.

The story is just the construct. It occupies the other person’s attention. The message, embedded within the story, is what causes change.

All of the tools that I teach in my Talking to Toddlers audio course come from my training in NLP, Ericksonian Hypnosis, and interpersonal communication. That’s why they work so darn well!

Anyway, I wrote this to share a story with you. And the story is about how stories can create change. I hope you enjoyed it.

For further reading, you might want to check out Toddler Parenting and Waiting on Tables: What They Have in Common and What Exactly are the Terrible Twos.

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

We’ve all been there, we try communicating with, or disciplining our kids using a style that we have adopted … and out of nowhere, the spouse bursts onto the scene with a different view.

Frustrating isn’t it? If you have a different parenting style than your spouse, it can cause a rift in your marriage. But even worse is when the difference is voiced openly, right in front of the kids.

So, I found this article on Yahoo! written by Liza Finlay. Finlay is a journalist, psychologist and former managing editor of Flare magazine. She also contributes articles to several publications including Flare, Globe & Mail and Today’s Parent.

Finlay wrote:

When you and your spouse have different approaches to parenting it can feel like the Great Wall of China has arisen between you. Child discipline can be divisive. And arguments over child-rearing can make the most even-tempered adult seem childlike. We quibble and quarrel with our mates like school-aged siblings.

Why? Because we care. Because it’s important. Because it matters more than pretty much anything — to both parents.

Sure, this is a hot-button issue, but you can turn down the heat by remembering that your spouse is in complete agreement about the importance of parenting and parenting right. You two may disagree about what that looks like, but appreciating that you share the best of intentions will bring the feud’s fever pitch back to the normal range. See, you’ve already found some common ground!

Chris Thompson’s thoughts: I really like the overall message here. I learned from Dr. Mike Mandel that whenever a couple has an argument over a detail, they need to climb up one level to discover what it is they agree on. By going higher up (becoming more broad rather than specific), you can realize that you both want to raise a well behaved child, or a child who enjoys reading, or eating a good diet, or whatever. Then you can climb back down to wherever it was that you were disagreeing and find a solution that you both can accept, to achieve the common goal.

Let’s see how this thinking lines up with Finlay’s helpful tips:

• Get on the same page. Stop the power struggle and settle this on neutral ground. This isn’t a game of Tug of War so drop the rope and let an expert weigh in. Start from scratch and consider building solid strategies by taking a parenting course — together.
• Limit disagreements by carving out turf. If laundry is your chore, it’s up to you to decide how to handle the clothes strewn across the kids’ floors. If hockey practice is his drill, he can dictate the terms of the 5 a.m. drill. And remember, you didn’t marry your mirror image. Play to strengths. If he’s better with tantrums and you’re better with picky eating, divide and conquer.
• Agree to disagree. Unless his parenting practices cause bodily harm, battling over discrepant approaches is not worth the strain it puts on the marriage. Learn to let it go. Remember, the relationship your spouse engenders with the kids is not your affair and you can’t control it. So unless his or her parenting practices are truly threatening your child’s development, leave it alone. It’s their business, so let them work it out.
• Form a united front. Even if his authoritarianism, or her permissiveness, makes your skin crawl, keep the conversation calmly to yourselves. Allowing the kids to sense your disquiet only compounds the problem. And besides, compromise requires cool heads and calm.

Having different parenting styles can be quite difficult, but look at the bright side: both you and your spouse are interested in your child’s discipline. You might want to adopt Finlay’s view when she wrote that it might be better if you and your spouse have a designated turf. Or you might want to adopt the approach I described earlier with respect to “climbing up a level” to see where you both agree.

You know where you’re going to work best. And remember the most important rule: never tell your spouse what to do in front of your child.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

For further reading, you might want to check out The Healthy Alternative to These Poisons in Your Fridge and Why Parents Shouldn’t Spank Their Children.