Last week I got an email from a reader, Toshy, asking me if my Talking to Toddlers course specifically helps develop self confidence in three year olds.

You could probably substitute any age in that question and it would still be a very good question. I answered Toshy personally, and I also feel that my answer should be shared here because it will help a lot of parents.

What causes Self Confidence in Children

Self confidence comes from being willing to fail. It comes from willing to fall down and get back up again. It comes from knowing that things won’t go perfectly every time. It comes from expecting mistakes and taking action to correct them. It comes from being a problem solver rather than learned helplessness (expecting someone else to fix your problems).

One way that parents can establish this trait in their kids is to give them to freedom to make mistakes. Allow them to fail. And when they do, congratulate them on learning something new.

If your child wants to pour his own milk, let him. Perhaps stand beside him with a cloth, ready to catch any big mess. Or put the milk in a smaller container first, so it’s manageable.

If your child wants to get his own shoes on (but you’re in a rush), slow down and start a bit earlier. Let him struggle to try. It’s the only way he’ll learn.

If you see your child doing something that you KNOW isn’t going to result in success, let him make his own mistakes. Unless it will result in a trip to the hospital, of course. Safety first .. but I’ll allow my child to get a few bumps or bruises if it means learning to be independent.

And last, but not least, limit the use of the word “no”. It’s one thing to say no to a bedtime snack. But it’s a totally different thing to say no to picking that flower in the park, or walking outside without shoes on, or not letting your child choose her own clothes. You might think a jacket is required because of the temperature. If you let her figure it out for herself, she’ll get cold and know better next time.

Confident kids are kids who learn early on how to make their own decisions, and solve their own minor problems.

My course, Talking to Toddlers, deals with this by teaching you, the parent, more effective ways to communicate. Remember my course is for parents, not kids. It doesn’t teach your kids to be confident. YOU do. My tools certainly help you accomplish this.

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

How many times have you been at the end of your rope and you just didn’t know what to do anymore? Do you find yourself screaming, “If you do that one more time I swear I’ll throw all your toys away!”? Threats such as these may be very ordinary for some families, but let me tell you why parents shouldn’t be making threats like these:

Simply put – because you really can’t follow through. I mean, really … will you really throw away all of your child’s toys? If you make empty threats, your child will learn to never believe them. They’ll go in one ear and out the other. You’ll wreck your ability to use discipline effectively.

So, imagine my delight when I saw this article at babycenter.com. It gives a few common parenting scenarios (geared to 5 year olds). The article was written by Dorothy Foltz- Gray, a freelance writer and mother of two in Knoxville, Tenn.

The author provides “typical” (read: “wrong”) ways to talk to a child, and suggested correct ways to speak. I largely agree with everything in the post, although I have lots of suggested changes based on the language techniques I teach in my “Talking to Toddlers” audio course.

The debate whether corporal punishment over children should be practiced or not has been going on for a long time.

A study very recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal concluded that corporal punishment has very negative effects on children. The study has been going on for 20 years, and has ended after examining 20 years of published research on the issue.

According to the article published on the topic:

Spanking children can cause long-term developmental damage and may even lower a child’s IQ, according to a new Canadian analysis that seeks to shift the ethical debate over corporal punishment into the medical sphere.

Durant and co-author Ron Ensom, with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, cite research showing that physical punishment makes children more aggressive and antisocial, and can cause cognitive impairment and developmental difficulties.

Recent studies suggest it may reduce the brain’s grey matter in areas relevant to intelligence testing.

“What people have realized is that physical punishment doesn’t only predict aggression consistently, it also predicts internalizing kinds of difficulties, like depression and substance use,” said Durant.

“There are no studies that show any long term positive outcomes from physical punishment.”

As to the controversy surrounding corporal punishment: according to Joan Durant, a professor at University of Manitoba and one of the authors of the study:

“We’re really past the point of calling this a controversy. That’s a word that’s used and I don’t know why, because in the research there really is no controversy. If we had this level of consistency in findings in any other area of health, we would be acting on it. We’d be pulling out all the stops to work on the issue.”

Parents only want the best for their child, but I think corporal punishment doesn’t qualify as the “best” way to discipline your child. You might even want to learn better language techniques to communicate with your child.

I’m sure that you care about the health of your family. I sure do and I can’t imagine any parent NOT taking this seriously.

So when I saw this article written by Mike Geary, I knew I had to write a quick blog post about it suggesting you read it.

Here’s why this article is so important to read:

It helps you understand the 5 most dangerous condiments that you probably have in your fridge right now. It explains why they are unhealthy (and we shouldn’t feed them to our kids).

But it ALSO shows you 5 alternative HEALTHY condiments that you should use instead.
You might be surprised to see how often soybean oil is used in foods. You know why? It’s because soybeans are the commodity crop used to give cattle protein, along with corn (for carbohydrates). The byproduct of this industrial farming is a lot of excess soybean oil. So food manufacturers feed it to us. Not because it’s healthy, but because it is cheap.

As I read the article this morning I nodded along at every point that the author made. He and I definitely see eye-to-eye on this.

Please take the 2 minutes necessary to read this. You’ll be surprised by what you learn.

Enjoy your children (and your health!)

Chris Thompson

P.S. Make sure you noticed what I mention about soybean oil in the middle of this post. There is a reason it’s in almost every garbage condiment these days, and it has nothing to do with better health.

This weekend was a blast for my family. My wife and I drove the family from Toronto, where we live (Canada’s largest city) to a very small town 5 hours away called Petawawa. We have friends who live up there, and 4 families gathered at their house for a weekend party. We had seven kids in total, ranging from 3-7 years old.

Courtesy QUOI Media (creative commons)

We went sledding at a huge hill overlooking the local golf course. It was probably the best sledding hill I’ve ever been to. My kids didn’t complain once about the hike back up the hill to go for another ride to the bottom. At night on New Year’s Eve, we even got to take them for a horse-led sleigh ride through the woods. We sat on bundles of hay. It was awesome.

Between outdoor fun and indoor fun, the kids were kept very busy. At some point in the weekend one of the adults in our group said, “Wow, the kids are all really well behaved!”

You know why? Because they were not looking for attention from Mom and Dad, and being ignored. They had our attention during the outdoor sledding, and they had each other’s attention when playing in the house. They were all having fun.

Funny thing about how having fun often translates to great behavior …

My oldest daughter cried this weekend – and the reason was she was sad about leaving to drive home this morning. I practice what I preach, and I got down to business by entering her world. I said things to her like, “You’re sad because you don’t want to leave, sweet heart. I know. I don’t want to leave yet either.” I just acknowledged her feelings and continued on with packing up the car. It wasn’t some magical mood-cure for her, but she got over it fast and it was better than getting upset at her. That would have gotten me nowhere.

Anyway, the lesson here is to realize that when kids are busy and having fun, it takes away reasons to misbehave for the purpose of getting attention. So if you’re suffering behavior problems in your house, consider whether or not it might be due to lack of attention that your kids get from you, your spouse, or anyone else. Then see if you can find ways to inject more fun in your lives.

Oh, and that bounce house my friends had in their basement? It was AWESOME. I want to buy the same model but I measured my basement and unfortunately it won’t fit. But I might pick it up for the summer season when it can go in the backyard. This is the exact model they had. Easily fit 4 kids at a time. Easily. The brand is Little Tikes, a well known brand. There is also a larger model available if you have a gigantic house or yard.

Christmas for the little ones just isn’t complete without Santa Claus. This big, old man with the white long beard is pretty much THE symbol of Christmas for kids. Well, that and the presents under the tree, right?

I’ve noticed that a lot of children line up with their parents to sit on Santa’s lap, only to end up crying when they’re face to face with the big man. A bit of this is the parent’s fault. Imagine how scary it is to suddenly sit on a stranger’s lap and hear a loud “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

I saw this article on Yahoo! Shine and thought it would be helpful.

According to Ryan Johnson, there are three ways to introduce toddlers to Santa Claus: books, movies and TV and Dolls and figurines. Here’s an excerpt from Johnson’s article.

Books

As with everything else, there are countless books out there for kids at Christmas. We started reading them last week, and she’s already totally into them. They’re what she goes for now when it’s time to read, and she loves the reindeer, elves, and Christmas trees. There’s one in particular, Christmastime is Here with the LittlePeople, that has a huge photo of Santa on the front, and contains pages and pages of flaps to lift. When she picks up that book, she yells out “Ho Ho Ho!,” knowing that’s Santa’s mantra. She’s able to pick him out on every page, and she gives a big smile when she sees him. However, a one-dimensional picture of Santa that doesn’t make any noise in a book is quite different than the real thing, so we also turn to…

Movies and TV

Like many children out there, my daughter is quite taken with the Sesame Street gang. She’s particularly fond of Elmo and loves to see him on TV. My husband and I both have SesameStreet.org programmed into our favorites on our computers, so we can quickly pull up a short video to give her a quick fix every once in a while. You can find just about any video you’re looking for, whether you’re searching by character or by topic. Learning to count? No problem. Potty training? The Muppets of Sesame Street can help. So, after a quick search, I found a cute little video of Elmo visiting Santa Claus up at the North Pole. Not only is Elmo excited to see Santa, but it goes into the spirit of Christmas and there’s a song to boot. But again, seeing Santa on TV isn’t quite the same thing as when he’s right in front of you, so we’ve also brought out some…

Dolls and Figurines

Unfortunately, the dolls we have around our house have given me an inkling as to what we’re in for when we go see Santa. Last night, we put her to bed and hauled out all of the decorations. We thought it would be fun to get it all done while she was asleep, and then have her walk through the house with everything glowing this morning when she woke up. And it was fun! She loved it and continued through every room with a look of wonder on her face. Until, that is, she spotted the two Santa dolls we have with our respective school logos on their sweaters. These Santas are probably 12 inches tall and are too cute. She took one look at them, furrowed her little brow, and took off running as fast as her little legs would carry her. My hope is that she’ll get used to them the more she sees them. Only time will tell. In the meantime, wish us luck with our visit to Santa. And if we do have the all-too-common photo of a screaming toddler and an exasperated Santa, at least we’ll have a great story to tell for years to come that will embarrass her to no end.

Now, don’t stop at the three suggestions Ryan gave here. These may or may not work on your child, so trying other things will definitely help. If you have already successfully introduced Santa Claus to your child, how did you do it? I’m sure other parents would like to know.

You have to remember to respect your child. If you wait in the mall lineup for 45 minutes only to have your child completely refuse to sit on Santa’s lap – that’s his or her choice. You can’t force him to do it. In fact I suggest prepping your child ahead of time. Ask him if he wants to sit on Santa’s lap. If he says no, don’t push the issue. It may only be Santa, but do you really want your child growing up thinking that he has to go sit on a stranger’s lap when you tell him to?

Last year I found a blog post where an awesome woman had pointed out a whole pile of absolutely free Christmas music available at Amazon.

I emailed the link out to my subscribers and everyone loved having access to it. Hey, you can’t beat free, right? I don’t mind paying for great music, but I’ll always be more than happy to save some money to stuff my kids’ Christmas stockings just a bit more.

Anyway, I just checked this morning and sure enough you can still get a ton of free music for the holiday season.

I sorted the music by price so the free stuff shows up at the top.
Here’s the link to Free Christmas Music

I also noticed something called 25 days of free, which is a free Christmas song every day in December up until the 25th. So you might want to go back daily to grab the current freebie.

I came across an article about a new program called COPE24 that’s being implemented in nearly twenty school districts in Missouri. The program aims to teach teenagers about the stresses of parenting and how to recognize neglect and abuse before they even become parents themselves.

There are different forms of child abuse. These are:

According to a research made by Florida State University Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy, children born to young mothers are at a greater risk of being an indicated case of child abuse or neglect and being placed in foster care later. The U.S Department of Health and Human Services has similar findings.

COPE24 works by showing teenagers videos of real-life scenarios (such as that of a father who lost his baby due to shaken baby syndrome), and then they have guided discussion of how to better handle such situations.

I think this is a great program. If you don’t get educated on a topic, you’ll remain ignorant. And there are lots of times when you can probably think back to something you learned and say, “Yeah, that really had an impact on me”.

I’ve always liked the expression, “kids don’t come with instruction manuals”, so programs like COPE24 sound quite helpful.

The numbers of teenage parents are growing everyday – and teenagers are usually not mature enough to understand their own emotions, forget those of a child! So at least if we can’t prevent so many teenage pregnancies maybe we can at least minimize the damage that they can cause.

COPE24 is still on its early stage, and I guess the biggest obstacle right now is how to get through to teenagers. While this sounds like a great program, we all know that parenting is the last thing on a teenager’s mind. It’s very hard to get them to listen to these kinds of messages. I wonder how they’ll deal with low interest among teenagers.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is an organization made up of 60,000 pediatricians committed to the attainment of optimal physical, mental and social health for all infants, children and adolescents.

The organization published a news release recently with the following title:

BABIES AND TODDLERS SHOULD LEARN FROM PLAY, NOT SCREENS

They argue that it’s not a great idea for parents to allow kids to spend so much time watching TV.

Here are some of the key findings from their study:

• Many video programs for infants and toddlers are marketed as “educational,” yet evidence does not support this. Quality programs are educational for children only if they understand the content and context of the video. Studies consistently find that children over 2 typically have this understanding.
• Unstructured play time is more valuable for the developing brain than electronic media. Children learn to think creatively, problem solve, and develop reasoning and motor skills at early ages through unstructured, unplugged play. Free play also teaches them how to entertain themselves.
• Young children learn best from—and need—interaction with humans, not screens.
• Parents who watch TV or videos with their child may add to the child’s understanding, but children learn more from live presentations than from televised ones.
• When parents are watching their own programs, this is “background media” for their children. It distracts the parent and decreases parent-child interaction. Its presence may also interfere with a young child’s learning from play and activities.
• Television viewing around bedtime can cause poor sleep habits and irregular sleep schedules, which can adversely affect mood, behavior and learning.
• Young children with heavy media use are at risk for delays in language development once they start school, but more research is needed as to the reasons.

The report recommends that parents and caregivers:

• Set media limits for their children before age 2, bearing in mind that the AAP discourages media use for this age group. Have a strategy for managing electronic media if they choose to engage their children with it;
• Instead of screens, opt for supervised independent play for infants and young children during times that a parent cannot sit down and actively engage in play with the child. For example, have the child play with nesting cups on the floor nearby while a parent prepares dinner;
• Avoid placing a television set in the child’s bedroom; and
• Recognize that their own media use can have a negative effect on children.

Part of this study says that over 90% of parents said their children (age under 2 years old) watch some form of electronic media. That’s not really much of a shocker. But they also stated how the average time in front of a screen is one to two hours per day. I definitely see this as a problem for the under-2 crowd. Let’s face it. Kids are going to learn a lot more by interacting with other people at this age.

With all the shows packaged for young kids such as Barney, Dora the Explorer and Thomas and Friends, just to name a few, it’s very easy to be swayed into letting our kids watch TV while we go about our daily routines.

Parents, I know how it’s sometimes more convenient to let the television do the babysitting for us, but it really isn’t in the best interests of your child, is it?For our children’s sake, let’s take a break and spend more time with them.

What do you think about the AAP study? Do you believe the numbers? Do you have a problem with the idea of putting a kid that young in front of a screen for up to 2 hours per day?

I was reading Parenting.com today, and when I came across a blog post written by the site’s celebrity blogger Kendra Wilkinson.

For those of you who don’t follow the celeb scene (I don’t, my wife does), Kendra Wilkinson is a star of the E! reality show The Girls Next Door. She’s also married to football player Hank Baskett and mom to toddler Hank Jr. I normally wouldn’t suggest taking parenting advice from a former Playmate, but in this case I think Kendra demonstrates an understanding of parenting that a lot of people don’t understand.

In this post, I Don’t Want to Smother Baby Hank, she says:

“My whole pregnancy I had ideas of what I thought I would be like, but just like my cravings, they changed daily. The one thing I knew for sure was that I was going to be protective—I just didn’t know what that would entail… Once he was born, everything kind of fell into place, and I knew almost immediately I wanted him to be able to go out there and learn on his own and experience life on his own. “

So that’s the setup. But here’s where she brings it home with a really simply story. She couldn’t have put it any better about parenting when she said:

“We can do our best as parents to teach him, but it is up to him to learn. For example, he used to love to play with water; he would sit there and turn the faucet on and off and get the biggest kick out of it. One time the water was pushed to the hot side—not all the way, but still on the hot side. I kept telling him “Hot, Hank, No, Hank, Ouchie.” But I DIDN’T turn it off. I told him why not to touch it. He looked up at me and said, “Hot!” and didn’t touch it. If I had turned the faucet off he probably would have burned his hand at some point because he wouldn’t have known better. I would have prevented the incident instead of teaching him to learn for next time.“

I couldn’t agree more with Kendra on this one. Nothing beats a parent’s love but if you’re truly concerned about your child, you need to let him learn things on his own. It’s a big world out there, and you have to teach your child to survive rather than to always protect him from it. After all, you know you can’t always be there.

Your child will fall down, get cut, get hurt, deal with social issues, and have disagreements with others. Our role is to teach him how to overcome the pain on his own, or learn form the mistakes on his own. We can coach our children, but not do everything for them.