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.

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

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

In the beginning I wasn’t worried about this. It was no big deal, and it wasn’t worth a fight. But soon afterward I realized I was going to have to show her how to make her own decisions and how to be responsible for her own choices. After I came to that realization, I started making her do things for herself if she changed her mind.

As a simple example, say she told me that she really didn’t want the orange bowl. I’d just say to her, “That’s fine sweetie – just go to the drawer and get whatever bowl you want, and put this one back”. If she really wanted to make a change it was now up to her. Sure, she fussed about this at first, because she wanted me to do it for her. I just pushed the responsibility back to her politely.

Children want parents to do things for them. They test the boundaries and they want to see how much influence they can have over Mom and Dad. Instead of getting angry at these tests, just realize that they are a normal part of growing up. It’s so much easier to just show them how to take action to solve their own problems.

Always keep in mind that children will get upset if you say “No” right to their face. It can really be easier to say “I see – you want a different color bowl? No problem, here’s where you can go to get it by yourself” When you do this you’re presenting a solution

Sometimes parents won’t offer solutions. They just seem to put up roadblocks. They say “No, I won’t get you another bowl”. I suggest that when you have a conflict with your young kids, you offer them solutions rather than roadblocks. This forces them to take responsibility for adopting the solution.

Toddlers and young kids will push the boundaries as a part of their learning experience. If you understand that this is a normal process, you’ll find it much easier to redirect the conflict towards teaching them how to solve their own problems.

Chris Thompson is the creator of the Talking to Toddlers audio course for parents. He shows parents how to use language to reduce parenting stress. Listen instantly to his free lesson on raising toddlers.

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

Remember when your baby was born? Sure, it was stressful at times. It was a huge change in your life. You didn’t always know why your child was crying. But you quickly discovered the main culprits of temperature, hunger, gas, a soiled diaper, or fatigue. Those were rather easy problems to solve, and you didn’t need any special skills. You didn’t have to ask your baby what was wrong. You just learned to figure it out based on “reading” your baby’s behavior.

Then sometime between 12-24 months your baby became a toddler. Crawling turned into walking, and mutterings turned into real words. Your child would point at things, ask for things, and literally freak out if you said “No”. Am I right so far?

I’m going to give you the single most important advice that I think all parents of toddlers need to understand. Ready? Accept that children in the age range of two to four have almost no reasoning skills. Logic is usually a bad way to approach a problem. That’s it. Once you appreciate this, your ability to prevent tantrums will have suddenly skyrocketed.

One of my pet peeves is when people write advice about what not to do, but they don’t give you any useful suggestions on how to replace the old habit. So let me expand upon this statement. Let’s pretend that your toddler or preschooler is messing around in the kitchen and is dragging pots and pans out of the cabinet. You know that you’ll have to clean this up. You want the behavior to stop. Be honest now. In this situation, would you normally just tell your child to “stop” and take them out of the kitchen? If you answered “yes”, then you’ve tried to solve the problem by using logic, or by assuming your child will understand that this behavior is not allowed. Guess what? It almost always results in a tantrum.

So what do you do instead of using logic? Start managing your toddler’s state of mind. Change the focus of his or her attention. Use distraction or confusion techniques to create an opportunity to shift your child to a new activity. There are plenty of ways to deal with toddlers that don’t involve rational explanations or logic.

Here’s a quick way to get your toddler out of a messy situation without a fight. First, enter the child’s world. Say, “I see you are playing with these pots and making a lot of nose. That must be a lot of fun!” Next, start to distract your child with something simple such as a tickle and some laughing. This positions you in positive manner, not as the mother or father about to take away the toys. Finally, change the scenery by carrying your child over to the window and pointing out something interesting. Maybe it’s the squirrel climbing in the tree. Maybe an airplane flying overhead? Young kids have a short attention span. All you need to do is be a bit “sneaky” in changing your child’s focus while maintaining a positive state of mind. Then, following the distraction, give them something new to do.

In nearly every instance, tantrums and bad behavior are the result of a certain (negative) emotional state in your child. If you want to change the behavior, you need to change the emotional state first. Language is a powerful asset that parents can use to steer children into resourceful states. After all, kids don’t tend to misbehave or throw tantrums when they are laughing and smiling.

If you’d like to learn more of these simple and powerful communication strategies, simply visit http://TalkingToToddlers.com

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

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

Remember that kids just want to do things that they deem fun, comforting, or somehow satisfying. As a parent, if you get resistance from your child, you can turn that into co-operation if you transform what you are doing into something that is more fun, more comforting, or more satisfying.

Here’s a recent example. My oldest daughter was watching Berstein Bears in our bedroom during “quiet time” before bed. My wife had already taken my youngest daughter off to brush teeth and cuddle, and I was giving my older daughter another 15 minutes. When the cartoon ended, I told her it was time for bed, as usual. She put up a whiny fuss about it and I knew I had to change the direction of the situation right away, or I’d risk a tantrum. At the very least, it would just set the wrong tone for bedtime and it would take longer to get her settled.

What I did: I was standing at the edge of the bed telling her it was time for bed, and I had the remote in my hand to turn off the TV. If I simply turned it off, I risked killing our rapport and turning the whining into a big fight. So I playfully tossed the remote onto the mattress beside her. She knows how to hit the “off” button so I gave her a little challenge. I told her, “Ok sweetie … I’m going to give you a 20 second head start and then I’m going to crawl over to the TV and I’m going to turn it off. I wonder if you’ll beat me to it.”

I started (again, playfully) counting to 20. By the time I got to 4 she was into it and didn’t want to wait. She said, “Daddy – just go, start crawling.” I did exactly that. I got onto the floor and started creeping over to the TV like I was some kind of lion or tiger. I got halfway there when she turned the TV off and declared victory. I laughed, she laughed, and I carried her off to bed like the little princess that she is.

The whole “fuss” lasted all of 10 seconds. I didn’t negotiate with her or demand instant compliance with my wishes. That’s not the right way to handle it. It’s much easier, in my experience, to create a more compelling reason for her to want to go along with the routine. I just turned it into a game and that seemed more fun than a cartoon. I knew it would work (or at least I had a pretty good feeling it would) because we play games all the time. So I’m not telling you that this will work for you exactly as I’ve described it. Use your own instincts. But the same principles apply.

You can get more flies with honey than with vinegar … that’s what my Mom always used to tell me. Boy, was she smart.

Admit it. Sometimes you are worse than your toddler. When parenting toddlers, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all, at some point, turned into an adult-sized child. We throw our own tantrums, we nag our kids worse than they nag us, and we act and react based on emotion, no matter how silly it seems later.

Nagging your kids is not the same as raising your voice. I define it as asking your child to do something in a whiny voice. I’m guilty of this too, but if I catch myself doing it I’m able to replace that nasty habit with communication tools that are a lot more effective. I think that most parents are either not aware they are nagging, or they just don’t know what else to do. I want to change that.

In this article, I simply want to point out the behavior so that you are more aware of it when you do it. Then, you can stop what you are doing and implement some better alternatives. There is always a better way.

Parents tend to nag their kids when they are doing something that is not allowed or not desired. “Elizabeth, stop pulling on the dog’s tail … come on Liz … how many times do I have to tell you to leave the dog alone? Liz, the dog doesn’t like it when you do that … do you want him to bite you?” We both know this almost never works.

Parents also nag their kids when they are not doing something that the parent wants them to do. “Robbie, come to the table and eat your lunch. Come on, Robbie … Mommy made you a yummy sandwich and I want you to come sit down right now. Robbie … you can play with your toys after lunch. Come sit down for lunch”.

Between those two examples I’m sure you get the drift. The pattern is almost always the same. You, as a parent, are focused on what you want your child to do, or perhaps to stop doing. You ask once, and nothing happens. Your child ignores you. You ask again, but this time with stronger reasons, hoping your child will suddenly become rational. Rinse and repeat.

When you want to get your child to change his or her course of action, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask. If your child ignored you the first time then he won’t listen the second or third time. Somewhere inside, you know this is true, and you adapt by changing your tone of voice until you are either yelling or nagging. Neither is very effective, both cause you added stress and perhaps worse, they teach your child the same lousy communication strategies. Kids learn from mom and dad, after all.

So what can you do instead? When you catch yourself nagging, just stop for a moment. Reflect on what you are trying to accomplish. Are you expecting a small child to be a rational thinker? It isn’t going to happen. What else can you say to get the message across, or to distract your child from whatever he is doing? A great starting point is to enter your child’s world by incorporating things that will interest your child into the conversation. You could also use what I call “the illusion of choice” so that whatever choice your child takes is in alignment with what you want.

If you’ve purchased a copy of my audio course, “Talking to Toddlers”, then take what you’ve learned and apply it to these types of problems. I believe that parents run into resistance because they stick to a direct “do this” mentality of ordering their kids around. They expect their kids to understand logic and reason. Parenting toddlers is a lot more fun and less stressful when you can use softer, indirect methods to get your kids to do what you want.

The most important thing to take away from this article is the realization that we all nag our kids more than we should. It’s not particularly effective, and if you can stop yourself before you get too deep into it, you’ll easily be able to make use of any number of parenting tricks. Remember. Nothing works when you lose your cool.

If you haven’t already done so, go and get my free audio lesson where I’ll teach you 3 simple language strategies that you can start using right away. Click here to get the free lesson. Or simply look for the sign-up form at the top of this page.