Implementing Chores

Many parents ask the question should allowance be attached to chores? The response is what are we training them for? The purpose of training up a child is to ready them for adulthood. There are many jobs that we as adults have to do around the house. I don’t remember ever receiving a paycheck for doing dishes, laundry or taking out the trash.  One of the purposes of chores is to teach children that there are things that we do simply to be a contributing member of a family. There may be extra jobs that are not considered regular chores, such as cleaning out the refrigerator or cleaning windows, that could be done to earn some extra cash.  This teaches a child to go above and beyond what is simply required of them. These extra jobs can also be used as consequences, without pay, for chores not done.
Many parents then ask how do I get my child to do household chores? We discussed yesterday setting up a reward/consequence plan for chores. We as adults do have a reward for household chores-a clean and relaxing living space. Think of some rewards,not monetary, that will motivate your child as well as consequences for chores not done.

Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on chores.

Chores Teach A Child To Choose

We discussed yesterday that chores train a child to do what is responsible rather then what is pleasurable. The question is where is a parent to start? The concept of chores is something that can start as early as preschool with simple tasks.  In our house, we are working with our three-year-old son teaching him how to clean up after himself. He picks up one set of toys before bringing out another.  Of course it would be MUCH faster, and I probably wouldn’t have to sing the clean up song, if I just ran around after him straightening.  If I consistently did the work for him, however, then he wouldn’t be ready for the next step, cleaning his room on his own.

For any child utilizing the ICE plan is key for chores.  Instruct them what your expectation is.  Tell them ahead of time what the consequence is for not completing the chore and what the reward is for completing the chore to your expectation.  Finally and sometimes most difficultly we have to step back and let them exercise their choice.  Are they going to choose a reward or consequence?

In the residential homes at Sheridan house the teens have chores every morning.  The room that does the best in their chores gets ice cream at the end of the week.  Many kids are reward driven so attaching rewards early on for a job well done will easily teach that it’s worth it to work hard.

For more on chores listen to today’s podcast.

Why It’s So Important

Why is it so important to fight the chores battle as parents? There are four main reasons. First there is nothing that teaches a child personal responsibility as well as chores.  It teaches a child to make the choice between what they want to do and what they need to do.  This learned responsibility translates into many adult situations from credit cards to sexuality.

Chores can communicate that a child is needed.  Every part of the family pitches in to help out.

It can also help to teach a child how to take initiative as well as learning the importance of excellence.  If I do something right the first time I won’t have to go back and fix it.

Lastly it prepares a child for emancipation from the home.  We have laughed about how many college freshman have no idea how to do laundry.  But simply teaching a child how to do chores helps them to learn basic household management skills.

For more on why chores are such an important area to train your child in, listen to today’s podcast.

Why Don’t We Give Our Kids Chores Anymore?

This week will be spent talking about the importance of children doing household chores. The interesting thing is that it seems overall families don’t prioritize their children doing chores.  Why is this?

There are many reasons for this but it seems that the main reason is time.  We are all very busy from adults to children in the home, our schedules are jam-packed.  The priority of chores has fallen by the wayside. It also takes a lot of time put in by the parent.  It takes time to train your child how to do the chore.  It takes time to inspect the chores and make sure that they are done to your standard.  It also takes time to correct mistakes, as well as time to cheer when the chore is done right.  This is why many parents shy away from the job of training their children to do chores.  “It just seems faster and easier to do it myself. “

Chores are an important part of training a child however.   There are many lessons that can be learned from them.  Check back the rest of this week to see why they are invaluable!

Listen to today’s podcast for more on chores.

Perfection vs. Fun

There is such pressure for performance and perfection in today’s culture, from how we perform at work/school to our appearance.  A great way to defuse this pressure is family fun.  Especially fun at a parent’s expense, this helps model for a child how not to take themselves to seriously.   In our house this was Dad.  Dad made sure that he rigged it so that he lost most of the games we played.  He then would make a huge show of loosing meaning that he would burst into tears or being silly throw a temper tantrum.  There were many creative ways to have us all hysterically laughing.  It seems he took it as a challenge if one of us was in a bad mood to do something ridiculous to make us laugh.  There was even several times that he “fell asleep” at the breakfast table and got oatmeal all over his face.  This was a great lesson for us in how its ok to be silly and to laugh at yourself.

Listen to today’s podcast for more on this topic.

The Value of Food Coloring

With the explosion of social media there is an overwhelming amount of information on how to have fun and create fun family memories. From blogs, like this one, to pinterest we have no excuse to not have creative family time.  We just have to make the time.

There are two types of fun that need to take place because they serve two different purposes.  The first is spontaneous fun, this is the type of fun that breaks routine. We gave an example of this unexpected fun with the story of the water balloons earlier this week.  It can even be something like having a themed dinner, picnic on the floor, dinner at the beach or the park on a weeknight, or even as simple as stopping for an ice-cream off the dollar menu to celebrate a Tuesday.

The other type of fun is scheduled fun.  This is setting aside time to have fun together as a family.  A great example of this is a family game night.  Family game night can do a lot more then just fun. It can help to teach a child how to have fun with competition and how to win/loose appropriately.

Make it a habit to have moments of spontaneous and scheduled fun at least once a week.

Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.

It Doesn’t Have to Cost Money

Today’s society has such a warped view of what fun is.  For many of us fun is wrapped around getting something new or paying someone/something to entertain us.  Many of us pay to take our children places for them to be entertained.  We need to teach our children what it means to have fun with out spending.  This doesn’t mean sitting your children down and lecturing them how when you were a child you could spend the day entertaining yourself out side with only a stick or a rock.  This means setting the example.  Play with your children, don’t just set them in front of the TV or videogame as a babysitter.

Another thing that we can do is encourage our children to develop their imagination.  Spend time reading to your children or making time for them to read.  Loose your inhibitions and spend time in the back yard pretending to fight the dragon or sailing across the ocean with your young children.  Take the time to kick/throw/ hit a ball with your older children.  Show them that fun doesn’t have to cost anything. There is also something to be said for the value of knowing how to entertain yourself and not have to be entertained.

Listen to today’s podcast for more on this topic.

It Relieves Stress

We touched on the concept of fun as a stress relieve a little bit yesterday.  It is amazing that fun can be like a mini vacation from life. It is amazing how just a few brief moments of fun can lighten the load of a stressful situation.  It also helps us as parents keep proper perspective on what truly is important.

For example, during a particularly stressful time for the girls in the residential program, meaning they were having a bad week of fighting between each other, the house mom and I decided that we needed to create a “distraction of fun”.  When the house pop left in the van to pick up the girls we spent 30 minutes filling water balloons.  Now was there other things that we could have, and probably should have, been doing with that time? Yes, but we knew that it would help the girls relationally if we could create a distraction.  We were around the corner of the house when the van pulled in and soaked them as they got out.  It is amazing what being pelted with water balloons does to build camaraderie in a group.  We were able to defuse the tension and relational stress with fun.

Try finding time for some silly fun in your house this week.

Listen to today’s podcast for more on the topic of fun.

Why It’s Important To Have

There are so many stressors on every member of the family today, financial, relational, and work/ school related stress to name a few.  The home is suppose to be an environment that will shield us from those stresses.  It is our safe place and shelter from the world around us.  It is also the place to build those lasting childhood memories.  How sad for time to just fly by because of our busy lives and have regrets about the time spent with our children.  We can’t spend our time living only for the weekend or the vacation time. We need to incorporate fun into our day to day.  When children are young get into the habit of making family meals something that you do together.  Take that opportunity around the table to talk but also don’t miss out on the opportunity for laughing and just plain silliness.  It is amazing the stress relief of a really good laugh.  Taking opportunities to look for fun also sets the tone for the atmosphere of your family.  What will your children feel as they think about their childhood? Will it be fond memories of great family times or will it be memories of wishing for something different.

Make sure to not take yourself to seriously and just have fun with your family.

Listen to today’s podcast for more on the topic of fun.

Questions About Imperfect Homes

One thing that can be unsettling for children is when their parents disagree, because if this it may raise questions. First our children need to know that mommy and daddy aren’t perfect and two imperfect people living under the same roof may not always agree.   As always we need to be aware that children observe everything and make sure that if we disagree in front of the kids we are appropriate to each other

This maybe a great discussion to teach your children about marriage that even though two people love each other they don’t always agree. It can also be a great thing to use to teach your children about God.  Even though mommy and daddy aren’t perfect and make mistakes, their Heaven Father is perfect.

The hard questions about home issues can be used to start discussions with your children.  However, if the issues are more severe never put your children in the middle of the arguments or cause them to half to choose sides between mom and dad.  This is very distressing for them.

For more on this topic check out our previous series titled, When Parents Don’t Agree, by clicking here.

And as always check out today’s podcast as well for more insight.

Questions About The Gray Areas Of Life

There are some areas in life that aren’t completely black and white and different people have different convictions about them.  These may be decisions that you want to help coach your kids through.  This means that your answers aren’t as important as the discussions they create.  Helping your children their own convictions about these gray areas will help them stick with them as they get older.  It is their own decision rather then a rule imposed on them.

There are also some gray areas that society has set up boundaries around already.  Take movies for instance, some people make the personal choice not to see rated R or even PG-13 movies because of their content.  The nice thing is society has already set up that these are appropriate only for ages over 18 or 13.  So this is an easy gray area to help your child set up their adult convictions for.  So it is easy to have a dialog about this type of gray area.  When your child asks about  movies, you can reply what your personal conviction is but open a dialog about it. For example something like “mom and dad have chosen not to watch movies that are R because of the nudity or language,” or “mom and dad are very selective about the PG 13/R movies we watch because we don’t want to put the sexuality or language into our heads.”  That can open a dialog to discuss this issue.

The importance is the discussion not the answer because with gray areas every family may have made a different choice.  This means that your child will observe other families maybe making different choices then yours, which is why you want to be available for questions.

Listen to today’s podcast for more on this topic.

Peer Interaction Questions

Another topic that may be difficult for today’s parent to discuss is peers.  Our reactions to peer discussions can go one of two ways.  Either we can be tempted to blow off issues as not a big deal or blow up issues and make them a bigger deal.  Neither one of these reactions will encourage our children to come back to us with peer issues.

Something that we need to keep in mind in talking with our kids about peers is their experience may be very different from ours.  Bullying has been taken to a completely new level then what most of us have observed. (For more on bullying check out our previous series by clicking here.)  And with the introduction of the internet, our homes are not completely a sanctuary because of cyber-bullying. (for more on this topic check out the cyber-bullying series by clicking here.)

We also must remember that while something may not seem like a big deal to us as parents, we are removed from the situation.  To a preteen/teen peer relations are their world, therefore it is a bigger deal to them.  Because we are removed we can offer valuable advice and insight but we must be careful not to downplay our child’s emotion about a situation.  Doing this is another way to alienate your child and make them decide not to come back to us in the future because they feel mom/dad “doesn’t understand.”

Listen to today’s topic for more insight on peer interaction questions

Sex Questions

Like we discussed yesterday and many times previously we want to be the ones that our children come to with their questions.  It is our job as parents to “train them up in the way they should go” this means that we cannot leave the difficult topics and questions for some one else to answer.

Because of the world around them it is amazing the questions our children come up with and at younger ages today.  Especially when it has to do with sexuality.  We must be prepared for these questions and control our emotions when they are asked.  We cannot give the answer, even though we may think it, wait until your older.  When we leave these important questions unanswered we leave them vulnerable to whoever will answer and usually that means peers.  If a difficult question throws you off instead of reacting shocked, its ok to say “because this is a really important topic why don’t you let me think about it and we’ll talk before you go to bed.” That way you have time to process how to answer and to think through if there are any deeper questions underlying.

For more insight on the topic of teaching your kids about sexuality check out our previous series on Putting Sexual Purity Into Your Parenting Curriculum as well as today’s podcast.

The Questions Your Child Has But Doesn’t Know To Ask

Children are innately curious creatures.  Ask any mom of a toddler and they will tell you how they spend their day answering the seemingly limitless amount of questions.  Why, or in my son’s case, what happened? At some point though if we are not careful they stop asking questions.

As parents it is our job to make sure that we are open and available for our children to ask questions to.  It is very easy to quickly answer a question and continue on with what we are doing.  Often these are moments where our children want to know something deeper and either don’t know how to ask it or are feeling us out for how we will respond.  Take the time to truly listen to what your children are saying and look for opportunities to draw up that underlying question.

Remember we want to constantly do things that will open the lines of communication with our child and reinforce that we will always be a safe place for them to come with questions, even the hard ones.

Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.

Remember This Is A Long Term Project

We spoke yesterday about continuing the training into the teen years.  This is one of those areas in parenting that is a long term project.  This training is a marathon not a sprint.  We can’t give up when it feels like the communication training we worked hard on in the early childhood years seems like it is needed again, and more than ever in the teen years.  Some of the behaviors may even look the same as many parents of teens can attest as they watch a teenage temper tantrum. We just have to keep at the communication training and not reinforcing the negative behavior.  Many adults around us have not been trained to communicate and can be seen acting out as a result of pain.  Those people are very hard to be married to and difficult to employ.  This is why we must focus on the day to day process of training in communication and remember it is worth running this marathon for our child’s future!

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”

2 Timothy 4:7 ^“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful.”

Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.

Continuing Communication Training In The Teen Years

We’ve spent a lot of this week talking about signal behavior with younger children.  Acting out with temper tantrums and other negative behavior.  But what about when it happens in older children and teens?  This age also acts out when they are hurting but there are other things that happen as well.

There was a few ways to tell when one of our residential girls was in pain and didn’t know how to express it.  She would be mean to the other girls in the house, she would become sullen, or she would pull away and withdraw.  I had to train these girls that I was a safe place to come in and talk when they were hurting, so I had to read the signs and begin the process of helping them communicate through it.

I found that when a girl was really struggling to communicate finding a neutral turf was the best to get them to talk.  Either taking them out to lunch or even just talking when we were doing another activity, like playing basketball or painting nails depending on the girl.   Don’t allow your child to withdraw and more importantly don’t take it personally. Pursue your child and continue the communication training!

Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.

Developing Healthy Communication Skills

Developing healthy communication skills is one of the most important areas of Parenting.  If someone can’t communicate what’s going on inside them they will find marriage very difficult. They will hide in a shell, medicate or explode.  As a parent we need to find the line of dealing with the behavior but making sure we are also training our child to communicate what is wrong.  We also cannot let them get what they want by means of negative behavior.

Currently, as I am writing this my three year old has started struggling with bedtime again. He has been getting out of his bed because he knows that mommy or daddy will have to come in to discipline.  He is seeking relationship and is communicating through his behavior that he needs one of us to be with him. This behavior has started again because he is working through being an older brother and having to share mommy’s attention with his two-month-old baby brother.  He doesn’t know how to verbalize these feelings, and may not completely understand that he is having them, so he is reaching out for relationship with his negative behavior.  We have to be very careful not to reinforce him getting up.  So we wait for a time where he is laying in his bed, doing what he is suppose to, at that point we can go back in to lie down with him to talk and reinforce how important he is to us.  Make sure that you are reading the signal behavior and not reinforcing negative behavior but teaching your child to communicate using it.

Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.

Teaching Children To Talk About Their Feelings

Learning how to communicate your feelings is a vital skill for children to learn. Learning to talk through an issue rather than have an emotional outburst is something that is key to marriage and employment.  It is so important that we spent and entire series that was dedicated to communication.  Check out The Importance of Teaching Your Child To Communicate.

Listen to today’s podcast as well for more insight.

Defining Signal Behavior

The assumption is that kids are born able to communicate. Why would anyone married over a week think that people are automatically able to communicate? We actually spend a lifetime developing our means of communication, more importantly we have to be taught to communicate.

Take my 3 year old son. Everything’s fine. He gets into the car seat with his mother and grandmother up front. We are talking to each other, not him.  He wants to be the center of his world so he starts speaking or singing loudly in order to get us to pay attention.  If we don’t he escalates the attempt by asking things repeatedly or even misbehaving.  Before we know it we are reinforcing negative behavior to get attention.

When we can’t talk we still communicate.  We just speak a language that is more difficult to understand: The language of behavior. We are going to spend the rest of this week discussing signal behavior and how we listen to it.  A verse to remember this week is  James 1:19, “My dear brothers and sisters, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.”

Listen to today’s podcast for more on this topic