You’ve threatened, cajoled – even begged your kids to tidy up. But it still seems you’re the one facing the ultimatum: either ignore the mess or do it for them.
Here are 7 tips to encourage kids to clean their bedrooms, without raising your voice or losing your mind:
Society generally portrays dads as having it pretty easy. I am not going to lie – sometimes I think they do too. Raise your hand if you don’t think you occasionally do more than your partner, and I will personally nominate you for sainthood.
I am the default parent of our daughter in that I look after snack-day, what needs to be in her daily backpack, or when it’s time for her next shots. This is not because I am the mother, but because my partner has a memory like a sieve and the poor kids at daycare would never get their cupcakes.
Summer is quickly approaching and the daily SPH facial lotion and lip balm will no longer be enough to combat the sun’s rays. Short of dressing in long sleeves, pants, a large hat and sunglasses… it’s time to find the right sunscreen for your family. Which types are a good fit for your family? How much sunscreen should you apply to keep their skin protected?
My friends at MomBabble ran this love letter to my post baby body last year.
Dear Flesh and Bones and Heart that Sustains me,
We were first paired some 31 years ago. Neither of us had any idea what kind of journey we would be on together. I was so excited about you in the beginning. You were magical. You could do no wrong. You carried me everywhere with strong legs. We had adventures and everything was fresh and new.
I had the opportunity to reflect upon my life choices – albeit one bad one after another – and seeing how each decision, each person I encountered ended up helping mold me into who I am today. Self-worth is sometimes measured against how our parents acted towards us, or how our siblings got more than us at Christmas. We measure it in how our significant others treat us, how our kids back talk, how our bosses see us as employees. Each and every person is helping mold you into who you want to be.
If you want your children to be skilled and creative problem solvers, consider preparing outdoor play spaces for imaginative play! Fantasy play and imaginative role playing, in spaces like fairy gardens, are well established pre-cursers to divergent and original problem solving later in life; skills that are well recognized in highly effective students! Fairy Gardens are a great way to encourage imaginative play and they are perfect for taking advantage of the magical thinking young children bring to their everyday play.
Lice. Just saying the word makes me scratch my head. Once you have seen a few creatures crawling in your kid’s head, you will never rid yourself of the itchy-head feeling when you hear, say or write the word lice.
There are more than a few reasons I am happy I waited until my mid-30’s to have a baby (and a few reasons I am not, but that’s for another post), and when I did give birth at 37 and decided to hit some of the mom-and-baby library groups, it became abundantly clear what exactly had made waiting right for me.
Being a people watcher and an armchair psychologist, I had a good look around. The moms were all younger than me; I wasn’t the oldest, thankfully, due to the grandmother unsuccessfully wrangling her grandchildren to the circle and the elderly librarian trying to grab their attention.
I have never been into the “earth mother” aesthetic. Do not buy me a fertility goddess statue with mammoth breasts and the planet earth painted onto its belly. Because both times I was pregnant that is exactly what I looked like.
When I first found out my Wife was pregnant with our son, I was over-the-moon excited. I had always wanted to be a parent for as long as I can remember and while we were actively trying to get pregnant I couldn’t help but be excited as if it were a complete surprise to me. I had always had these grand ideas of how I was going to be a great parent, mostly because my parents were such poor examples. I would simply do everything opposite of them. How could I fail?