Helpful Mom

A friend of mine commented on my last post about how often we find ourselves as moms constantly focusing on the bad behavior and not rewarding their good behavior.  I too can find myself in this trap and have had to retrain myself to encourage and recognize their good behavior.  I have noticed with my older daughter in particular that she responds much better to praise than if you yell at her for being bad.  Kids crave and thrive on your encouragement.  Obviously all kids are very different and respond differently to different consequences but they all need our love and encouragement.  But it can feel very unnatural to be telling them what a good job it was that they finished their sandwich or remembered to flush the toilet when it’s something they are supposed to do anyways.  But making the effort is worth it in the end because they are more likely to do it again in the future because it makes mom happy.  Apparently I said it so often to my girls that they started telling me that I was doing a good job (and giving me thumbs up) when I’d put dinner on the table.  That makes it worth it doesn’t it!

So after reading Creative Correction I began using one of the hundreds of ideas for teaching your children to obey and behave.  It’s a very simple yet effective idea.  Each time the girls say please, thank you, or share unprompted we put a penny in a jar with their name on it.  When they get 100 pennies I take them to the dollar store and they can pick one toy.  So far it has worked really well and they remember to say please and thank you most of the time.  Katrina’s favorite is to ask for something please, I get a penny, thank you, I get two pennies. All in that sing songy voice of little kids.  But it has really helped with them remembering to be polite and has also had an interesting side effect.  They end up catching each other being good too!  Katrina will sing out, Mikayla gets a penny.  It’s simple, it’s easy, and highly effective.  It’s so much easier to encourage good behavior from the beginning then to try and retrain them after the fact.  We just need to remember to do it.

Another trick I have to remind myself to do is when Mikayla is whining, whining, whining.  Driving me crazy while I’m trying to do something, always when I’m trying to do something isn’t it ;P  I have to stop myself and just take her to the couch and sit for a few minutes just cuddling her.  And that’s it.  Usually all she wanted was a little attention, then she’ll go off and play and I can go back to what I was doing.  I have to remind myself that nothing I’m trying to get done is as important as my little girls, because they will only be little for a short time.  My husband won’t mind if dinner is a bit late if he comes home and things are in control.  But if dinners on time but I’ve spent the last half hour yelling at them to leave me alone what good is it?

Has this ever happened to you?  My daughter says I’m hungry.  So you start pulling everything out of the diaper bag one at a time to which she says no, no, no to each one.  Then you have the whining and fussing as you try to explain that is all there really is, as if you are hiding the good stuff somewhere.  So one day I decided on this quick easy fix.  I bought a lunch box that I keep in our diaper bag.  Each morning before we go out I make sure it’s packed with about three different healthy choices, like a baggy of cereal, grapes, and apple slices.  Then when she asks for food I can just hand her the lunch box and she can pick out whatever she likes.  It gives her healthy, non-messy options, and lets her exercise her ability to choose for herself.  And it ended that debate about if there was anything else, now she can plainly see that all her choices are right there to pick from.

And we keep the treats separately in the diaper bag.  They only get any kind of treat if they have finished a serving of food.  So if she finishes the cereal she would get a Kellog’s fruit snack.  Or they might get a lollipop.  It works really well!  The other day I took Katrina shopping and she’d asked for a sucker and I told her she could have one and we’d get one for her sister too who wasn’t with us, but that she’d have to wait til we’d paid for it and got in the car to eat it.  So she agreed, but when we went out to the car she spotted her bag of cereal she’d started before going into the store and she gave me her sucker back!  Saying she had to finish her cereal first.  I was stunned and amazed.  And what’s funny is I’ve had her do that again since then!  It’s one of those small victories that you have to step back and appreciate.  Realizing that they are learning even when sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

I used to feel guilty about rewarding eating with treats but then I read this great book called Creative Correction which said that even God used rewards and incentives with the Israelites.  He would say if you obey your parents you will have a long life, or if you follow me I will take you into the promised land.  So if even God offers incentives to His children then why can’t I.  And I recently heard Dr. James Dobson say that the whole world is operated by incentives and rewards.  You go to work and get a paycheck.  Noone is going to work if they aren’t receiving something in return.  So there is nothing wrong with offering reasonable rewards or incentives.  I’m not saying go crazy buying them stuff but there’s no reason to feel guilty about rewarding your child.  It works, my kids know not to ask for treats all the time because they know the answer is no.  And they are learning that it’s important to eat the healthy things first, if you aren’t hungry enough to finish the good stuff then you certainly don’t have room for a lollipop, and learning what foods are good for you and what things are just not.