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Telling your kids to be better, do better, and get more motivated may not make them want to be better, do better, or be more motivated.

If your child tends to do the opposite of what you’re trying to get them to do, try telling them what you already love about them, what you appreciate about what they’re doing now, and talk about their dreams and hopes.

The Welcoming Children Home Conference 2015 is HERE!

This Saturday, November 7th from 8:30-4:00 is your chance to learn more about how you can help foster children, foster families, and your family if you have adopted. That’s right, we have workshops and speakers for every season of life whether you are college age, retired, parenting, young married, you can come and learn how to get involved and where you can help a child in crisis.

Register here http://www.welcomingchildrenhome.com/ to hear more about how to help a foster child, CASA, SAFE families, Tree of Life Crisis Pregnancy, becoming a Foster or Adoptive Parent, how to work with kids who have experienced trauma, and much more! Contact me if you have questions. Hope to see you there.

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Your Child’s Mess Is Your Message

by Ron Huxley, LMFT

Many parents use control to manage their children’s behavior. Why wouldn’t they with parenting books and programs teaching them to do that very thing? Unfortunately, control is risky business, that when it works, leaves parent and child uncertain about who really won the battle. Rather than try to control a child, parents need to encourage self-control. This develops from taking responsibility for their actions and learning to clean up their own messes when they make them and make them, they will. This is where the mess becomes the message!

After a child makes a mess, such as hitting a sibling, lying to parents, not completing their chores, they need to figure out a way to clean it up. Messes create disconnection in relationships but cleaning them up re-connects them. The process of discovering how to clean them up is where a child learns self-control and parents find more joy in parenting. 

Parents do not get angry at messes. They require their child to clean up their mess. Because of age and inexperience, they may not be able to come up with a solution but one can be offered, by the parent, or they can try their own and then another try until the mess is completed. Parents who feel powerless don’t realize that they control the environment of the home. Children always want or need something and parents can simply state: “Of course you can have a snack sweetie as soon as you clean up that mess you make with your brother. And, by the way, I took out the trash for you since you were too busy playing video games and so you can do my chore of folding all the laundry. Take your time sweetie, the snack will be there when you are done.” 

Instead of a snack, the child may want to sit go to the neighbors to play or go to the shoe store to get new shoes or sit down with the family for dinner. The child can decide how long they want to take to clean up their messes and get the things that the parent has control over. Never fear, arguments, tantrums, screaming fits and vows of running away may be involved. They are ways the child believes he or she can control the parent. Parents must be patient and model how control is an illusion for them as much as it was for the parent. This information will serve them well in all their relationships for life. 

The good news is that this process will only take a few times (days?) until the child realized the parent means what they say and discovers cleaning up a mess is so much easier than testing the parents resolve. 

For more information, check out http://www.lovingonpurpose.com/podcast/ or https://www.loveandlogic.com/

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Parents like to play but sometimes feel guilty about it…

Source: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3052589/behind-the-brand/how-ikea-is-defining-the-state-of-play-with-a-little-help-from-dreamworks?utm_source

Play isn’t just about fun and games—it’s a valuable way for children to refine their motor skills, learn about the world around them, and develop social relationships. 50 years ago, that might have meant hide and seek; 30 years ago maybe it was Jenga; today it’s probably any number of games on a PlayStation or iPad. Anecdotally speaking, play changes with the decades, but what Ikea wanted to do with its 2015 Play Report is quantify the social forces that are driving the shifts and understand how design in the domestic realm—the company’s domain—can help adults and children play more.

To better understand the state of play, Ikea surveyed nearly 30,000 parents and children from 12 countries. The goal was to establish if the perception and nature of play had changed much since the last survey in 2009; whether children are playing less or more and the nature of play; if parents are playing more or less with their children; how digital media impacts family life; and the concerns, behaviors, and benefits of family time.

Here are a few of the findings:

1. Parents want to spend quality time with their children, but find it difficult to carve out playtime. And they feel guilty about it.

“Parents agree on the importance of play,” says Cindy Anderson, the business area manager for Ikea who’s responsible for developing Ikea’s range of children’s products. “At the same time, they sometimes struggle with finding inspiration on how to play and they’re bored when playing traditional children’s games.”

With that challenge in mind—making kids’ games more engaging for all ages and removing barriers to play—Ikea developed the Lattjo collection of products, which launches in November. It includes costumes; Ikea-fied games like chess, dominoes, tug of war, and percussion instruments; and a “recipe book” of activity ideas.

2. Parents are anxious about safety, but are also concerned about being overprotective.

“At the global level, about 22% of kids are not allowed to play outdoors and that’s an increase [from the 2009 report],” Andersen says. “That shows how important it is to play indoors—it’s, how can we create an environment to define playfulness inside the home?”

This information paired with the findings that home life is important inspired Ikea to create items that could be used indoors.

3. Over half of the parents surveyed said that play can include the use of smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and computers.

This sparked a mobile app and 25 animated digital shorts produced in conjunction with DreamWorks. The films include stories that teach children how to navigate the world, like how an eagle faces his fear of heights.

“You can develop a product, but the whole idea is to make us to play more, and to create a more playful mindset,” Andersen says. “To accomplish that, storytelling is an important complement to engage people and inspire behavioral change.”

The Lattjo collection as a whole seeks to spark creativity no matter where it comes from. “We’re all born with a certain play preference that’s stronger than others,” Andersen says. “Some are storytellers, some are into physical play, some are builders, some just like to move. What I hope that there is something that everyone can enjoy.”

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Today, instead of focusing on how to manage your child’s behaviour, look for ways to inspire them with experiences. Research proves that this will create closeness to one another.