Why should you teach your teen to negotiate? Negotiation is a skill that is useful at home because it helps keep the line of communication open between you and your child, and makes them feel heard and like their opinions matter.
My parents were great—no complaints at all, but as a kid I remember that there were certain house rules that made me repeatedly think: I will never do that to my kids. I will certainly be parenting differently than my parents.
Of course, looking back, my parents weren’t that bad and for the most part, they were pretty logical.
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.
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.
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?
Caring for a newborn takes gargantuan effort, patience and sheer physical strength. Before I had my daughter, I had no idea how much of myself I would have to give, and give, and give. There was no room left for anything, no me time, no us time, no time, period.
I am a determined, independent woman with strong opinions (sometimes to my detriment, to be sure) but I have (mostly) learned along my 40-year journey when to bare my teeth and when to turn my back. And then I had a daughter. I had to think about raising a girl. All of a sudden, I felt the weight of having to teach her how to be all of those things that I wanted to be, too, while still making sure she didn’t choke on grapes or fall out of the stroller.
It’s not uncommon to have a child who hates homework. No child out there enjoys doing homework they get from school. Many children just get it done and move on with their other activities, but some children really struggle to get their homework done.
Toddlers love to pitch in and help around the house, so what better way to get them started on the right foot in life than by giving them their first chore chart?