Wish I'd Known: Set An Alarm

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Over the past few months I've figured out a trick that seems to help with parenting a 2 1/2 year old.

Set An Alarm

Like in the morning?  No don't do that!  Sleep as long as you possibly can!  You'll need every ounce of energy to get through the day.  What I mean is I use an alarm as a way to get my daughter to stop asking for things constantly.  If you know my daughter, you know she LOVES to eat and would pretty much eat all day long if I let her.  So rather than having her yank on my pants and beg INCESSANTLY, I tell her she can have a snack when the alarm goes off.  

I use the alarm trick with many other things as well like clean-up time, bed time, when we get to go outside, etc.  It really works.  My daughter will ask to do something and then will say "Set an alarm."  Then she won't ask again.  Or if she does, I just remind her that we have to wait for the alarm to go off.  It kind of turns it into a game.  Maybe it won't work for your kids, but it's been amazing for us!

Wish I'd Known: Candy-less Potty Training

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Today's tip is about potty training.

Don't give candy as a reward for potty training - Nia

Nia, I totally 100% agree with you!  When I potty trained my daughter, I was trying to figure out what I would do as a reward.  I knew several people who gave candy, but I didn't really want my daughter eating a ton of candy.  I decided to use stickers.  I put a piece of paper on the wall that said "I Went Potty".  Then each time she went to the bathroom she got to put stickers on the paper.  She would get one sticker for pee-pee and two stickers for poo-poo.  She loved getting to pick out her stickers.

The first day couple of days of potty training consisted of several trips to the bathroom with a ton of little successes.  IfI had been giving her candy as a reward, my daughter would have been in a sugar coma!

Unfortunately, we went on a trip to Georgia and through wearing pull-ups in the car rides, her potty training regressed a bit so I had to re-potty train her.  I wasn't totally starting from scratch, but you get the idea.  I wanted to do a different reward this time, but still avoid the candy.  What I ended up doing was hanging a paper on the fridge and each time she went to the bathroom she could come and draw a smiley face.  No, they didn't really look like faces, but she LOVED it!  Then every day my husband would get back from work she could show him all of her faces.

I started thinking that the whole drawing faces thing could be used as a learning opportunity.  Instead of drawing faces, your child could trace a letter of the alphabet or draw a certain shape.  They are learning while getting their reward!

Potty training can be hard.  Let us know if you have any other tips for moms out there!

Wish I'd Known: I Hate You

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Today's tip comes from Clarissa:

Be prepared for the, "I hate you" and wait to respond until you can do so calmly......After a long time out (until we're both calm), I tell her that I love her and that it makes me very sad when she says that. She always apologizes and feels terrible about saying it. She has said it and many other terrible things to both my husband and I on numerous occasions. The best thing we've found for dealing with it is just to wait a few minutes. - Clarissa

I am so not looking forward to that stage. As much as we think that our child would never say, "I hate you", every child will. I think it's good to have a plan with how you're going to handle it before hand so you don't have to try to figure out how to discipline when emotions are high. Thanks so much for the advice Clarissa!

Wish I'd Known: Choices

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Today's tip is from Heidi:

"Give your child lots of choices."

This has helped Heidi significantly with the "terrible twos" because her daughter feels like she is in charge while making all the choices, but really Heidi is in charge since both options she gives, she's perfectly ok with.

So rather then saying "It's time to leave", you'd say, "Would you like to leave now or in 5 minutes?" Or when disciplining you'd say, "Would you like to go to time out or your room?".

Heidi got this idea from a book called Parenting with Love and Logic. I've heard really fantastic things about this book.