I just found out that my book is now available on Barnes and Noble too! Why is this good news? Because you can get your members discount on it.
All posts by Karen Dimick
What is your parenting style?
One thing that I think is really important for parents to do is to reflect on their views, values and personality to find out why they do what they do. Research has shown that parents parent the way their parents did, unless a conscious effort is made for change (and it can be done.) These tendencies are mixed with your individual personality traits and life experiences to make up your individual parenting style. So, I came across a parenting style quiz on line at this site http://quiz.ivillage.com/parenting/tests/parent.htm . It is not the most user friendly site as every time you move to a new page you get a pop up, but it does allow you to take the quiz on-line, it isn’t very long and it will give you your results immediately. So, here is what I got:
Your Parenting Style:
Authoritative
This parenting style is often described as the “no-nonsense workaholic” who is best at “emergency-mode parenting” and providing discipline where it is needed. Too often, however, strong-willed children eventually rebel against this parenting style if the parent doesn’t learn to balance expressive warmth with the authoritative discipline.
Your parenting style is highly driven and task oriented, as opposed to relationship-centered. Relationship-centered people tend to focus on nurturing and caring for others; authoritative people tend to be more focused on “getting things done.” Although your authoritative parenting style may not be the most popular style, it typically produces respect and obedience from your children, at least until they become teenagers. At that point, there is a good chance that they will find ways to avoid your control. As long as you are consistent in the way you discipline your children and as long as you maintain strong personal values, your children will model your self-discipline and persistence, thus benefiting from this rather rigid parenting style. This style might not produce the results you hope it will, however, if you do not find ways to outwardly express your loving and caring emotions. Remember that your children’s self-esteem comes not only from their self-discipline but also from feelings of significance, love and acceptance they receive from their parents.
I know my kids would not be real surprised about this revelation. They often accused me of being a control freak. The thing that is important here, is that knowing this about myself I have been able to, as a parent, try to use the strengths of this parenting style to my advantage, while trying to make up for my weaknesses. I had to learn to show more love and compassion for my kids, and learn to be a bit more flexible and spontaneous. I can’t say I was always successful in this, but knowing my particular style has helped. I used this strength to help develop the organizational methods that I outline in my book.
To offset my tendencies my husband and I used a different mindset about our children’s activities. While many parents have the mindset that they do not allow their children to do anything ‘unless it helps them’ we had the mindset that unless it hurt them, and was a reasonable, safe and supervised activity, we let them participate. as a result our children had a wide range of experiences while learning to thrive under an organized system. The organization gave them a sense of security because they knew our expectations and limits.
When to have THE TALK
One of the most stressful issues facing young parents is determining when they need to have THE TALK with their children. This topic recently came up in a Facebook discussion and stirred some memories.
The first thing to realize is that children need truthful information. If you are uncomfortable when they ask questions they will become reluctant to ask you. If you deceive them in any way they will doubt you.
The next thing to realize is that you CAN, and should, be truthful without giving every detail. When your 3 year-old comes to you and asks,” Mommy, where do babies come from?” How will you respond? A wise friend shared with me that as a young mother she simply said, “The baby is in mommies tummy and when she is ready to come out mommy has some special muscles to help push her out.” The child was satisfied and his question was answered and trust and belief maintained.
Find out what they know, ask them if they have questions, and then add to their knowledge. By the time they are 8 or 9, about five years before they really need to know everything, they should know everything. You don’t want those playground conversations to be traumatic and misleading to your child.
What are your thoughts and experiences?
Tools for Discipline
When children don’t behave our first reaction is to get mad. But getting mad doesn’t help.
Years ago parents knew how to handle their children. The prevailing wisdom was that if you spare the rod you would spoil the child. So when many of today’s grandparents were children they felt the swift and firm consequence of their behavior with physical punishment.
Most experts now agree that strong physical punishment is neither advisable nor effective. The problem is that today’s parents have not been given tools that are as swift, firm, speedy and as easy to execute, as a whipping was. We have been told to use time out or to ground our children, but many parents have found time-out to be less than effective and have found that when they ground their child they ground themselves as well.
What people today need are tools. Parenting tools help parents guide their children’s behavior, keep parents in control and help alleviate responses that are impulse related, like hitting or yelling.
One tool that parents can use is to provide consequences for children’s behavior. Often we think of consequences as punishments, but consequences can be good or bad. A consequence for your son cleaning his room may be that he can watch his favorite show on TV. A consequence for your daughter coming home late from her friend’s house may be that she has to come home a half hour earlier,or the length of time she was late, the next time. Consequences that relate directly to their behavior teach children to shape their behavior to create the least discomfort or the highest reward. Yelling at, or hitting your child, may control behavior, but it doesn’t teach children to manage their own behavior.
Token Economies for your kids
A token economy is a reward system. The idea is that you have some physical item that can be handed to your child that has some value. The child can see something tangible as a reward for their behavior. There are several key components to using a token economy. It must be physical. If they can’t touch it they are being asked to understand an abstract concept that they might not be ready to understand. It should be interesting. Visual or physical appeal increases the apparent value. They must be responsible for safeguarding it. They must be able to spend it for items they want.
Some items that we have used as tokens are raffle tickets (available at office supply or craft stores), juice can lids decorated, printed currency and even old unused car and house keys. Change them up once in a while to keep them fresh.
Help each child to establish a safe place (or bank) to keep their earnings. On a periodic basis, maybe once a month, allow them to purchase little prizes with their earnings. This teaches them rewards of work, saving and even thrift.
Feel free to post your ideas on what to use for tokens for your kids!
Helping Haiti
I am shocked and saddened at the tragedy that has happened in Haiti. To try to help in my own small way I am donating $5 for each copy of my book sold during the month of January. I am also going to be participating in a blood drive later this month.
What are you doing to help?
Why another book on raising children?
Many people think there are enough books on raising children. Many of them focus on pop-psychology and use all sorts of buzzwords to define how to raise children. While raising my children I became quite frustrated with the lack of how-to books with practical applications. The books all contained, as my husband says, “all the nouns with none of the verbs.” My purpose in writing this book is to create a tangible plan, based on sound research (the nouns), and tried and proven methods (the verbs) to raise good children. By using the methods in my book you will be more organized and your children will be more secure because they will understand your goals and methods.
The methods I outline and used are not intended to be THE definition. Merely a starting point to give you a foundation on which to build your parenting plan.
I would love to hear what works for you!
Just my Opinion 