After listening to tonight’s teleconference phone class on positive parenting, I have a couple of items that are still running through my mind. Simi Yellen, the host of the series, gave the participants a checklist on how to make positive atmosphere in our home. There were six items on this list. There were two that really stood out to me.
The first was to spend 10 QUALITYminutes with each of your children everyday doing something you BOTH enjoy. As Simi said, children should know there is going to be a special time each day where mommy is all mine. This fosters the thought that mom is approachable and builds trust – so when I have a problem I can talk to mommy. As their mom, you want to convey the message that you can be talked to and fun to be with. We have to teach our children that we are good company or else they will start to look elsewhere for that companionship, something that isn’t always constructive. I love this idea and have already instituted it. I spent 20 minutes reading and talking to each of my children and focusing just on them. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been doing this before, it was nice though that I pointed out to them that this was our time and no one else was going to interfere. I will keep this up. I want to be a person my children can communicate with when they need something to talk about. Hopefully teaching them this now will result in an open dialogue as the years progress.
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Another way to create a positive environment in my home is what Simi calls the four-to-one ratio: four positive comments to every negative one. A positive is anything that builds self esteem. Think of negatives as orders, confrontations, demands, or scolding and positives as praise, recognition, or attention. How it makes a child react is how you can determine if the comment is a positive or negative. If something happens to increase a negative in the house, then you have to increase the positive. Your children aren’t going to turn the vibe around; it’s on the mom to do this. Wow, I really want to do this; so I started listening and categorizing what type of messages I was delivering to my children. I will say it wasn’t four-to-one! Today has been a conscious effort on my part to be aware of what I’m saying to my children and how it sounds to them. Because of this I feel I am on the road to being more in touch with my children’s feelings.
Next week I’m excited to find out the “list of cooperation techniques” or 22 ways you can move a kid through the day in a positive way.
Off to create a positive environment,
Elise
*** Disclosure: I was granted access to listen to six weeks of parenting lectures lasting one hour per week and in turn promised I would blog about what I heard and what I thought.
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