Strategies to Stop the Sibling Fighting

Do your kids bicker and fight over everything? Are your nerves wearing thin? Read this step-by-step approach from Parenting Magazine to help you restore order to your family, so that you can enjoy being together.

Step 1: Think About It
Most of us brought our second baby home from the hospital along with visions of our children becoming life-long friends. (Some of us even had a second child specifically so that our first would have a playmate!) When our children fight, it not only grates on our nerves, it tugs on our hearts. The most important advice I can give you is this: Calm down and relax. Keep a level head and view your kids' arguments in a realistic way. The fight over the red Lego, as intense as it may seem, will be over and forgotten by the time one of them realizes he needs a blue one. Kids fight for lots of reasons. They fight because they don't want to share, because they want parental attention, because they each have a differing view about what's fair or simply because they have to share the same space, day after day after day. The vast majority of sibling battles are not destructive to the relationship between the children. All this considered, there are ways to survive sibling fighting. And there are ways to reduce the number of fights, and the severity of them, as well.

Step 2: Take Away the Audience
It's a proven fact. Kids will fight longer, louder and with more enthusiasm when they have an audience. Usually, it's because they hope you'll step in and solve the problem. (You can sometimes tell that this is happening because your son's comments are directed at his sister, but his eyes are on you!) Therefore, it stands to reason that if you leave the room, they will have to solve the problem themselves. A large amount of verbal battles will fizzle out without a parent's interference. If you think about it, you'll really love this solution. It gives you permission to follow the essence of the advice from a particularly appealing bumper sticker I've seen, "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping".

Step 3: Identify and Solve the Problems
Try to identify if there is a pattern to the kids' fights. Do they typically fight over one thing, say the computer, or choice of TV shows? If so, make a schedule for computer or TV use. Do they always fight while you're making dinner? You could enlist their help in preparing the meal, feed them a healthy snack or have a routine activity planned during that time, such as homework or chores. Do they always fight over who sits where at the table, or in the car? Assign specific seats and rotate them monthly. Do they fight while they are getting ready for bed in the evening? Let them take turns using the bathroom, one at a time, for a specified time period. The idea here is to identify the "hot spots" between your children and create a plan to prevent the problem from continually causing arguments.

Step 4: Teach
Teach your children how to negotiate and compromise with each other. Have both children sit on a sofa at opposite ends, or on two adjacent chairs. Give them a choice. Tell them you will "arbitrate or mediate." Of course, they will ask what you mean. Let them know that "arbitrate" means you make the decision and they will live with it, "mediate" means they will make the decision, and you will help them come to the best conclusion. Over time, and with practice, they will learn how to settle arguments on their own.

Step 5: Distract
If the argument is over a trivial issue, you can often defuse the tension with humor, or distract the kids with another activity. For example, if one kid is complaining that his brother is "looking at him funny," there is no sensible reason for you to intervene. Instead, ignore it and ask who would like to help you make brownies. Or, try humor. "Oh no! I once read about a boy who made a face like that and it froze in place. They had to mash up his food so he could sip his squashed pizza through a straw. He had such a hard time eating that he lost so much weight the cat thought he was a piece of string and batted him around the kitchen."

Step 6: Praise Good Behavior
It happens. The kids are playing together nicely. "Oh, good," you think, "I'll have time to catch up on my paperwork." As tempting as it is, don't ignore your children when they are getting along well! This is the time to show up with a plate of cookies and a kind word of praise. Reward the behavior that you wish to have repeated, and you'll see more of it.

National Breakfast Week!

 

 

March 4th-8th is National Breakfast Day!  The folks at Kellogg's know how important breakfast is and want to spread the message to all of America's families.  The following is a collaboration between Kellogg's and the Institute for Healthy Kids.

What if parents could give their children a magic pill in the morning to make them healthy, smart and well-behaved? This pill would undoubtedly be flying off the shelf of the local pharmacy. While there is no such medication, there is something just as powerful: breakfast. Consumption of this morning meal is one of the most important things a child does all day. Over 30 years of credible research has proven that a healthy breakfast positively impacts brain function and energy level, which is extremely important for school-aged children.

Benefits of breakfast

The following are key reasons why breakfast should be made a priority for every child:

Breakfast equals better behavior

Children who skip breakfast are more tired, irritable, or restless by late morning. These symptoms lead to aggressive behavior that causes children to get in trouble in school. Children who regularly eat a morning meal have more energy, are less likely to exhibit aggressive behavior, and have a better attitude toward school.

Breakfast leads to higher test scores

A study published in 1998 in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine showed significantly higher math test scores after children ate breakfast. This and other research has clearly shown that children who consistently eat breakfast test higher in most academic areas.

Eating breakfast led to better class attendance

Children who eat breakfast are absent from school fewer days. They also spend less time in the nurse's office complaining of stomach pains. Ironic as it may be, children who claim they don't eat breakfast due to a lack of time in the morning are tardy more often than those who take time for a morning meal.

More nutritious intake by eating breakfast

Breakfast eaters generally meet vitamin and mineral requirements for prevention of deficiencies. They consume more fiber, vitamin C, calcium and folic acid. Unfortunately, children who miss breakfast do not make up for lost nutrients later in the day.

Eating breakfast helps weight control

Eating breakfast helps to establish a normal eating pattern. Eating regular meals and snacks is a key to maintaining a healthy weight throughout life. Increasing childhood obesity is in part attributed to the disappearance of normal eating patterns in many of today's household

Brain Building Desserts

After dinner treats aren't always a bad thing!  These dessert ideas from Parenting.com are packed with the super foods your little genius needs!

Blueberry Blast
Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners and sprinkle granola in the bottom of each one.  Stir fresh or frozen blueberries into vanilla Greek yogurt and add honey to taste (for kids over 1).  Divide yogurt mixture evenly between liners.  Freeze for 3 hours , or until firm.

AB&J Cones
Swirl almond butter and raspberry jam into slightly softened strawberry ice cream.  Freeze for 30 minutes.  Scoop into an ice cream cone and sprinkle with dark chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and almond slivers.

Curiousity Questions from Positive Discipline

Helping children explore the consequences of their choices is much different from imposing consequences on them. Exploring invites the participation of children to think for themselves and figure things out for themselves, and to decide what is important to them and to decide what they want. The end result is focusing on solutions to the problem instead of consequences.

When the solutions come from the children, or are brainstormed together and the child chooses what will be most helpful, they learn that they can make a valuable contribution when using respectful decision-making skills. Children learn that mistakes aren’t horrible if you don’t beat yourself up about them and if you look at mistakes as ways to learn.

Positive Discipline recommends trying Curiosity Questions to get "into the minds" of our children and help them come up with solutions.  The following guidelines will help when using curiosity questions:

1. Don’t have an agenda. You aren’t getting into the child’s world if you have an agenda about how the child should answer these questions. That is why they are called curiosity questions.
2. Don’t ask questions if either of you are upset. Wait until you are both feeling calm.
3. Ask curiosity questions from your heart. Use your wisdom to show you how to get into the child’s world and show empathy and acceptance.

 The tool card below gives some great Curiosity Questions to some common problems.  For more ideas and suggestions about these parenting tool, call Building Healthy Families.

DIY Shoe Tying Board

Instructions

1. Cut out a square of cardboard and place your shoes down on it. Trace around the sole of the first shoe loosely (be careful not to get marker on the shoe). 
2. Trace around the sole of the second shoe.
3. Make a straight line on the cardboard for the toe design at the top of each shoe. Draw ten dots on each shoe outline for the lace holes.
4. Lay the cardboard on top of thick carpeting and punch out the lace holes with the screwdriver (NOTE: Adults only!). Spin the screwdriver around to form the holes.
5. Thread the shoelaces through the holes, then let your child learn to tie!

An added bonus is that your child can color the shoe-tying practice board too! Happy tying!

How to Improve Your Child's Handwriting

From worksheets to short essays, there are a lot of assignments for your kid to crank out -- and his teacher has to be able to read them. "Despite the increasing amount of technology in classrooms, a child's schoolwork still is mostly handwritten," says pediatric occupational therapist Jan Z. Olsen, founder of the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum program. "Teachers think good penmanship is crucial for communicating effectively." In fact, less than half of first- to third-grade teachers said that their students' handwriting was fast enough to keep up with classroom demands, found a Vanderbilt University poll.  Still, many kids with penmanship problems simply aren't getting enough practice. Bridge the gap at home with these clever ways to start off right.

Invisible Ink

Trace letters and simple words on your child's back and see if she can guess what you're writing. Then, swap and have her "write" a letter or word on you. Focus on the letters that are hardest for kids this age. Another Vanderbilt University study found that j, k, n, q, u, and z account for 48 percent of the mistakes when kids attempted to write the lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Picture This

Take out the markers or crayons and draw a single capital letter on a piece of unlined paper. Ask your child to make the chosen letter part of a bigger picture. She might turn a capital I into a butterfly or transform an O into an octopus. As she decorates the letter, she'll also be focusing on its shape.

Outsider Art

Using sidewalk chalk, have your child write a giant note that could be seen from outer space, then a tiny one for ants to read. (Or if your lawn looks like a winter wonderland, ask your glove-clad kid to write letters in the snow.)

Mail Tale

Buy a notebook and ask your child to keep a journal for a week. Send it to a relative to add comments on your child's week, record a week in her life, and mail it on to another loved one. The last person should mail it back to your child. She'll get reading practice too!

Tools of the Trade

Stock up on office supplies. Collect awesome writing tools (gel pens, scented markers, funny-shaped pencils) and all sorts of paper (lined sticky notes, doodle pads). Stow them in strategic spots around the house. She'll also be more psyched to scrawl if her pencil has a cute eraser.

Make it Homemade

From Grandparents to classmates, babysitters to sibling, everyone loves a Valentine!  While store bought cards are an easy option, the benefits to creating homemade Valentines far outweigh the convenience of buying.  Depending on the age of your child, having kids write their own messages can sharpen skills from letter identification to the creative process of writing a pun or rhyme.  Handmade items also allow your child to feel the satisfaction of creating a final product, while spending positive time with an adult!  You can even make finding creative ideas on the Internet part of the fun!  Here are a few to get you started!