[quote=“Mother Theresa”]
Do you have any children? [/quote]
Yes I do, or I wouldn’t be giving opinions. My boy is coming up on 3 now.
Maybe I’m lucky or maybe it’s how I approach things—but so far I have no problems getting him to do things. Sometimes I need to suggest or ask twice but most of the time he does it right away.
I use enthusiasm alot of the time,like; “Hey! come on! Let’s go brush your teeth with the new orange toothpaste!”. I guess you could call it a motivational approach.
Kids, like people, are all different. Having my second child really highlighted that and he (2.5yrs) needs a quite different approach to his older sister (6) so what works for some will not always work for another. Kids also mature at different rates, I am amazed with some of my daughters friends at just how mature and maipulative they are at 5 years of age! But I also think this develops in kids who don’t have firm enough parents or are too innocent with regards to how their kids operate.
One of the things that I always use and helps to keep things moving along is to give them a time warning in advance as I feel alot of the difficulty for kids is that are slow to transition from one thing they like to another thing they like. Such as “5 mins till bath time” while theyre playing in the liviing room, then when the 5 mins has elapsed and they start to complain I just say, hey, I told you it was going to be 5 mins (and even using intonation to suggest they agreed to the time line, you know, like I’m surprised they are arguing this). Before long theyre in the bath and having a great time. Then again, “2mins till we finish the bath”, and then tell them, “2mins up” and pull the plug. Kids need to be led a lot of the time.
I quite agree with the comments on voice intonation and I would also say your eyes are just as important (as with training a dog!), look at the kid firmly and speak with a firm voice. It usually pulls them out of their world and into yours and you can get out of the house in a flash!
Yes, I’ve come to realize that most of the “crib-side experts” who are constantly trying to tell me and my wife how to raise our son only have one child. They seem to think they are just like dogs and all trained in the same way.
I have only one child. But, I’ve never asserted that all children are the same. You don’t need to have multiple children to know that. I have a brother and a sister. Its obvious that all people, including children, are different in certain ways.
You seem to think that all dogs are the same. I have two dogs. They are both different. Nonetheless, I am able to use as much consistency as possible when dealing with them, and still recognize that certain different methods need to be used with each dog.
In that sense, yes, children are similar to puppies.
[quote=“Tigerman”]I have only one child. But, I’ve never asserted that all children are the same. You don’t need to have multiple children to know that. I have a brother and a sister. Its obvious that all people, including children, are different in certain ways.
You seem to think that all dogs are the same. I have two dogs. They are both different. .[/quote]
No need to get defensive, I wasn’t directing that at you–just pointing out that I constantly get people with only one child trying to tell me how to raise mine. I seldom get that from people with 2 or more children.
I trained dogs before. Yes, they have different characters but compared to humans they are trained pretty much the same.
I’m finding that our third child, now 2.5, is a LOT different from her 2 older brothers. She’s usually very happy, playful, and affectionate, but when she’s bad she’s horrid. With the boys I could get away with the approach MT talked about. With her, well, I’m still working on it. For one thing, she’s much more stubborn than either of the boys were and is the first one to throw a full-on temper tantrum. I can usually get her to do what I want, but it’s often not as easy as it should be. I think I use the same approach with her as I did with the boys, but the results are definitely not the same…
A third! Congratulations. My wife told me to find someone else for the 3rd and I am considering it.
I am going to prepare myself to be shot down here in saying little girls are much like their older versions in that they are much more emotional. With my son I can be very direct and authoritative (and indeed its what works best) but with my daughter I need to be much more gentle and persuasive. I need to read the signs of when the potential for an emotional outburst is there and be firm but gentle in stating whats happening, why and how and then leave her to brood on it, it takes time patience and understanding but usually avoids the temper tantrums. When she is upset I do not say anything to her and try to be there for her while also doing my thing too (without being upset myself). Fortunately her bottom lip is a very good indicator of where she is at and if it gets bigger I know either she is getting more upset at which dont say anything or she just needs some TLC and some gentle words and a hug will fix things (which of the two to choose is usually in her eyes or in her response to either of them). As mentioned in my earlier post, giving kids a time line on whats happening helps avoid a lot of conflicts. Most of the times kids get upset is when they must do something, go some where that they dont want/like to - pulling it out suddenly on them is often what creates this conflict.
I find it helps alot also and use that very often.
Last night my son was jumping around on bed with his monster mask on and I told him I thought the monster needed to get it’s teeth brushed. He ran straight into the bathroom without needing to be asked twice. So making a game of things also helps.
I find it helps alot also and use that very often.[/quote]
Me too. A sudden announcement that it’s time to do such and such is more likely to lead to trouble.
Yea, same here too and tooth brushing is one of the difficult tasks. Of course she has a special Winnie the Pooh toothbrush and her own special toothpaste. But we also approach the task with an excited voice and tell her if her teeth are really clean next time she goes to the dentist she’ll get a balloon (the pediatric dentists at Changun Hospital give out baloons). And, as she tends to just chew on her brush, I need to brush for her, so I ask her to help brush my teeth and while she’s brushing mine (when I’m lucky enough to convince her) I’ll quickly and discreetly start brushing hers.
So, in retrospect, I still find a firm authoritative voice to be necessary at times (but it usually doesn’t take much), but I, too, tend to start out with playful, positive encouraging invitations, games and tricks so she’ll gladly engage in the task, forgetting that she might want to rebel or had previously expressed disdain for the task.
I used to let my son brush my teeth also until he tried shoving the brush down my throat :help:
Not to change the subject by what do you have done at the dentist with your daughter? She’s about 2 isn’t she?
I still havn’t taken my son to the dentist as the doctor said there is no reason to yet. However I have a friend who is a dentist and he gives a quick check in my home ever few months. He recommends a flouride treatment soon. The issue of flouride is a subject I’d like to see discussed. Apparently in Taiwan now more and more schools are doing weekly flouride rinses or something.
I took my son for his first dentist check up at 2.5 and am supposed to take him back every six months for a check up and flouride rinse. ( I know any excellent dentist if anyone needs one by the way). He just checks for any cavities or damage then does that rinse, took about 15 minutes.
Mother Theresa, you can suggest to your wife giving choices can help your little girl feel some control over the situation.
You can say, “Do you want to take your bath before we watch a video or after?” Either way, she’s going to take a bath.
Also natural consequences work nicely with preschoolers and in a way, it’s reassuring that there is a natural order to their world (as opposed to threats which can be irrelevant to what they are doing). “If you take a long time brushing your teeth, then you won’t have enough time for a bedtime story.”
I like “Pick up the toys you want.” 
[quote=“Hongda”] Not to change the subject by what do you have done at the dentist with your daughter? She’s about 2 isn’t she?
I still havn’t taken my son to the dentist as the doctor said there is no reason to yet. However I have a friend who is a dentist and he gives a quick check in my home ever few months. He recommends a flouride treatment soon. The issue of flouride is a subject I’d like to see discussed. Apparently in Taiwan now more and more schools are doing weekly flouride rinses or something.[/quote]
It is a different subject and I believe there are threads on the subject, perhaps the one I started on kids eating candy and brushing teeth, but that’s OK.
We first took our girl to hte dentist abt age 1.5, I believe, to have her teeth examined and swab a flouride goop on her teeth, and they recommended she come back every 6 months for the same. I have no idea if that’s consistent with what’s done in the West. As for flouride, I had a friend a dozen years ago whose dad was a Uni prof whose whole career had been devoted to warning of the dangers of flouride, in our drinking water, and so forth. I believe I did a little research then and concluded that perhaps flouride could present some hazards but they were most likely outweighed by the benefits and guys like my friend’s dad tend to be a little kooky. I could be wrong about that, but that was the opinion I formed then.
:bravo: Great strategy. We/I do try lines like that sometimes, but kids are brilliant. Sometimes one can trick them up with such stuff; other times they’re too clever for it. But, you’re right, it’s definitely worth a try.
I remember reading about the flouridated water debate and it seems the main issue is a small percent of people have a serious reaction to it. Otherwise there seems to be little doubt of the benefits. Also I think this all started when most of the people in a small village in England were found to have very healthy teeth. They eventually discovered this was due to naturally ocurring flouride in the water. In another case in the U.S. all the people had strange chalky white teeth and it was found the water there had too much naturally occuring flouride.
How about, “Do you want to take your bath before or after brushing your teeth?” 
Hongda,
That’s pretty much the option I give my son: Do you want to brush your teeth before or after your “elephant”? (elephant = fouride tablet, container has elephant on it.) Works every time.
As for the bath… do you want bubbles or no bubbles tonight? do you want to play swimming or use the shower hose? do you want to use a cloth or a sponge? … when to actually take the bath isn’t an option for us, he already has enough choices to think about.
Yes, I agree that giving kids limited choices is a great idea, in theory. But are there any other parents out there whose kids have never been tricked by this? Parenting books often give this advice, and then don’t say what you could do if they still do not comply. Whenever I try this strategy with my two very persistent sons, it usually goes something like this:
“Do you want to take a bath now or do want to finish playing first?”
“I don’t want to take a bath!”
“You need to take a bath. Do you want to do it now or after you play?”
“I never want to take a bath! No bath!”
“Do you want me to help you brush your teeth or do you want to do it by yourself?”
“I don’t want to brush teeth!” And runs away.
What works better for us is making it into a game/competition, using reverse psychology ("Whatever you do, DON’T eat that broccoli!! NOOO, don’t eat it!!!), or (yes, this sounds bad) using scare tactics (if you don’t brush your teeth, the teeth germs will eat your teeth and ALL YOUR TEETH WILL FALL OUT!!!)
And natural consequences, such as if you don’t clean up your playroom, you won’t have any room to play often don’t work either. They couldn’t care less if the room is messy, then they end up taking their toys and spreading out the mess to different rooms.
Rules such as “you get to keep all the toys you put away” work with my older son (5.5) but not with my younger (2.5). My younger son doesn’t care if I take away his toys, and probably wouldn’t even notice which ones are missing.
So with both kids, I use positive reinforcement whenever they do a good job cooperating. With my younger son, I choose my battles- I don’t force him to do everything I ask him to do, but I will do what someone else said and pick him up and carry him if it’s something really non-negotiable.
In the end, I suppose you have to do whatever works best with your child’s personality.
Choices worked for my kids but only to a certain point. My second son in particular is unbelievably similar to nyteacher’s 5 yo. (And we share a lot of same personality traits but are almost complete opposites to these two boys… 
)
I’ve also used that low, firm, no-nonsense voice some of the dads have mentioned and it definitely gets a response but not necessarily obedience. More often I get, “Why do you have talk to me that way?” :help:
Other things have worked for us. In our case the nine year old has the hardest time with transitions so I have to give him many, many warnings about what to expect, where we’re going, when we’re going, who we’ll be seeing, etc. Routines have been really helpful for us too and now I’m thinking of stepping them up a little so that the kids in elementary school (one fourth grade, one going into Kindergarten) will feel like they have a little more say.
When we’re out and about, we often make appeal to third parties. “You’d better eat up or the laoban will get angry”, “OOh look here comes a police car, that policeman will get ever so cross if you two don’t stop fighting in the back”, “LOOK that car in front’s [brake] lights have come on, and now it’s STOPPED. Better stop shouting and screaming now”. Seems to work for our two-year-old, though clearly not for an older child: I think it’s special to Taiwan cos many parents do it here and I’ve never come across it elsewhere.
Ask how long the kid wants to play, eg before bathtime. Get into souk-like bargaining, suggesting five minutes when actually ten minutes is acceptable to you. (Sometimes the child will say “Please, daddy, make it six minutes”!) This is of course great for learning to tell the time.
Some one sent this to me. Hope this adds to the discussion.
[quote]
37 PRACTICAL PARENTING POINTS TO BEAR IN MIND
to parent effectively with love, and without anger or stress
by BOB LANCER
100% of the anger and stress that you exhibit in your relationship with your child results from destructive emotional reaction programming you learned in your own childhood and the unbalances in your life.
Improving your response to your child’s behavior begins with taking total responsibility for your responses.
Focus on your own behavior to see the ways that you contribute to the outcomes that you do not want.
Begin addressing any unbalance in your life. To parent with more peace, poise and loving effectiveness, you need to eat well, exercise enough, practice some form of meditative centering or conscious relaxation, do enough of what you love to keep your morale high, and practice doing what must be done in a calm, confident, pleasant manner.
To remove the anger and stress from your reactions to your child’s behavior, practice handling every aspect of your day without rush. The more you rush the faster you drive yourself crazy.
Children have two speeds when it comes to doing what you want: slow and stop. If you push them to go faster they go in reverse.
A calm child behaves better than a stressed out child. Your state radiates. The more calmly you interact with your child, the calmer your child will be.
You cannot instill better self-control in a child while you are losing yours.
Taking charge in your relationship with child begins with taking charge of yourself.
When a child can make you react, the child is in charge. Gaining control in any situation starts with controlling your reaction to the situation.
Watch what you tell your child. Saying things like, “You make me angry. You move too slowly. You force me to yell.” tells your child, and your own subconscious, that the child is in charge and responsible for how you behave.
God sends a challenging child into your life when it is time for you to grow.
When you lose your peace and poise in response to your child’s behavior, you lose your power.
Practice handling EVERYTHING with peace and poise. From peace you can connect with your deeper wisdom and love to guide you in your parenting.
By degrees equals ease. Be satisfied with making small steps of improvement in any situation. When you lose your patience, you lose more time.
Your stressful reactions to your child express an unhealthy way that you handle what happens and indicates a lack of self-respect.
Children need a peaceful, harmonious, stable environment to demonstrate their best behavior and positive, loving, respectful attitude. Therefore, when you react with anger and stress toward your child’s behavior, you undermine your child’s ability to do better.
Anger, stress, pleading, arguing, yelling … these represent the most ineffective modes of parenting. Regard them as a choice, not as a necessity and then choose another way.
Children need boundaries but they do not learn healthy boundaries when you try to enforce boundaries in an unhealthy way.
As a general rule, if your reaction hurts you it probably hurts the one you react to. As you commit to taking excellent care of yourself you will operate within healthy, constructive boundaries in your parenting.
When you get stressed out in reaction to your child’s behavior, you make yourself sick, unhappy and exhausted. You make yourself that way; the child does not make you that way, and your influence sickens those around you.
Observe how you think of your child. If your thoughts bring you anger or stress, your thinking, and not your child, is the problem.
You bring about what you think about. Think of your child as you want him/her to be and think of your parenting as you want that to be.
To be wise is to make problems smaller, not larger. When your child behaves in a problematic way, you add to the problem by becoming a stressed out, unhappy, angry person in response.
Changing your response to your child begins with resisting the urge to blame your child for how poorly you react.
Your anger and stress reactions to your child’s behavior indicate that you push yourself too hard and then take it out on the child. As you take better care of yourself your child’s behavior will seem less taxing.
When you do not know how to handle your child’s behavior, simply observe, relax and assume an attitude of confidence. Pay attention with an open mind and something constructive will occur.
Before you can gain control, you need to learn how to be out of control. Trust the way things are when they spin out of your control.
Make no big deal about behavior that disturbs you. Make a very big deal about the behavior that pleases you. A high intensity reaction rewards the behavior to which you react.
Do not struggle against behavior you do not want, but rather, take constructive action to achieve the behavior you do want.
The most essential “ingredient” a child needs to behave well is a deeply loving, secure and mutually respectful relationship with his/her parents. You undermine this with reactions of anger and stress.
To change a child’s behavior, demonstrate better behavior yourself.
95% of your redirection of child behavior should involve positive, loving, even playful ways to guiding your child out of behavior you want stopped and into behavior you want started.
If you are in the habit of thinking of yourself as a martyr and portraying yourself as a martyr you sacrifice your sense of power and self-respect in parenting. Stop seeing yourself as a victim to start experiencing more victory.
When you need to be firm, be unemotionally firm. Institute a consequence involving a restriction of a privilege, but maintain your composure and remain kind in the process. Be consistent and your child will get the message of the boundary you want followed.
When you blow up as a parent, you blow it as a parent. Anger and stress are to a child’s poor behavior what gasoline is to fire.
The final solution: you have to trust that it can be done, that you can guide your child with love and without anger and stress. Where there is a willingness, a way opens up.[/quote]
Some good points in there, points that are addressed in most parenting books on the market. But while good intentioned, to me it doesn’t sound like the guy has any kids.