Tell Me No Lies

Q: My daughter receives extra credit for bringing in Campbell’s Soup labels. I sent her to school with two in a bag but found the bag later on with the labels still inside. She showed me her extra credit pass, so I know her teacher gave her credit. But I also know she couldn’t have turned in the labels she swore she took to school. I sent her to her room until she tells me the truth and confesses to her teacher. Did I do the right thing?

A: All children lie at one time or another. The best way to help your children not to lie is to avoid asking them questions to which you know the answer. To wit, you knew she had not taking the extra credit paper to school. Therefore, act accordingly.

Don’t give her a chance to lie by asking her about the labels, just proceed as if she had told you the truth. She didn’t turn in the labels, and so her extra credit was not received legitimately. Now you must decide on a punishment, which I would make sure invokes the Agony Principle (parents should not agonize over anything a child does or fails to do if the child his perfectly capable of agonizing over it herself, from John Rosemond’s The Well-Behaved Child) ”

Her punishment should include a handwritten note of apology to her teacher. And tell her that you’ll follow up with her teacher to make sure she receives it. My article “Why Do Children Lie?” explores lying and kids in more detail.

Do you have a parenting question you would like to see answered on this blog? Email Sarah through the contact page with Parenting Question in the subject line.

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Rediscover Your Calling

Tomorrow, I will be speaking at the Manassas, Va., MOPS group on "Rediscovering Your Calling." The talk will encompass how to figure out your talents and what to do with them once they're identified.

Until next time,
Sarah

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To Trick or Treat--or Not

For many Christians, Halloween can be the trickiest holiday of all. Where some see ghosts and goblins, others see candy and fun. Growing up in southern Virginia, I went trick-or-treating for several years before my parents came to know Christ. Then it was salvation tracks and candy for a year or two, followed by church-sponsored Harvest Festivals.

Today, we accompany our children, who wear non-scary costumes (no witches, vampires, etc.), around the neighborhood knocking on doors. We've met many neighbors, and found a spirit of community in the blocks around our house. It's also excellent practice for our kids to say "thank you" and "please" to adults (we ask that they also look the adult in the eye).

For more reasons why Halloween can a good experience, check out my article, "A Tricky Holiday."

Until next time,

Sarah

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Stop Potty Training Once It's Begun?

Q: I started potty training my 28-month-old son, but he doesn’t seem interested at all. Sometimes he’ll go on the potty, and sometimes he won’t. He’s starting to resist my efforts to put him on the toilet. I read a book that suggested I should stop potty training once I’ve started if the child wasn’t “ready.” Should I stop and if so, when should I try again?

—Potty Training Trauma

A: More and more parents are becoming paralyzed by toilet training. Before disposable diapers became the norm, 90% of U.S.kids were successfully using the toilet on their own by age 24 months, according to a Harvard study. Nowadays, a mere 4% of children that age are potty trained.

Toilet training has nothing to do with a child’s “readiness.” You as a parent should be the one who sets the potty-training time table. John Rosemond’s excellent book Toilet Training Without Tantrums succinctly outlines how to do it, but here’s the short version he calls Naked and $75. I used this method to train all four of my children and found it to be easy to implement and it made potty training much less stressful.

Basically, you strip the child down below the waist and set up a small potty in the room you use the most. Show him the potty and tell him that he’s now expected to put his pee and poop into the potty.

Then you pump him full of liquids (water preferably) and give him a high-fiber breakfast to get things moving. Set a kitchen timer to go off every half hour or so, and tell him when it dings, that means it’s time to sit on the potty. Remind him what to do when the timer goes off, but don’t hover or sit with him or watch him. Let him attend to his “business” while you attend to yours.

Finally, expect accidents. Just like a child spills milk when learning to drink from a cup, he will pee on the floor when he’s learning to use the potty. Have him help you clean it up and don’t make a big deal out of it. By keeping calm and projecting confidence in his ability to use the toilet, he’ll soon be using the potty on his own. Yes, it really can be that easy.

Do you have a parenting question you would like to see answered on this blog? Email Sarah through the contact page with Parenting Question in the subject line.

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Cry Baby

Letting babies cry it out when going to sleep isn't harmful, according to a new study by a group of Australian researchers. In a recent Wall Street Journal article "Letting Babies Cry a Bit is OK," babies who cry themselves to sleep incur no long-term psychological harm. The study didn't follow parents who allowed babies to cry for long periods of time, but instead followed parents who either frequently checked on the babies when crying or sat in the room with the infants and gradually lessened the amount of time spent in the room.

The long-term and short-term benefits of children falling asleep by themselves can benefit more than just the child. Families of children who sleep well generally have fewer problems overall. "In the short term, the infants and parents get more sleep," said Judith A. Owens, director of sleep medicine at Children's National Medical Center. "A well-rested parent is going to be a better parent in the daytime."

We generally let our children cry for a bit, usually about 10 minutes or so, before checking on them. That worked well, because nine times out of 10, the child had fallen asleep before the 10 minutes ended. An excellent resource for parents wanting sleep guidance is "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth. This was the book that helped us solve many a sleep problem--and now all four of our children are usually good sleepers.

Until next time,

Sarah

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Bad to the Bone

Babies exude innocence. After all, they are quite helpless, needing someone to feed, change, dress and do a host of other things for them.

But contrary to popular wisdom, babies are not all sweetness and light—they are, frankly, bad. They can’t help it because they—and everyone else—are born that way. It’s hard to look at your baby and think of him as a heathen in every since of the world.

Especially as mothers, we learn early on how to differentiate our baby’s cry, classifying it as hungry, sleepy, unhappy and angry. And boy, do babies get angry sometimes. They might not have words to express their angst, but they certainly have a good set of lungs and can fill the air with their angry cries.

I’ve always been amazed by parents who persist in viewing their children as angels who have to be taught to be disobedient, to steal, to lie, to cheat, to do bad things.

If you’re still not convinced, just think about your children when they were toddlers. Did you go around teaching them to scream and throw things when they didn’t get their way? Did you teach them to smack you in the face when they were angry? Did someone teach them to take toys away from other children and hit those kids over the head when they protested?

No one has to teach children to be bad—their sinful hearts can handle that task just fine. It’s our job as parents to teach them how to overcome their bad tendencies. In other words, to civilize them.

As parents, it’s much easier to get past our children’s misbehaviors and to the correction, or civilizing, if we cease to be shocked that they are behaving badly. Nothing our children do should ever surprise us—everything that’s in our own hearts are in theirs as well, and they generally lack the filters that we wear.

If we start every day reminding ourselves that our children are sinners just like we are, we will be able to react to misbehaviors in a more godly manner, and less feeling that we’re to blame for their badness.

Knowing that our children suffer from the same forms of heart sickness that we do goes a long way in helping us understand them. It also can help us stay the course in correcting their misbehaviors as we help them learn self control and to get along with others.

Our children might have been born bad to the bone, but the good news is they don’t have to stay that way. 

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Homework Takes Over

Q: My daughter takes a long time doing homework after school. She’s in the fifth grade, and her teacher says the assignments should only take 45 minutes to an hour. My daughter’s at the table for upwards of 90 minutes, sometimes even two hours. She does have the tendency to be perfect in everything, and I’ve seen her erase and redo math problems to get the numbers just right. The teacher says she’s capable of doing the work, but having her pour over her work for so long is really eating into her play time and other activities. Help!

—Trapped in Homework Land

A: It sounds like your daughter needs help learning how to manage her time. If her teacher says the work shouldn’t take her longer than an hour, then that should be the amount of time allowed to complete the work. Set a timer for an hour when your daughter starts her homework. Tell her that when the timer dings, she is finished with her homework, whether the work is complete or not. Yes, that might mean she doesn’t get a good grade on that assignment, but she needs to take responsibility for her own homework. Part of homework is learning how to manage your time, and only your daughter can figure out how to get her work done in the allotted time.

One final thought: Let the teacher know you are trying this approach and that you expect the teacher to give your daughter the grade she deserves on the homework turned in, whether it’s completed or not. You certainly don’t want the teacher to give your daughter extra time in class to finish what should have been done at home, or that will defeat the purpose, which is to help her with time management.

Do you have a parenting question you would like to see answered on this blog? Email Sarah through the contact page with Parenting Question in the subject line.

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