Week Eight

Monday Nov. 21st  6:00-6:30AM
Tuesday Nov. 22nd 6:00-6:30AM
Wednesday Nov. 23rd  6:30-7:00AM

Parenting With Love And Logic By Foster Cline, M.D. & Jim Fay

This week I was able to get through Pearls 27-36. Pearl 31 talks about spanking. This pearl says that kids would rather have a spanking and a brief moment of pain and so they can be off the hook. Children need to think about what they have done wrong and live with the consequences and think about solutions. There are five good reasons to avoid spanking:
1. Empathy and logic consequences are far more powerful than spanking, because they teach problem solving skills.
2. Spanking fails to teach the behaviors we want.
3. Most kids would rather receive a spanking than have to think about their poor choice.
4. More recent research tells us that spanking has many negative side effects, such as anger, resentment, revenge, etc.
5. Our kids may someday choose our nursing homes.

I also really liked Pearl 35, Teeth Brushing. I have a 3 and 5 year old daughters and teeth brushing is always a struggle with us at our house. One thing the book talks about is to talk with your spouse in ear shot of the kids such as after dinner the dad may say to his wife: "I sure can't go through the rest of the day with all that sugar on my teeth and in my mouth. I'd better go take care of it so I won't have cavities." When he returns from brushing he tells his wife "I'm sure glad I did that. It only took a couple of minutes to get the job done, and I feel a whole lot better." With doing this kids can thus model what we say as well as how we feel after we've done it.
I really think that this is a good idea. I think that I will try this with my husband while we are still sitting at the table after we have finished our dinner. This way my girls can hear that I am going to brush my teeth. I think that I could also brush my teeth with my girls of an evening even if my husband and I didn't have a conversation in front of the girls about it. Maybe if I am going to brush my teeth then it will help my girls want to brush their teeth too.