Vicki,

Okay, you convinced me. Plus, I so absolutely believe that POT should have national attention that I will do what I can to contribute to the cause. So, you can find me blogging here: http://shiftandtweak.wordpress.com/

With my toddler, for skills that I know she has but won’t use, it has been effective to simply decline to do these things for her. Eventually she just goes ahead and does it. I have also found that if I just keep moving forward to the next step, she manages to follow. For instance, if I go out to the car, then she will put on her shoes and coat. If I turn on the engine, she will get into her seat. If I pull out of the garage, she will cooperate with getting buckled.

With my 6-year-old, it is more difficult. I can’t tell if he is resisting or just forgetting. I have used questions like, “How do you want to…” and lots of “Yes, as soon as…” Instead of directing how to do something, I try to offer “such-and-such has worked for me.” I ask which parts of a task are working well for him, and which he wants more ideas to try.

I think training new skills is easier than figuring out how to encourage them to use skills they just aren’t. The questions of power struggle and motivation are much less prominent.

This exercise make me painfully aware that there are not many skills for either of my children (6yo & 2 yo)` in the first category, only a few in the second category for my 6yo, and virtually none for my 2yo. Yes, the clock is ticking and I need to empower my 6 yo with more skills I need to raise my expectations for my 2yo. But I definitely need to prioritize because it’s a long list. I shouldn’t shy away from asking others to help, e.g. Ben’s teacher, babysitters, mothers helper, aunt. It dawned on me that many areas of character training are important but non-urgent (e.g. explaining the virtues of honesty, integrity), so we often back-burner them to address the more urgent matters like mealtime prep and clean-up. Perhaps if I could train the kids to help with the daily chores I would have more time and energy to focus on long term character building.

Kids are naturally inquisitive and instinctively want to learn to do things, as evidenced by my two year old constantly saying “Why?” and “Me do it!” She also really loves to “help Mommy” with household chores, albeit with a very short attention span. It struck me that my 6 year old doesn’t say these things anymore, and has very little desire to help with household chores. How do I light the fire of his perhaps buried Inquisitive nature, and how do I motivate him to help with the family chores. At 6 years old, he seems to waver between a desire to be babied (i.e. asking me to do simple things for him) and a desire to be independent, largely tied to how tired he is feeling.

My husband and I feel strongly about teaching our children to develop a strong work ethic, yet we definitely lean toward doing things for them, rather than teaching them how to do it themselves. I guess it’s time to make some changes.

See you tonight,
Betsy

Hi,
Me again. Now I’ll answer this week’s specific homework question about how do I train my kids without reverting to my old interfering discipline strategies:

• Prioritize!
• Ask them what they want to learn to do and start with these
• Make my own list of other things I need to teach them and share with tom
• Find strategies to make it fun; e.g. playdate with friend to teach them how to xyz
• Carve out time each day/week to train; eg time with ben after she goes to bed, training over breakfast
• Highlight skills their peers already know to incent them
• Assign some areas to Dad!
• Enlist Ben my 6 yo son to help train Jenna
• Ask babysitter to help with some tasks for which they resist training from me; e.g. nail cutting
• Make some tasks a competition btwn son and daughter, e.g. who can get their shoes, hat & coat on first? A bad idea?
• Find age appropriate books for both (eg potty training, manners)

Definitely need help in this area!
Betsy

Still need help tweeting! How do we find you on twitter? I searched #parentingontrack, and #vickihoefle, and #parentingot, but no luck. Can you advise us tonight? Thanks.

[...] http://www.parentingontrack.com/mom-tv/training/#more-4326 .  Click and read – good stuff. [...]

I’m finding that in our house the key thing is to find the motivating factor for each child.
During do nothing say nothing week, one of the things I noticed was that my 2 older kids know how to eat healthily, but if I am not monitoring what they eat, they will just eat empty carbs. So after that week we made a privileges and responsibilities chart — Responsibility: eat 5 servings of fruit & veg a day. Privilege: have a treat after dinner. My daughter has been going like gangbusters eating 7 servings some days and measuring her food at dinner time to see how many servings she has, all to get that treat after dinner! My son, on the other hand, has no interest and hasn’t even tried to earn a treat. When I asked him why he’s not trying he said he doesn’t care about earning a treat, he only wants more TV time (which I’m not willing to give). This woke me up to the fact that the motivator really has to be meaningful to the child.

For anyone who missed the show last night- we are parentontrack on twitter. Let us know if you have any more questions or trouble finding us.
Thank you!!

I am trying not to remind or direct toward household chores, or to point out pieces of jobs only partially done, or to complete them myself after the fact. Is this what I am supposed to be doing? Everything is a mess, it’s basically mini-DNSN. I really don’t want to live like this for weeks or months on end. I am trying to use teaching, non-directive questions and “as soon as” to get some of the work done, but am getting very impatient.

Hi,

I know, it’s frustrating isn’t it. Problem is, kids don’t really care all that much about cleaning up. That’s the way it’s suppose to be for a bit.

The point of this is to understand that although you can identify now what the kids can do, etc., no real plan for how to train, when to train and what to train has ever been developed. Have you sat down and written what skill you will teach first, when you will teach it and how you will teach it? If not, do that now. If you have, then think of the ways that you will move beyond just the teaching. Will you make agreements about when the “chores” will be done. Will you connect them to P & R’s. Will you pass out the chores at Family Meeting. How will you use “as soon as” to help bring them back to task. What are you willing to do if things aren’t picked up and agreements are broken.

Training kids to hang up a coat is the easy part. Having it become a way of “being” takes much more time. So you could do anything you like. Pick up after the kids so the house doesn’t drive you crazy AND keep thinking about HOW you will make “picking up” part of their every day life so it becomes a habit.

Let me know if this was helpful or if you need me to say more.

Yes, yes, thank you, very helpful! “Permission” to clean up is great! All the other stuff is constantly in the works. Being able to keep my house comfortable for myself will put me in a better place emotionally, to be patient and kind and encouraging, instead of frustrated and angry. Creative instead of desperate. Thank you!

You are so very welcome.