There are many forms of discipline and punishment that parents use with their children. In our house, we’ve used the time out method, the just talking method, the redirecting method, and we’ve even yelled at times out of losing our patience. Hey, it happens, right?

But, lately, we’ve come up with a new system for helping our nearly-four year old daughter behave better. Ok, “we” as in the husband came up with the idea and I take half the credit since I use the method. What’s his is mine, isn’t it?

We recently turned our guest room into a play room since we don’t often have guests. (Because she needed just one more space in the house to clutter up.) The reality is that we all wanted a family fun room and wanted her room to be more of a tranquil space for relaxation and rest. So, we now have a play room and because she helped remodel the space, she has taken full ownership of that room. It is – quite frankly – her play room.

Because of that, it has also become the one true thing that she hates to not have. Therefore, we have the following hanging up on the door to that room.

What you see is a dry-erase board with sad faces on it. Normally, there are 3 happy faces on there. It’s sort of like a behavior chart.

How it works:

1. If baby girl does something naughty or doesn’t listen, we give a warning. If she still doesn’t listen, she gets a sad face.
2. After 3 sad faces, we close the door to her playroom.
3. She must earn back her 3 happy faces with good behavior. We try to make the acts equal; that is, if she lost a happy face because of whining, we’re not expecting she clean up her room to earn it back. A smaller act that is comparable will do. On the other hand, if she lost a happy face because she threw a tantrum or disrespected us, then the act to earn it back must be equally as big.
4. Once she earns her 3 happy faces back, she gains access to the playroom again.
5. And the cycle continues.

Why this works:

• She is seeing a visual of her mistakes as well as her achievements.
• My girl needs more than just stickers as an incentive.
• The playroom is a place of her own that she enjoys so it’s a true punishment for it to be taken away versus just being scolded or sitting in time out.

Of course, explanations, warnings, and the “after-talk” is all a part of this to help her understand what happened, why it happened, and how she should act next time.

We’ve really seen it work over the last few months. She even goes through periods of weeks at a time without losing a happy face.

What methods do you use for disciplining your preschooler or toddler?

Early last month, I posed the question, “Can Preschoolers Help Clean?” and provided a list of chores for preschoolers to do around the house. Many of you agreed that yes, preschoolers can indeed help clean around the house and even provided a few additional suggestions based on what your kids help with.

One of the original suggestions I had listed was to have your young child help with folding clothes. As I thought about it more, I realized that my daughter actually helps with pretty much all aspects of doing the laundry. If we involve her, she can be of help from beginning to end when it’s laundry day. In case you hadn’t thought about it, let me share the ways your young children can be of more help with this task.

Photo by FL4Y from Flickr

How your Toddler or Preschooler can Help with the Laundry

• Sort clothes – Your child can easily take the clothes out of the hamper and help you properly create the necessary piles. On our laundry day, what we do is start a few piles on our floor, tell her what each pile is for (most are recognizable by color), and have her sort her own clothes.
• Load washer – We put her step stool in front of the washing machine, bring a pile over, and have her help throw the clothes into the washer. It’s so simple, but she loves doing it.
• Load dryer – Similarly, when it’s time to change out the loads, she stands next to the dryer and pushes in the clothes as one of us takes them out of the washing machine. Sometimes, she takes the dryer sheet and throws it in too before we start up the dryer.
  • Once the clothes are dry, she also helps us take them out of the dryer and throw them on the couch.
• Fold clothes – Though the clothes may not end up folded perfectly, your preschooler can help fold his/her clothes or even some towels. Their clothes are small, so they’re perfect for little hands to fold. They may be able to hep fold other clothes, depending on the size, but generally, their own clothes work best.
• Hang up clothes – Grab a stack of hangers, and lay out a few shirts on the couch. Your preschooler can easily slide a hanger into each shirt, and make a new pile of ready to hang clothes. This also works best with their own clothes and the smaller hangers.

Now that you know how your preschooler can help out with the laundry, let’s think about why this is actually a good thing for not only them, but you as well.

Photo by Anna Maria Horner from Flickr

Why Helping with the Laundry is Good for your Preschooler

I’m sure there are many more reasons why helping with the laundry is beneficial to young children, but here is a short list of the benefits I’ve seen:

• Color recognition
• Recognizing patterns
• Categorization
• Coordination
• Feeling helpful
• Teamwork
• Teaches responsibility and pride in taking care of what we own

Photo by Ruth from Flickr

How Letting your Preschooler Help with the Laundry Helps You

Getting some help with the housework is always a good thing, right? But, particularly if you work from home or are striving to create more work-life balance in your days, then involving your young children in daily chores will help. You may think that if you just do the chores yourself, you’ll be able to get them done faster. However, how often do you find yourself interrupted when doing one task because your son or daughter wants some type of attention? Do you really get it done very fast?

Keeping them involved will allow you to have conversations with your kids while getting things done. It lessens the feeling of stress because you’re spending time with them while doing housework. They will feel like a “big helper” and you may find that it helps the overall mood in the house.

Do your kids currently help with the laundry? Do you feel it’s a learning experience for them?

Photo credit: sean_alexander

There are many forms of discipline and punishment that parents use with their children. In our house, we’ve used the time out method, the just talking method, the redirecting method, and we’ve even yelled at times out of losing our patience. Hey, it happens, right?

But, lately, we’ve come up with a new system for helping our nearly-four year old daughter behave better. Ok, “we” as in the husband came up with the idea and I take half the credit since I use the method. What’s his is mine, isn’t it?

We recently turned our guest room into a play room since we don’t often have guests. (Because she needed just one more space in the house to clutter up.) The reality is that we all wanted a family “fun” room and wanted her room to be more of a tranquil space for relaxation and rest. So, we now have a play room and because she helped remodel the space, she has taken full ownership of that room. It is – quite frankly – her play room.

Because of that, it has also become the one true thing that she hates to not have. Therefore, we have the following hanging up on the door to that room.

What you see is a dry-erase board with sad faces on it. Normally, there are 3 happy faces on there. It’s sort of like a behavior chart.

How it works:

1. If baby girl does something naughty or doesn’t listen, we give a warning. If she still doesn’t listen, she gets a sad face.
2. After 3 sad faces, we close the door to her playroom.
3. She must earn back her 3 happy faces with good behavior. We try to make the acts equal; that is, if she lost a happy face because of whining, we’re not expecting she clean up her room to earn it back. A smaller act that is comparable will do. On the other hand, if she lost a happy face because she threw a tantrum or disrespected us, then the act to earn it back must be equally as big.
4. Once she earns her 3 happy faces back, she gains access to the playroom again.
5. And the cycle continues.

Why this works:

• She is seeing a visual of her mistakes as well as her achievements.
• My girl needs more than just stickers as an incentive.
• The playroom is a place of her own that she enjoys so it’s a true punishment for it to be taken away versus just being scolded or sitting in time out.

Of course, explanations, warnings, and the “after-talk” is all a part of this to help her understand what happened, why it happened, and how she should act next time.

We’ve really seen it work over the last few months. She even goes through periods of weeks at a time without losing a happy face.

What methods do you use for disciplining your preschooler or toddler?

I realized the other day that I never actually updated you on our potty training issues.

You’ll be glad to know that baby girl is officially potty trained. Full out. All the way. For real.

The girl goes to the potty by herself without us having to remind her, she’ll tell us if she needs to go when we’re not home, and she’s doing pretty good in the clean-up process as well.

And you know what we did?

Nothing.

All of you were absolutely right. She did it when she was ready.

For all the encouraging, rewarding, praise, and potty games we played, in the end, she simply would go when she actually wanted to. That turned into her going when she needed to. And eventually, she was able to switch over to being diaper-free all the time.

Even at night.

Really, when it was time for her to start preschool, it was suggested to us by the school that we bring her diaper-free. We warned them that she wasn’t fully potty trained, but they said to try it anyway and they’d deal with the accidents. So, that’s just what we did. And amazingly she did really good. There were really very few accidents considering our progress beforehand.

She’s definitely proud of herself and loves that we’re proud too. The first few weeks of preschool, she’d say things like, “Did I make you proud?” or “I had NO accidents today mommy!”

I love that my baby girl has finally achieved potty training success. Of course, this means she’s officially a big girl. In her eyes anyway.

We are a tech-heavy household. That’s not to say that we don’t do any hands-on activities, such as crafts, coloring, and puzzles. It’s just that both my husband and I love technology and use it daily. So, it’s only natural that our baby girl will grow up in a technology-filled house and will learn to use it early on.

She already knows how to navigate our iPod touch, knows how to work a computer mouse, and knows many techy words. How many three year olds do you know that have words such as blog and email in their vocabulary?

Mine does.

The latest activity that she likes to do is play on the computer. Since she learned how to use the mouse, she likes to go on “the real computer” (our laptop) and play games online.

Of course, we limit how long she plays at any given time and we’re sitting right next to her when she plays. This way, she can still interact with us as she plays and we can guide and help her if she needs us to.

Where does she go to play online games? Here are some of her favorite places to visit:

• Noggin
• Sesame Street
• PBS Kids
• Nick Jr
• Playhouse Disney

Of particular interest to her are the Dora games and lately Special Agent Oso has been a hit as well.

Does your toddler or preschooler play computer games? What sites do they enjoy? Do they have a favorite game?

After much time spent on attempting to potty train and many ups and downs, we have been having regular success this past week. Baby girl has actually used the potty at least once each day. She even went and sat down by herself without me or her dad having to make her sit. Major improvements, folks.

However, she has this little thing that she doesn’t want us to really celebrate it or tell her we’re proud of her. It’s the strangest thing. Here’s how it goes.

Me: Good job love! You did it!
Her: NOOOOOO! I DIDN’T WAAAANT TO DO IT!

Seriously, what in the world is that about?

My child has to be the only child who does NOT want to be praised when she’s done something good. I’ve read all the potty training tips out there. Believe me, if a link says “potty training” in it, I click it. And they all say the same thing.

Praise, praise, praise.

I get it. It makes sense. If I tell her she did something good and that I’m proud, then she’s more likely to do it again or want to do so.

But, apparently, that doesn’t fly with my daughter. I can’t make out why.

The important thing, though, is that she continue to use the potty on a daily basis so that eventually we can move on to always using it. So far this past week, even without too much praise, she’s shown that she’s getting the hang of it.

Perhaps she just likes to complain in the process of doing so.

As always, any input on past experiences are appreciated. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

A really really long time ago, the folks at Da Capo Press sent me a complimentary copy of the book “I Brake for Meltdowns: How to Handle the Most Exasperating Behavior of Your 2- to 5-year-old” to review.

I’ve just now gotten around to actually writing my review of the book. Better late than never I always say.

After reading my review, you can enter to win the book for yourself! I figure I might as well pass along the copy since I held onto it for so long.

Review

The book begins with an overview of various types of tantrums and meltdowns and details several scenarios. It then goes over many well-known toddler behaviors, with chapters on the following:

• social behavior
• sleep-related concerns
• eating dilemmas
• potty training
• fighting
• anger issues
• manipulation
• travel
• health and hygiene
• refusals
• other stubborn and annoying behaviors

Each chapter pretty much provides different circumstances and how you can deal with them, with alternatives included. I was stuck on the potty training chapter for a bit (for obvious reasons). One of the tips given is to let your child run naked outdoors. Which makes total sense since it makes for easier cleanup, but really? What if she sits down on the grass…naked? Maybe it’s just my paranoid self, but I’m not about to have ants crawl up my daughter’s butt.

Overall the book seems like a handy resource. Especially for those just beginning to deal with some of those really frustrating situations that come with toddlers and when your kid hits the terrible twos.

You can find out more at http://www.ibrakeformeltdowns.com

Win a copy of I Brake for Meltdowns: How to Handle the Most Exasperating Behavior of Your 2- to 5-Year Old

How to enter:

1. Leave a comment with the chapter you think would interest you most.
2. For a second entry, tweet a message on twitter with a link back to this post.
   Sample text to use: Win this book from @modernmami & learn how to deal with tantrums! Enter contest at http://tinyurl.com/modernmami-book
   You’ll need to leave a second comment with the link to your tweet, not your profile, so I can verify. You have to leave a separate comment so that it will count.
3. For a third entry, write a post and link back to this contest post on your blog. Again, be sure to leave a separate comment with your post link so that it will count.

Rules

You have until 11:59 pm EST on Saturday, May 9 to leave your comments. The winner will be posted on Monday, May 11 and will be chosen using Random.org.

Be sure to check back to see if you’ve won! Remember to include an email address so that I can contact you if you win.

Note: Contest open to U.S. addresses only.

Now that you have some resources for helping your child read, do you want to know about a good book to read to your toddler or preschooler?

This is the cutest book and your kid is going to love it. Well, only if he/she is as awesome as my baby girl. hehehe

Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by Mo Willems

We first learned about Knuffle Bunny while watching Between the Lions one day with baby girl. The story was read on the show along with the pictures from the book. And the pictures? Stunning. A mix of city photography and illustrations. You’ll have to “look inside” the book to see what I mean.

By the way, the title is pronounced Keh-nuffle; the K is NOT silent.

My favorite lines from the book are “She went boneless. She did everything she could to show how unhappy she was.” If you remember what tantrums are like (or are currently dealing with them), you’ll know exactly what those lines mean. Of course, the reason behind those lines will help you appreciate, or at the very least, understand the tantrums a little more. It gives a new perspective on things…from your kid’s point of view.

My daughter’s favorite part of the book? Pretty much all of it. She loves to look at the pictures and loves to repeat what Trixie (that’s the main character) says. She laughs at the same parts each time we read the book. In advance mind you, since she already knows what will happen next.

Apparently, there’s a sequel now to Knuffle Bunny, which I keep meaning to pick up. Looks like Trixie is now a preschooler herself.

Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity

And, there’s also a DVD from Scholastic with the Knuffle Bunny story on it.

Knuffle Bunny… and More Great Childhood Adventure Stories

I just added the DVD to our Netflix queue so hopefully baby girl likes it.

If you’ve never read Knuffle Bunny, then you have to buy the book. I promise…you – I mean your son/daughter – will love it.

And no, I did not get asked to review this book or write about it. I really just like the book a lot.

The other day, I posted about my daughter wanting to go shopping so she could buy turkey.

In the comments, it was noted that she doesn’t eat meat…not really.

I figured, I’d expand on this a bit.

Though we’re far from being a vegetarian household, for some odd reason, my daughter will not eat meat.

The only meats she eats are chicken nuggets and/or chicken fries and sometimes deli meat. More often than not, we force her to eat the nuggets/fries and sometimes we sneak the deli meat into her sandwiches.

If it were up to her, she could go without.

Now, this wasn’t always the case. When she started eating solid foods, and especially when she started eating on her own, she would eat cut-up chicken, bacon, and sometimes she’d even eat some beef in a broth with rice.

But, she slowly started rejecting all meats and we had to re-introduce the little bit she’ll eat now.

Like I said, we’re not a vegetarian household, so it all seems very strange to us. She sees us eat meat all the time.We keep offering it to her in various forms. But, nothing.

I know there are vegetarian kids out there who are perfectly healthy. Her doctor even said it’s fine and wasn’t concerned.

But, as her mami, I can’t help but worry if she’s getting enough protein. She doesn’t eat beans either. Well, not in the way we cook them with the gravy. I haven’t tried another way.

I keep hoping she’ll outgrow it and will soon start eating some meat, so I can just give her the same food we eat.

Actually, I keep hoping she’ll overcome being a picky eater in general.

Any vegetarians out there have any suggestions?

This morning, as I’m getting baby girl dressed, this is the conversation we had:

Where are we going, mami?

Well, mami and daddy are going to work, so you’re going to abuela’s house.

I don’t want to go to abuela’s house!

Why not?

I’m going to work…to get some money.

And, why do you need money?

To go shopping.

And what do you need to buy when you go shopping?

Turkey!

So, to recap…

My daughter needs to go to work so she can get money so she can go shopping and buy turkey.

Image credit: Bree R