This is a year of milestones. I could tell you all about how my eldest daughter is now 16 (and knowing it all, as teenagers do), or my son turned 14 and is now taller than me, or the little one turning 11 just a few days ago and now learning to cook with Granny. But the most significant milestone…
Category: Discipline
What the heck are tweens?
I remember thinking for a long time that I’d like to have kids close in age. It would be tough, having to cope with a baby when your eldest is only a toddler, but that’s how I wanted it. All because I am 5 years apart from my sister and I felt that, growing up, it was the age difference’s…
What does No mean?
Before I was a Mom, I hardly knew anybody with kids. I had close family members that have kids, but they lived in another country, so I had contact with children only in small doses. It seems that since I became a Mom, there are more and more Moms and children in my universe. More often than not, I try…
Option 1, Option 2…
Most parents probably agree that shouting and screaming at kids is counterproductive. It just produces children that will shout and scream as a way to resolve problems. And in theory, it should be possible to resolve issues without ever having to shout. Being that I am Portuguese, however, this is a really difficult thing to do. You are brought up…
I am not a child!
I have consulted with a few different psychologists in my life. One of them uses Transactional Analysis (TA) in their therapy. According to TA, a human being’s personality consists of three parts or ego states: a Parent, an Adult and a Child (the Child state is split further into Natural Child and Adaptive Child). I’m not going to go into…
Getting ready – the 3 morning rules
I really like to promote independence with my kids, so as soon as Miss Z was able to get dressed herself, I encouraged her to do so. These days, as she is in school, she has to wear the school uniform during the week, but she is free to choose her own clothes on weekends. The result is not always…
Naughty step
I think probably everyone that has children knows what the naughty step is. Some people also call it timeout. I first heard about it from the Supernanny TV series. It’s funny really, because both my husband and I thought that smacking was a good way to discipline children. This was before we watched Supernanny on TV. Seeing is believing –…
Vanilla, chocolate, choose!
I tell my child to do something. Let’s say it’s “put the brown shoes on so we can go”. He says “I want the wellies Mommy”. This is probably a silly example, but it’s the first one that comes to mind. So I say “No, darling, it’s the brown shoes”. Inevitably, there’s some screaming or shouting or stomping his feet…