SheilaWrayGregoire.com

-------------------------SHEILA'S BACK FENCE---------------------
Tired, at your wit's end, or just need a pick-me-up? Come meet me
at my back fence, where we can talk parenting and housework with
some common sense for a change!
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IN THIS ISSUE
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You don't need a license to be a parent. Anybody can do it,
which many of us feel is rather unfortunate, when we look around
the school or the playgroup at some of our kids' cohorts.

Love makes the world go round. Love is all you need. There are
so many trite things said about love that it's easy to forget
how very important it is.

But love isn't just a feeling. It, too, is something that you
do. You love when you read a story to your child, even when
you're tired. You love when you tie their shoes for the three
hundredth time, even though every developmental scale you've
read said they should be able to do it by now. You love
when you reach for your baby at 3 in the morning, though
you pray that she would learn to sleep through the night
and give you a bit of peace (we'll talk about how soon!).

In other words, we love when we prioritize our kids rather
than ourselves. And though we all know that's important, it's
not something that is often done in society. Surveys show that
most kids spend less than 30 minutes a day in any kind of
meaningful conversation with their parents once they hit
school. Even younger kids get short shifted.

To love means showing our kids they're important. I once
read that kids spell love T-I-M-E, and I'm inclined to
believe that's true. Time is the most precious commodity in
our society, not money. If we're going to love our kids,
we need to prioritize time with them.

It's like a bank account. If we want the right to tell our
kids how to behave and have them listen to us, we need to
put enough "deposits" in so that when those withdrawals
come, they'll still listen to us. We need to earn the right
to be heard. Kids are really perceptive, and they know what's
really important to us. Let's make it easy for them to see
that what's important is them!

I know many parents who think they're really harsh. They
spend their days reprimanding their kids, yelling at them
because their room isn't clean, because they haven't put
away their school bag, because they won't share with their
little brother or sister.

But yelling is not discipline. And does it really work? More
often than not it doesn't, and it just makes the kids really
ticked off at you.

Many times I've wandered down to my basement to put on
some laundry, only to find the place a disaster area, as my
children have emptied out their dress up clothes and boxes
of toys in an endless search for some elusive item.

What's my response? Unfortunately, too often it's to yell.
"What are you doing? Do you expect me to clean this up? I
spend my life cleaning up after you!". The kids cower and
make some half-hearted attempt to clean up, while I feel
completely guilty.

And what happens when I venture downstairs again to put the
clothes in the dryer? I find the disaster's still there. The
kids have learned that yelling doesn't really matter. They
just have to endure it.

If you want them to actually change their behaviour, you
have to give them a reason. I used garbage bags. I told them
calmly that the next time I found toys all over the basement,
I would take a garbage bag and give twenty away. They
cleaned up pretty quickly.

Discipline your kids with consequences, and they'll learn to
behave. If they leave their bike outside and it gets rusty,
they have to buy a new one. If they fight over a toy, it's
confiscated. If they won't eat dinner, they go hungry. You
don't need to yell, your blood pressure stays low, but the
kids learn you mean business.

Which brings us to the next point: follow through with what
you say. If you threaten to confiscate a toy and then you
don't, your kids won't believe you mean it. They'll keep
disobeying you, because they've learned you won't follow
through.

Once you get into this habit, it's very hard to break. So
don't threaten anything you can't follow through on. If your
child has been invited to a birthday party, and you threaten
not to let them go unless they clean their room, but really
you have no intention of making them stay home, you're
asking for trouble.

It's awfully hard to get kids to act appropriately when we
model the exact opposite. What if you're trying to get your
two children to share and get along, but they hear you on
the phone bad mouthing a friend? What if you fight with
your spouse after telling your children they're not
allowed to fight with each other?

Try resolving legitimate conflicts in ways that you want
your own children to resolve their conflicts. Treat others
the way you hope your children will learn to treat their
friends. If you complain, gossip, and swear, chances are
your children will learn to complain, gossip and swear, too,
even if you tell them they shouldn't. They will do what
you do, not just what you say.

But the best thing we can do is to think of discipline as
something we use to train the whole child, so it's just
as appropriate to praise them when they're going in the
right direction as to steer them away from wrong.

Many kids act up to get attention. If you give them
no attention when they're being obedient, but yell at
them when they act up, they're likely to act up, because
enduring yelling is better than enduring silence.

On the other hand, if you're trying to teach your two
kids not to squabble, when they do go through an hour--
or 15 minutes, or even five minutes--of peace, tell them
how proud you are of them. Reward them with a story or
a snuggle. Take time to tell kids when you're proud of
them, and they won't bother to try to pull your strings
at other times!

Parenting is a tough job. It requires more energy
than any other, and it's full of quagmires. But if we
can take the time to show our kids we love and value
them, while teaching them to listen to what we say, we'll
find less and less need to discipline them as they grow
older. They'll learn to do it themselves. So put in the
hard work when they're young, and the rest of parenthood
will be so much easier!

Do you remember how much you loved playing Monopoly when you
were little? How you loved Battleship, or learning to play
Checkers, or even Old Maid? Kids love games, but increasingly
they aren't playing them. Instead, kids watch TV, play on the
computer, or play video games.

But games are great because they give the whole family the chance
to be together. Even younger kids can play in a "team" with
their parents, as my own three-year-old did when we started
Checkers.

Having low-stress time as a family when you can have fun, laugh,
and talk is so valuable in buildling strong bonds. Here are my
picks for some great games you can play with kids:

Let me step out on a limb here and say that we can do a lot
better with the books we're giving our kids to read. Many of our
early readers spend their lives in "Captain Underpants" or
"Mary Kate and Ashley" books. These are fun, and kids like them,
but if that's all they're reading they're missing out on some
great reads.

What are the books that have stayed with you since childhood?
The ones that captured you? Probably ones with rich characters
that you could identify with. So let your kids read "fluff"
books if they like, but try to introduce them to books that are
more substantial. They're lives will be richer for it. Here are
some of my picks for early chapter books:

1. The Courage of Sarah Noble (about a girl in pioneer days)
2. Junie B. Jones (I don't consider this fluff. You can really
get inside this character :) )
3. Pippi Longstocking
4. A to Z Mysteries series by Rob Roy
5. Step into Reading series (especially for boys) with books
on a lot of different subjects!

One weekend my friend, a nurse, was looking after her six-
year-old nephew when he fell off a playground slide and hit
his head. Worried he might have a concussion, she decided to
check him throughout the night. She'd gently shake him every
hour and ask, "What's your name?" Soon, he began moaning in
protest each time she entered this room. When she went in at
5 a.m., she found something white on his forehead. Leaning
close, she saw a crayon-scrawled message taped to it.
It read, "My name is Daniel."

Here's this month's: The average new mother loses
***750 hours of sleep***in the first year of each baby's life.
So if you're tired, there's a reason! And you never, ever, ever
get that sleep back.

1. My column, Reality Check, is starting up in Penticton! I'm
very excited about that! Hopefully I can get in some other
newspapers soon. If you have any connections in this area,
let me know!

2. I hosted a brown bag lunch on January 29 at the Belleville
Public Library on how to get published. It was a lot of fun, I had
plenty of great questions, and attendance was wonderful. If you
are interested in attending a full-day seminar on how to get
published, let me know at www.SheilaWrayGregoire.com/contact.php

3. I've been invited to speak to 4 women's groups this spring,
as well as two conferences and one writer's conference. I'm going
to be busy! If you have a group that needs a speaker, let me
know, too!

******How do you keep up with your laundry? How do you get
it all folded? How do you keep your socks in pairs? Have any
great tips? Let me know, and I'll list them here next month!***

All over town this morning, far too many sheets, comforters, and
blankets are in the washer. And it's not because we had a sudden
epiphany about the evils of dust mites, or because we all wanted
that spring fresh scent in the middle of winter. No, it's because
our little ones are puking their guts out. Norwalk has come to town.

I hate flu season. My own children have not actually succumbed
yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time since we do not
actually wash our hands fourteen times a day (or however many
times it is that you're supposed to). I remember a few Christmases
ago Katie had a terrible stomach virus, and we must have changed
her sheets six times in one night. We were down to our last set
of bedding (some old sleeping bags I found in the back of the
closet), and if she threw up on those we were going to resort
to wrapping her in towels. The worst of it was that during the
last episode she happened to get hit her blankie.
And Katie can't sleep without her blankie.

She decided to cuddle with me as a substitute. As a general rule
I like cuddling. But I'm not so fond of it if, at any moment, that
child may do to my bed what she's already done to hers. Nevertheless,
maternal feelings won out that night and she cuddled, I held my
breath and prayed, and the night passed without further mishaps.

Unfortunately there's not a lot you can do for stomach viruses.
There's no medicine that will make you feel better, and even if
there were, you couldn't keep it down. The only thing you have is
the infamous Pedialyte, that stuff that has saved millions of lives
by keeping sick kids hydrated. Personally, I think some scientist,
who must also have been a parent, created it as a dare. "Honey,
if you're really sick you'll drink this. Otherwise, you're going
to school." Any kid who's not on death's door will choose school
over Pedialyte any day. Have you ever tasted the stuff?
It's like Kool-Aid with salt, and something else which I haven't
identified yet and which I'd rather not know.

Pedialyte, though it's intended to rehydrate kids who have been
losing fluids to rather gross bodily functions, actually has the
opposite effect on otherwise healthy kids. So here's my parenting
tip for you this week: never confuse a Pedialyte popsicle with a
jumbo Mr. Freezie. Trust me on this one. It's a very bad idea. I
once gave a "Pediapop", as they're called, to Rebecca. She promptly
started retching. You'd think with the great demand for this
product they could invest some dollars into trying to get it to
taste better. But then, I suppose, you wouldn't be able to use
it as a dare anymore.

As bad as it is to have your kids sick, though, there's little
worse than being sick yourself and having to take care of them.
You lie on the couch, praying to die, while your toddlers jump
on you and every so often beg for food. You try, in an ever so
sweet voice, to explain to your two-year-old how to get her own
cereal. It doesn't work.

But getting up off the couch to fix them food is nothing compared
to actually having to look at food. In fact, I think they should
have a whole aisle in the supermarket dedicated to sick people. They
could call it the "Norwalk Aisle". In it, you could find apple juice,
apple sauce, those little Premium Plus crackers, and jell-o. And
that's it. Nothing else. Because when you feel sick, the sight of
ravioli or baked beans is enough to drive you over the edge.

I'm still praying that we avoid the flu this year. My husband
(a doctor) has had all his shots, and he washes his hands so many
times each day they're peeling (I figure he makes up for the rest
of us). But if the kids do get sick, it will be nice to cuddle
again. I'll just make sure they're turned the other way.

Since writing this, Katie did indeed get the flu. We did give
her pedialyte. She did think it was disgusting. We did cuddle at
night, but no major mishaps occurred.