Who said parenting was easy?! No matter what age or stage our children are at, it’s safe to say they keep us on our toes! Aoife Lee speaks to The LifeStyle Show's Taragh Loughrey-Grant on all things parenting.
Listen to The LifeStyle Show podcast above for some amazing parenting tips on getting the kids to brush their teeth, to play ball with you and to get them into the perfect bedtime routine.
What to do when kids say no?
When your child says no to you for the first time we may think "ah how cute, it’s great to see them showing their assertiveness" until it becomes part of the daily chat, the cuteness wears off fairly quickly! I encourage a couple of approaches.
Give positive directions – tell your child what you want them to do rather than not, for example, "please hang your coat up" rather than "can you stop throwing your coat on the floor".
Praise best efforts – children love being told how well they are doing – if you see they are really making an effort on changing their behaviour, like listening, doing what they are asked or finishing their dinner, acknowledge it, thank them – they are more likely to follow through than not.
Bedtime Antics
This is a regular challenge for many families, when parents are gone all day, although it can be crazy in the evening, for so many parents they feel keeping the kids up means spending that extra time they didn’t have with them during the day, it can often lead to over tired little people who struggle to settle to sleep and can also create irritable behaviour the following day.
My advice is:
Maintain a good routine – children cope a lot better when they know what’s happening next, we may think that our children are well able to stay up but often when it goes past bedtime they ‘hit a wall’ and get a ‘second wind’, this is a clear sign over an overtired child.
Between 7-8pm is the recommended time for children to be in bed asleep, try to keep to this and make the most of that special time when reading them a story, make quality time at the weekends, 20 minutes per child one to one. This will not only boosts them but eases the guilt for us when we make the time’.
Get the rest of Aoife's parenting hacks by listening to the podcast above!
Check out The LifeStyle Show every week on RTÉ LifeStyle. Catch up on every episode here!
