by Amelia | May 15, 2017 | blog
My father often says something rather wise: you get what you pay for. In many cases, a reward is like a payment, and it makes that behaviour more likely to occur in the future (whether you planned for it or not.) This post is all about how this strategy can back-fire,...
by Amelia | May 6, 2017 | blog
Child: *Poke poke poke poke poke poke* Me: “Sweetie, what are you doing?” Child: “I’m waiting for you to say ‘please stop’ so I can say OKAY!” Uh oh. As I mentioned last week, I’ve been working on training the children...
by Amelia | Apr 30, 2017 | blog
Just say OK.No whining, no arguing, no stomping, no screaming, no debating, no wheedling. It doesn’t work. It never works. Let’s just skip this. Just say OK, and we can move on. I am raising two infinitely optimistic boys, apparently. When they disagree...
by Amelia | Mar 31, 2017 | blog
Sending clear signals Let me show you something that will make your life so much easier. Just like a traffic light, we need the right signals to tell us what to do. This might seem simplistic, but bear with me. At first, you may give me a look like the cat below:...
by Amelia | Mar 20, 2017 | blog
It’s Sunday evening. There’s been a sudden increase in the amount of defiance and quarreling, particularly from my eldest son, age almost-five. I’ve done some ignoring and some mild complaining, made a few threats, but nothing improves. I’m...
