Recently, my youngest daughter has become reliable about brushing her teeth (I can tell because the sink is now filled with gobs of toothpaste when she claims to have brushed). Before this development, though, her routine was to pretend to brush her teeth, only for me to find a dry sink and a dry toothbrush afterward. How she went from someone determined to pull one over on her unsuspecting parent to someone who now brushes so enthusiastically that the sink suffers from her efforts was partially a matter of awaiting her maturity. But, as parents, we want to do more than just wait and hope, and there are steps you can take to drastically reduce lying and guide a child toward honesty.
Angelic images of smiling siblings make crowd- pleasing Facebook fodder, but the reality of life with two or more children is decidedly less picture-perfect. According to research from the University of Toronto, toddler-age siblings clash more than six times per hour. On average, siblings under the age of seven fight every 20 minutes. And fights that get physical can leave lasting physical and emotional scars. If sibling fighting is stealing the peace in your household, read on for relief.
It was the day after Halloween when my five-year-old daughter had an ‘important’ question for me: “How many more days until Christmas?” she asked. “It is still almost two months away,” I responded. She stood her ground, hands on her hips, clearly not satisfied with this news. “Okay then, what about Easter?” was her follow-up. “Even longer!” I said, laughing at her persistence.
Everyone, adults and children, live with some level of stress. After all, life is full of challenges. For adults, these challenges might be financial pressures, relationship or marital problems, job-related issues, and the like. The pressures in children’s lives may seem minor to adults, but these pressures are very real to our kids. Will they deal with their challenges head on, avoid them, or cope with them, passively?
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