Our Power as Parents to Make It a Great Day

• 2 • Live Well, Parenting

Send me your questions / blog post requests! First, a little business. You may have noticed that I’m posting more frequently than usual; I’ve decided to participate in #NaBloPoMo, a November event where bloggers post every day during November. It’s a fun opportunity to post about things that interest me but might not make the cut if I’m only posting 3 times a week. It also means my editorial calendar is more flexible, and I’d love to hear from you about what types of posts you enjoy!

What would you like me to write more about? Running motivation? Race strategy? Nutrition? Parenting? Recipes? Any running questions burning in the back of your mind that you’d like answered? I’m happy to do the research and report back to you in a post! Comment below or send me an e-mail to kelly at iamrunningthis (dotcom).

And now…. super cute kids in a wagon!

As parents, we have the power to make the day wonderful for our children:

Parenting is tough. It’s so easy to get caught in a downward spiral of nagging and frustration.

I am always amazed by how wonderful our day can be when I keep calm and take the (substantial) time to gently work through all the little upsets and mishaps and squabbles the kids have. I notice a huge change in my kids when I take the time to actively listen when there are conflicts, comfort both participants, and avoid blaming and shaming.

Time is an issue: It’s hard to take the time to do it when you’re trying to get them out the door to preschool or swim class.  It’s easier to hustle them into their jackets and plop them in the car still whining because 15 minutes of conflict resolution and cuddling will mean you miss half of swim class. (Which will upset them even more…) What I want to work on is taking time whenever it IS possible, and doing my best to at least remain calm and assure them we’ll work things out later when I don’t have time to fully resolve their problem in the moment.

Daylight savings to the rescue! Luckily for me, it was daylight savings time last weekend! Suddenly, the kids are up almost an hour earlier than normal, and I have plenty of time to get them ready for preschool in the morning. That meant that today, I had the time to make sure it was a great morning. I practiced being the type of parent I want to be.  It took some extra time, but it was faster in some ways, too. When my 5 year old feels listened to and respected and not blamed (even when he just walked off with his brother’s lunch box while his brother was screaming “don’t take it DON’T TAKE IT” because he wanted to be ‘helpful’) then he is much more likely to run off and get dressed by himself when asked. He’s likely to assist rather than resist during the whole getting ready process, and that is a huge time saver.

I loved choosing their lunch snacks with them and seeing my 3 year old’s excitement when he helped peel the cucumber.

We ended up having a great morning, despite many little upsets. I stirred the 3 year old’s oatmeal when he wanted to, recovery time: 5 minutes. The 5 year old tried to pack the 3 year old’s lunch for him, recovery time, 3 minutes. And so on. But we made it through with no yelling, the 3 year old helped peel the cucumber, they washed their own faces, and we left early enough to ride in the wagon all the way to school and still be on time.

Here’s the hope: by putting in the time this week, when they’re getting up earlier than normal, once they adjust to the time change they’ll be more used to having positive, peaceful mornings and things will continue to go smoothly.

It’s not easy – but it’s worth it. I feel wonderful about the way I took time for them and regulated my emotions all morning to keep from acting frustrated.

Check out this fabulous parenting resource: ahaparenting.com by Dr. Laura Markham

The inspiration for all this was attending a lecture the night before given by Dr. Laura Markham. She runs the website ahaparenting.com, and is a parenting expert whose publications include an entire book on sibling rivalry. (YES!)

Dr. Markham’s site has many resources. For some similar material to the lecture that inspired me so much last night to work on my parenting this morning, you can check out these articles:

How to Stop Sibling Hitting

How to Intervene in a Sibling Fight

How to Prevent Sibling Fighting

5 Ways to Help Children Develop Emotional Intelligence Skills Every Day

Should You Make Your Child Apologize

Practicing Good Parenting: Good parenting requires practice. Every time I read a great article about parenting or attend a lecture, it renews my energy to put the effort in to be the best possible parent I can be. I always want that, but attending a lecture or reading a chapter of a parenting book helps me focus in on specific parenting tools, strategies, or mindsets I want to embody.

Every time I go to one of these lectures, I’m like the most amazing parent ever… for about a week. Then things trickle off a little. I get snippy when we’re rushing out the door and they’re not helping for the fourth time in a row. I don’t prioritize pre-emptively setting the kids up for success by getting them their snack on time or making sure there’s enough laundry clean so they can easily find their outfits when I ask them. I start to slide a little, and a little more… and next thing you know it I’m yelling “DON’T KICK YOUR BROTHER!!!” and checking the clock to see WHEN ON EARTH IT WILL BE BEDTIME. It stinks. These are wonderful little people, and there are things I can do to make our home a really fun place. I just have to prioritize them, remember them, and be a consistently mindful parent.

Idea: What if I kept my good parenting practice alive by trying to read a refresher article each week? By reflecting on my parenting practice more regularly? I’m not saying dedicate an hour each Friday to re-reading parenting books (although that would be awesome) but taking some quiet moments to reflect and notice how I’m doing as a parent. Time to recall to my mind all the parenting strategies I’ve learned that make a huge difference in my children’s day when I practice them.

Maybe once a week I read an article from ahaparenting, or even just skim through the chapter titles of my favorite parenting book, or reflect on what was hard about parenting yesterday and how I might change my own behavior to make it better next time.

It’s worth putting in the time and the effort to be the kind of parent I want to be. Mindful, calm, connected, empathetic more often than rushed, hurried, dismissive, frustrated. I want to switch my adjectives around, and it’ll mean a time investment, but it’s one that will pay off when they’re able to play together more peacefully and aren’t so attention hungry they can’t handle having me leave the room to switch laundry.

But most importantly,

They’re worth it.

 

Montessori inspired family room makeover

• 0 • Parenting

Our Inspiration:

Remember how I got all excited about reorganizing the bookshelf to have forward facing books, making it easier for the boys to see and select books they were excited to read?  Well… it was awesome.  And the more I appreciated what a little change like that did for the boys, the more excited and inspired I became to re-evaluate our living space and make it a more Montessori inspired environment.  (Read more about Montessori here.)

Jennifer Lee, the director of the Montessori Children’s House of Wellesley, gave an amazing talk at the mother’s forum about how to help our children be more independent at home.  Looking at the photos of Montessori based rooms, I was so inspired.  Shelves were where children could reach them.  Furniture was small enough for kids to read or craft without having to continuously climb up and down.  Objects of interest, books, and activity trays were organized, easily accessible, and there wasn’t an overwhelming number of them.

It was amazing.  It was the environment I would want if I were a child.  It was the environment I wanted for my own kids.

Looking at our living area, we didn’t really have that.  We have a day-bed they love to climb up onto and cuddle with me to read stories on, and we have a big area rug with lots of room for building train tracks, these are good.  But the other pieces of furniture in the room were a couch and a chair that no one really used.  Adults tended to play on the floor with the kids, or relax in our finished basement where our television is.  With no coffee table in front of the couch (we wanted room on the floor for the kids to play) it wasn’t comfortable to sit on because you couldn’t put your feet up.

We decided to sacrifice the adult seating in the room to make the space more child-centered.  After all, we have a formal living room on the same level adjacent to the dining room where we can have adult seating, and this is the room where the kids spend most of their time.  Unlike some families, we dedicated our basement space to our t.v. and socializing area rather than a playroom.  That meant aside from their rooms, there wasn’t an area designed specifically for the kids.

Until now!

Our living room re-do:

We sold the couch and chair on craigslist (this funded about 80% of the cost of our re-do), and bought a mini child sized love-seat perfect for the boys to read on.  We put shelves to display books right above it, and some child-height display shelves nearby for a few stuffed animals and objects of interest that we can rotate.

We replaced our small plastic kids’ table with a larger wooden one with enough seating for friends (or a grown-up, there’s room so our knees don’t hit the top) to do crafts, puzzles, and other table activities.  Moving the couch meant we could place the table in a bright, centralized location rather than having it off in a corner with very little room, like the smaller table had been.

I moved almost all their toys to an upstairs closet, and replaced them with activity trays and three or four toys out at a time that can be rotated.  Right now they have building blocks, toy cars, a bag of coins, three puzzles, two stuffed animals, several craft trays with stickers and coloring, and a lock-set out to play with.  Picking up is a breeze, because they can easily see where everything goes and put it back into its place.

There’s extra room for spinning, dancing and building now that the adult furniture is gone, the room feels brighter, and the boys are spending more time looking through books and doing puzzles.  We’re still working on getting a larger area rug and a different set of shelves, but already I see a difference in how my children use and enjoy the space!  I love it 🙂

I’m inspired by and enthusiastic about Montessori parenting, and while I’m by no means an expert, I’m really enjoying seeing the joy and independence even little changes have made for my kids.

Some Montessori Activity Trays

• 1 • Parenting

We have a new kid size craft table coming today, and in anticipation I prepped some activity trays for the boys to do tomorrow!  It’s perfect timing, because Will’s preschool has professional days so he doesn’t have school the rest of the week.

I have two beading trays with string and a bead already anchored, a puzzle, two molding clay trays with accessories, and a cutting activity and hole punching activity.

If you look closely, you can see that two of the plastic green trays are already chipped.  They’re not so rough that I’m worried about the boys cutting themselves, so I’m still going to put them out.   I’ve ordered wooden replacements and look forward to getting them.

I originally purchased plastic because they’re better for any activities involving paint, glue, or pouring exercises with water.

I wish I’d just purchased wood, instead.  Besides being a more eco-friendly, biodegradable option, I like the thought of exposing the boys to more natural materials.  They’re more expensive, but I don’t need that many – for two children, having six activity trays available at a time is going to be plenty, especially if they also have access to a few bins of larger toys like blocks or train sets.

These are pretty rudimentary activity trays that I threw together in a few minutes this morning – but looking on pinterest and in some of my Montessori books, the possibilities are endless and exciting!

Getting your kids to eat healthier

• 4 • Parenting

IMG_8902.JPG

Kids aren’t born liking broccoli. Fruits are easier, because they’re sweet, but getting our kids to eat more vegetables and fewer processed snack foods is a universal parenting struggle.

Here are some strategies that have worked well for our family:

Avoid saying “try it you’ll like it”: Because they probably won’t.   It takes kids as many as 20 times trying a new food to develop a taste for it.  (Google this phenomenon, you’ll get varying numbers.)  If you say they’ll like it, and they don’t, they won’t trust you next time you say that.   I tell my kids the truth – “you’re learning to enjoy this food, and it’ll take some time.”  While they’re learning, they get a very small amount on their plates.  One piece of broccoli gets licked the first night, a small bite the second, until gradually they work up to eating more.  I haven’t found a food they won’t at least try, and by continuing to offer additional foods, they gradually add to their repertoire of “accepted” foods.

Pick whole foods for snacks: It’s tempting mid-afternoon to just give them the snack foods they’ll eat quietly, but processed, refined crackers get converted to sugar quickly, leaving them vulnerable to an energy crash right before dinner time.  I made a rule for myself – only whole foods for afternoon snack.  My kids now expect a sliced apple with peanut butter, banana, dried fruit (raisins are great – kids love eating them, and they have enough fiber to regulate their sugar content), or nuts for snack.  Will has started to eat sliced orange bell pepper and cucumber slices with hummus, too.  Snack time is a great opportunity to get another serving of fruits and vegetables in.

Give them choices: Would you like flax seeds in your oatmeal, or chia seeds?  Broccoli or carrots or both? I’ve made Will frozen corn and Andrew frozen peas for lunch because they each chose a different vegetable when we were planning, and I gave them that power.  (This is different from letting them choose a different vegetable once one is on the table and being served!)  I offer them similar choices for foods they love, so they’re used to getting to pick their foods.  When we have oatmeal, they pick their “sweetener” (maple syrup or vegan chocolate chips) and their seed (chia or hemp) and they can have as many kinds of fruit and nuts they want.  They see choices as a positive thing, and are so used to the routine that they aren’t yet saying “neither”.

Smoothies: Do I want my kids to learn to eat the whole vegetable?  Absolutely.  But if I relied on a 3 and 4 year old to consume all their vegetables in their whole form, they’d probably end up with a vitamin deficiency.  So while I make sure they have at least one vegetable on their plate at dinner time, I shamelessly throw leafy greens and other vegetables into smoothies for them.  They have 1 or 2 smoothies a day, and I make sure there’s always a serving or two of vegetables in the smoothie.  Bananas, dates, and cacao powder will get kids to drink more vegetables than you’d expect!

Offer all good choices: If you don’t have junk food in the house, your kids won’t eat it.  Yes, sometimes they eat a large portion of whole grain pasta with sauce, and only a few spoonfuls of peas, but they’re never filling up on crackers or oreos.  With such little stomachs and growing bodies, the more nutrient dense calories they consume, the better.

Involve them in food preparation: They’re more interested in trying a food that they picked out in the grocery store, washed, helped slice and prepare.  It’s a lot of work to involve young children in food preparation, but when you can take the time to do it, especially with a new food, it definitely increases the likelihood that they’ll be excited to try it.  That’s how I got Will to drink his first kale smoothie.

Skip dessert or make it fruit: We eat dessert on special occasions in our house, so our kids don’t skimp on their evening meal and expect to fill up on dessert.  Sometimes we’ll have homemade chocolate doughnuts or cookies on a weekend at snack time.  If we do offer dessert after dinner, it’s often sliced strawberries or another sweet fruit.  That way our kids still get the occasional cupcake or cookie, but they’re never under-eating their dinner in anticipation.

Don’t make them special kids meals: This is the hardest, but it’ll take them much longer to learn to eat healthy, balanced meals if you’re making them peanut butter and jelly whenever you have a dinner you know they won’t enjoy.  It’s a cycle – you don’t want to listen to them whine because they don’t like vegetable stir frys, you make them their own dinner instead, they never learn to eat vegetable stir fries.  Sigh.

Try a bite: We are in the try a bite camp.  The professionals are split on this issue.  It works for us.  If they lick a food and gag, we don’t push it, but that’s happened maybe once.  Other than that, if it’s on the plate, you eat at least a nibble before you get down.  Otherwise, they never get those 10-20 exposures to learn to eat new foods.

Good luck!

 

How To Keep a Preschooler Happy in the Grocery Store

• 3 • Parenting

IMG_8567.JPG

Put your kids in charge of their own grocery list next time you go to the store!

I made my four year old, Will, his own list by doing a quick google image search for food items I knew he could easily identify, and copying them into a word document with two columns.  I wrote the number of each item next to it, so he could carry the list and be in charge of what items were needed and how many.

Greg took Will to Whole Foods, and said the list kept him busy, contented, and involved throughout the entire produce section.  (And got him quite a few comments from other shoppers!)  Greg let Will get the produce himself, and Will even got to ask a Whole Foods team member for help finding the mangos.  The team member offered to show Will where they were, and even asked if he wanted conventional or organic.  Will said he wanted a vegan mango.  Wish I’d been there for that one.

This strategy could also help curb the habit of children asking for impulse purchases – if it’s not on the list, we don’t bring it home.  Ask them to help make the list another week when they could choose a treat to add.  (Make a grown up list for yourself to be in charge of, to explain why some items not on their list ARE coming home.)

Raising my children with Montessori in mind means I try to always be thinking about ways I can keep my children involved in our household tasks, encourage their abilities and independence, and let them be productive members of the household.  Will loves taking charge and being a contributing member of the family, and I love it, too.