Modeling Patience

Patience is a virtue… or so I’ve heard. Delayed gratification has been a huge topic in my family’s home, especially since we flipped the calendar to 2013. Three words: New Year’s resolutions.  Make that six:  Failing to keep New Year’s resolutions… especially the ones that challenge you to delay a reward. That’s us. And by us, I mean me.  Well, me and my 8-year-old.  But, she didn’t resolve to be more patient in 2013.  That was my Christmas wish that she didn’t deliver. Of course, if I listened to the experts, I would have known that resolving to lose weight … Continue reading

Does Your Toddler Test Your Patience?

Today was a particularly trying day for me. It seemed as if each time I asked Dylan not to do something, he look right at me and did it anyways. Also, he had a couple of tantrums over things that I could do nothing about. For example, he wanted to play with Play Doh and I could not find any in the house. For about forty five minutes he let me know how upset he was that I did not have the Play Doh that he needed. The whole day seemed to flow from one limit testing scenario to another … Continue reading

Does Your Toddler Stall At Bed Time?

Sometimes it can be difficult to discern whether your toddler’s bed time requests for things like a drink or a trip to the potty are legitimate or whether they are attempts to push bed time later into the evening. If the requests are for real, of course you do not want your child to go thirsty and of course you want to support him in the process of learning how to use the potty. On the other hand, if he is stalling, you want to send a clear message that such behavior is not appropriate. If you are anything like … Continue reading

Patience Is a Virtue

I love my children. I must say this 100 times a day. No matter what day it is, there’s some sort of yelling between them, getting hurt, or just doing things that make my heart skip a beat. They are children, after all. That is what children do. However, it drives me nuts. Some days I have no idea how I will get through it without having a nervous breakdown. Often times, I lose my cool and yell, “Can you please just stop.” It doesn’t do much. They get stunned because I don’t normally yell but then they shrug their … Continue reading

All Aboard the Roller Coaster Ride of Adolescence

Dealing with a teenager can be a dicey proposition in the best of times. On any roller coaster, part of the ride is taking that occasional plunge, but what happens when the drop becomes too steep or the ride veers off track? When you’re in parenting mode, your tolerance for a rough ride may be different from your teen’s. So how do you know if your teen is having a bad day or a bad week or something more? How do you know if the withdrawal and slump in grades are normal or something to worry about? How do you … Continue reading

Patience In All Things

Perhaps this might be a blog post for our pregnancy blog, but I feel it is appropriate here too. I am very pregnant awaiting our third child. This has been a difficult pregnancy for me. I was extremely sick in the first trimester, more so than with my other two pregnancies. And, I’ve been extremely swollen this time around. In the past, I delivered a few days earlier than my due date, and this time around, I had my heart set on that. Well, here it is, 2 days away from my due date and no baby yet. With one … Continue reading

What Paying Late Fees Really Means and How to Stop Doing It

Many of us accept late fees as a matter of course. It is just one of those things. But, you should never have to pay late fees. There are two main reasons why late fees occur. The first is the fact that many families don’t have the money for all of their bills and need to juggle their different bills each month, deciding on which ones to pay. This can be a difficult situation, and it is an indicator of big trouble to come. If this is the reason that you or a loved one is incurring late fees, then … Continue reading

When Your Marriage Faces Parenting Challenges

It’s been an interesting week in our home. There are points in time that everything is going along fairly smoothly. There may be a bump or two in the road, but nothing major. Then suddenly you have a week where all three of your preteen and teen children decide to test the waters or stretch your patience or whatever it may be. Suddenly your marriage finds itself being tested as well. Navigating through the relationship of a husband and wife is challenging enough without throwing into the mix some children. Now you have additional relationships to work through. Then there … Continue reading

Patience at Christmas

One quality needed in any marriage is patience. Especially at this time of year patience is a necessary ingredient when instead of showing love, many people seem to be impatiently pushing past others and not wanting to take time to talk because they are so busy. On Friday afternoon Mick and I decorated our Christmas tree. We put the wreath on the front door, the nativity scene in the window, a Christmas tableaus sitting on the coffee table and a few scattered baskets of tinsel and pine cones, but hadn’t done anything about lights. Come Saturday Mick and I decided … Continue reading

Discipline and the Developmentally Delayed Child

To put it simply, discipline is hard. It is one of the hardest parts of parenting. But when done consistently and correctly, it can help you to raise strong, well-behaved, emotionally mature children. Still, it’s a tough job. Each stage of childhood means a different type of discipline. How you discipline depends greatly on the age and maturity of your child. If one of your children is developmentally delayed, it will take him longer to reach those different stages and his age will truly be just a number. Have patience. It will take your child longer to adjust to stages … Continue reading