The Secret To Having Good Kids
How do I get good kids you say? Well, there are various methods that you can use. I just want to tell about one specific method that I use with my children, especially my younger ones.
Last week, when my daughter went off to bed I went in and played her favourite CD while she was dozing off to sleep. Then I went to bed as I usually do, leaving the CD player running. Beck woke up the next morning, and seeing that the CD player was still running, got quite annoyed. I was in the kitchen preparing breakfast when Becky marched out to me and said “mum, come with me, please”.
She grabbed my hand and we walked down the hall together. I had no idea where I was going or what we were going to do, nevertheless I followed her at her insistence. We got to Beck’s bedroom and she opened the door. “Come here, please mum”, she said to me. She walked me over towards her CD player. Then she stopped.
“OK mum” she said to me, “this is how you turn off the CD player”. And she showed me the “off” switch, turning off the CD player. I stood there watching her with a big smile on my face. What else could I say but “thanks Becky. I shall try to remember that next time.”
Becky has learned from my example, that the best way to teach someone to do something is to model it for them. I always try to model the correct behaviour to my children, and she had picked up on it and was returning the favour to me. I was very pleased with her that morning.
I can remember last month sometime I decided that I was not happy with the mess that my two youngest children were making in the bathroom when they had a shower. So I went to them with this same thought. I called the culprits into the bathroom to chat to them. When they were there I said to them:
“OK guys, see this bath mat beside the bath? When you have a shower I would like you to pull the mat over to outside the shower. Then when you finish having a shower you can stand on the mat and let the water drip on the mat instead of all over the floor”.
Now I could have dealt with the problem in a totally different way by saying: “Guys, how many times do I have to tell you to stop wetting the bathroom floor when you have a shower?” Can you see the difference?
It is far better to go over something another time (even a dozen times if necessary) than to growl for not doing something. Kids will respond well to being shown the right way to do things. If you can learn to do this small thing, it will make your job as a parent much easier. So before you growl at your kids, remember to remind them of what is required of them, so that they can indeed be good kids.
