Sleep Problems with Kids

This is the message from Julia, describing her sleep problem with her daughter. When she sent me the question, it was easier for me to give her a call and answer her question, but I wanted to share it with you too, just in case you are having similar challenges.

Hi Ronit,

I have looked around your site to try and find some info on sleep problems with kids but had no luck. I know you are very busy, but thought I would ask just in case you can direct me to something that could help me?

My 8 1/2 yr old daughter cannot put herself to sleep, we have her in a single bed next to ours, and one of us has to go to bed at the same time as her, and usually we fall asleep, as it takes her a while to nod off. So as you can see, there is never any ”adult time” in our house. Things are getting rather desperate, as it creates a lot of problems as you can imagine. Hoping you might have time at some point to help me.

Thank you,

Julia.

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Parenting Workshops for Schools

Mental health is a big concern in Australia, especially depression and particularly in young people. The Commonwealth Government recognizes this problem and has started, among other things, a program called Kids Matter, which guides schools in discovering, analyzing and solving any mental health problems.

Derek is a great believer in emotional intelligence, so Upper Mount Gravatt State School is getting the most out of working with Kids Matter. In fact, the school has done so well is has won awards for leadership in mental health for the past 2 years.

But Kids Matter only provides the framework and incentives for focusing on mental health. The school still has to choose good services and good providers to make real impact and Derek has chosen Ronit to run Happy Parents Raise Happy Kids and Happy Teachers – Happy Students.

In an interview with Derek Brady, he says, “Having a life coach attached to your school as a school partner has huge implications”.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (13): Parenting Teens

This entry is part 13 of 14 in the series Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss

Parenting teens is considered the most scary period for every parents. I heard endless times the mantra “Wait until your kids become teenagers” and when Eden was young, I did find this warning scary. After all, I had not been an easy teen for my parents (not that I had been an easy kid either).

Yet, the more Eden grew, the more I realized that for my parents, my teen years had been years of reason, success and happiness. While other parents had talked about their kids turning into monsters during their teen years, my parents had found joy parenting me for the first time in, because I had finally done well socially and academically.

This thought made me dedicate a big chunk of my education career to teens and even today, I often deal with parenting teens in my parenting workshops. I even wrote a book for parents, educators and teenagers to bust the myth of “those obnoxious teens”.

I asked our Top Parenting Bloggers what they think about parenting teens. Some of them are parents of teens, other are not yet, but it is interesting to read what they think.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (12): Parenting Boys and Girls

This entry is part 12 of 14 in the series Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss

Gender is no doubt a huge factor in parenting. Many parents would like to know their baby’s gender before it is born, because gender matters to them. In our society, the role of girls and women is different from the role of boys and men. It is hard to ignore these roles and treat kids equally, because in the eyes of our society they are not equal.

So what should we do? Should we parent our kids differently if they are boys or girls or should we treat them just the same?

Research on people’s attitude towards boys and girls has found that parents and adults generally treat boys and girls differently even when they are just babies. In a famous research done with a group of babies that were dressed in pink or blue (without any relation to their real gender) the researchers discovered that the pink babies (presumably the girls) were picked up more by the adults and received more eye contact than the blue babies (presumably the boys).

How do you think this translates to parenting?

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Teaching difficulties

I am sure you have heard a lot about troubled kids and troubled teens, but not much about troubled teachers. You have probably heard about learning difficulties, but not a lot about teaching difficulties. I think that many times when we do talk about kids’ difficulties, regardless of their age, the origin is some parenting or teaching difficulty.

Lately, I have had many requests for kids’ coaching from parents who were concerned about their kid’s behavior. When I asked them to tell me why they thought their child needed coaching, I discovered the most of these kids’ behavior “problems” were the result of teaching difficulties.

Teachers, as most people forget, are just human beings with a big task. If you hang around teachers long enough, you will find out teaching is not an easy profession. Teachers have the ability to make a huge difference in a kids’ life, but they can do it in a good way or in a bad way. They can instill passion, motivation and interest or kill them for life.

So what can we do about this as parents?

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People Change

When you read the title “people change”, you might be thinking, “Well, of course they do”, but very often, when you are very close to another person for a long time, these changes are difficult to notice. On the other hand, sometimes it is not the other person who changes, but us, and that just changes the way we see them.

When we start a long-term relationship, we are so intent on making it work that we overlook things we would prefer to be different “as long as we’re happy together”, but the discomfort caused by those overlooked things grows over time to the point where we suddenly notice them. One day, we are surprised to discover for the first time something our partner has been doing or saying for years. All that time, we dismissed it in different ways (“bad mood”, “something at work”, “didn’t really understand”, “only joking”, etc), but now, we look at “this thing” head on and think our partner has changed.

In a strange sort of way, the things that attracted us to that special person in the first place can become annoying over time, until we determine that the person has changed. We also get used to good things (annoying, but natural), which makes us take the good side of any character trait or behavior for granted, while getting more and more upset with the bad side.

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How to get your kids to help

I recently got this question from a mother:

“I agree with a lot of your parenting style but I set clear rules and boundaries but you say not to punish. What happens when your teens will not put their dishes in the dishwasher, won’t clean their room, or basically not do anything you ask. I even say please have your room cleaned by Sunday evening, giving them the choice and responsibility to do it. If I remind or ask again on Sunday evening, I am nagging.

How do you approach these situations?

We have 3 teens and a 24yr old at home, none of them pick up after themselves. We do and try to lead by example but nothing changes and I don’t want arguments anymore.

Thanks, Tina”

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (10): Parenting Tips

This entry is part 10 of 14 in the series Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss

As a parent, I am in constant search for parenting tips. In my parenting workshops, I have a goal of learning at least one great parenting tip from my audience and you know what? I always do and I am very happy and grateful for it.

At the beginning of my education career, I gave up one big desire: to re-invent the wheel. It was not easy, because some people thought it made me less creative, but I always gave the example of my mom as a chef – she uses the same ingredients as everybody else but combines them differently. Over time, I stopped asking her about cooking recipes and started asking more about cooking tips, because with the click of my mouse, I can find millions of recipes, but they all lack the experience.

It is the same in parenting. It is even truer in parenting. Asking parents what works for them is a great way to accumulate enough information and make a good parenting style from it.

In a way, when I asked the Top Parenting Bloggers to share their parenting tips, I hoped to find some I can adopt too. I was very happy to discover many good tips and I hope you will too.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (8): Discipline

This entry is part 8 of 14 in the series Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss

For some reason, parenting and discipline go together. After all, in order for us to run a home properly, we must set some rules and make sure we follow them to everyone’s benefit, right?

Setting rules and following a discipline routine is not easy. It requires parents to have lots of discipline and self control. To my surprise, when people seek parenting programs to enhance their parenting skills, they look for disciplining tricks and techniques when in fact, what they need is not a one-size-fits-all way of parenting but exposure to many different philosophies, which they can adapt to their own kids, beliefs and circumstances.

I thought that the topic of discipline was probably something every parent would like to hear from people who have made parenting a high priority and somehow managed it well. Here are their answers.

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Mirror Image

One morning, as I was walking around the neighborhood, I saw a Magpie-lark (the bird on the left) fluttering next to a parked caravan. It flew away from the caravan and then sped towards one of the windows, flapping its wings aggressively.

“What a strange thing to do”, I thought, but then I moved closer and realized the bird was seeing its reflection in the window and, perceiving it as a threat, was probably defending its territory from the “other bird”.

This got me thinking (and not for the first time) about how we humans view our own world and how we become aggressive towards certain things, while being completely OK with others.

It reminded me of a friend of ours who complained about one of her kids. She said, “I get along just fine with my oldest boy, even though he likes different things to me, and the little one is just cute, no matter what she does, but my middle daughter Ruby drives me crazy sometimes. You know, Ruby reminds me a lot of how I used to be as a girl. She’s stubborn and strong willed just like I was. Oh, maybe that’s why we argue so much, because we’re the same…”

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