Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

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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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (8): Discipline

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.

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

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Fussiness or Happiness

Sometimes, when I give my business card to people, I get this odd question, “Are you always happy?”

It is a valid question and I think that people who ask it probably think this is the meaning of happiness, which makes me wonder why they do it to themselves. You see, some definitions of happiness are too tough, meaning it is hard to achieve them, and I would much rather have a definition of happiness that is easy to get.

Let me explain this by using food as an analogy. Who do you think is happier, someone who says “I’m only happy when I drink luxury wine from 1864, use spices from the jungles of the Amazon and cook my food for 22 hours, 16 minutes and 33 seconds precisely” or someone who says, “I’m happy when I eat”?

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Alcohol for Teens

This week, I was at a conference and I had a talk about my book for teenagers with a woman named Jill. As often happens, our conversation turned into a “bitching session” about teenagers.

“Last night, I picked up my 15-year-old daughter from a party. I’m one of the rare parents who still come to pick their kids up. The rest takes a taxi”, she complained, “When I arrived, there were lots of police cars around”.

“Did anything bad happen?” I asked, worried.

“Oh, no, that’s usual. Every time she goes to a party, someone does silly things and the police arrive”.

My 20-year-old daughter and my 14-year-old son had never participated in a party where the police arrived, so I asked her, “What do you mean by ‘silly things’?”

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When Partners Differ

Parenting kids is a challenge for most people. There are many things that make parenting such a challenge, but one of the big ones is that a couple of parents is made up of two different individuals, each with their own upbringing, values, beliefs and preferences.

If life was just smooth sailing, this would not be such a big problem, except life is bumpy sometimes and when tensions are high, things can get silly and weaken the parents’ position of authority.

Even when things are pretty quiet, the ever-so-sensitive kids can detect notes of disagreement between their parents and immediately try to use them to their advantage (little buggers). Parents who are too preoccupied to notice end up facing the “But Mom/Dad said” and looking pretty stupid being caught unprepared.

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Make a list: Rules I Follow

Rules were meant to bring us some confidence in life. People without rules live life as if they have a very short memory span, let’s say 10 minutes, so they cannot make sense of what has happened to them in the past and they cannot predict what might happen to them in the future. If you ask me, this is a scary place to be. Rules form a useful survival mechanism. We do not need to bang our heads against the wall over and over again in order to re-discover it hurts, right?

Rules are limiting if they do not put order in your life and do not give you certainty and stability. Successful people are those who adopt good rules of success and stick to them. If you are looking for success in your life, in any area that is interesting for you, remember that your successful rules of living are the blueprint of that success.

This post is part 23 of 49 in the series Make a List

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TV Diet (15): Routine

During years of work in the education field, I have found that good routines are great for establishing good habits in kids. If your kids have bad TV habits and they watch for too long or too many unhealthy shows, a good routine can help them stay away from the TV and choose more beneficial activities.

Routines are a good way to give kids a stable atmosphere and make them feel certain in their life. The massive change in routine is one of the reasons kids’ world is so shaken and they tend to watch too much TV when their parents go through a relationship breakdown.

I think a good routine is a great parenting technique not only for overcoming the TV addiction but for many other habits you want to instill in your kids. An established routine encapsulates many of your rules and boundaries. If you are a regular reader in this site, you already know I believe that rules give kids a sense of certainty and define to them the safety limits in the world they live in. Therefore, a routine plays a big part in making your kids feel safe.

This post is part 15 of 18 in the series TV Diet

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100 Feelings I Want to Feel (and how to feel them)

Woman smiling in satisfaction and happiness

Today’s post is about how to discover the feelings your want to feel in your life, and finding great ways to feel them when you want to. We do this by listing “100 feelings I want to feel”.

As a life coach, I teach my clients emotional intelligence and I find that “learning to feel” is helpful (and, unfortunately, very much needed) in personal development. Our slogan at Be Happy in LIFE is “Happiness is a choice” and we see our goal as coaches to teach people how to feel happy and how to choose happiness.

Some people tell me that teaching happiness is strange. They say, “It’s a feeling. You either have it or you don’t”.

Well, in my opinion, this is not true.

This post is part 13 of 49 in the series Make a List

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Things Kids Never Argue With

I once said (OK, I have said it hundreds of time) that kids believe everything you tell them. The younger they are, the truer this statement is. Parents do not know they are lucky that their young kids do not question them as much as they should. In fact, because kids do not doubt what their parents say, I would like to encourage all the parents reading this post to take advantage of this phenomenon and plant good thoughts and beliefs in your kids’ little minds. So if you are a parent and you want to learn how to plant good thoughts in your children’s mind, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

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Pink Hair Band

I think I have written about school uniform and its (negative) educational value many times, yet somehow, I do not have the feeling I have written enough. I hope you can read my frustration with this topic in my sarcasm, because I am not happy at all.

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