Ok, I know you are out there. You're a mom and you have a well behaved child. Please share your secrets with us! Tell us how you did it!

[lucyjoy]

Foster Cline's Parenting with Love and Logic.

[VirginiaStegall]

Actually I'm the grandmother of some very great grandchildren. My daughter and son-in-law started their family when they were in their 30's. My daughter married at 32, had a daughter at 36 and a son at 39. These children gets lots of discipline balanced with lots of love. My granddauther who just turned 7 amazes me. She was taught to pick out her clothes for school the night before. She gets up in the morning for school with the first call. She dresses before she leaves her room and comes out for breakfast. When I'm there to take care of her, she gets her lunch box out and begins to let me know what she wants. She reminds me of what she needs to take too school.
She rides her bike to school with two other children in the neighborhood.
As far as the discipline of the 3 1/2 yr. old. When he acts up, Dad takes him to his room and gives him time to calm down and returns to his room calm himself and allows him to come out.
Wow, I'm impressed and proud of these parents.
The children also have God in their lives. That is so important.
Sorry If I went on and on.

[A_mothers_love]

My husband and I are raising three of my children, I think personalities have alot to do with how well your children behaves. I have one child who frequently acts out...but he is well behaved with doing chores, homework, ect. My two girls are extreamly well behaved, and very rarely have tempertantrums, or bursts of anger. I think parenting is allot to do with the parent. If you are calm and collected you will most likely raise your children this way. If you are dealing with stress or anxiety your children will most likely act out more. Children are very intuitive on there parents feelings, they dont understand and do what is natural, act against whatever is happening. Speaking to children never raising your voice, is all good, but has to be balanced with strong disipline...meaning dont let them get away with something one time and get mad at them for doing it the next.
BTW I am not a perfect parent...I am learning to be one though
Hugs
Melissa

[SomeBunniesMom]

This may be a bit of a smart-alec answer, but i am trying my best to do things as differently as possible from what my own parents did. We waited a long time for our family, and in that time i had a lot of opportunities to observe other people with their kids and make mental notes of what worked and what didn't. I observed a lot of parents who were inconsistent, who didn't follow through with a discipline, who made empty threats, who yelled and screamed so much the kids tuned them out.

I have two year old twins who say thank you and excuse me, who pick up their toys, help me clean up after a meal, never run away from me in a public place. I can take them to restaurants to eat meals and they are behaved and do not disturb the other diners. We take them to church and they stay with us through the whole service. they will walk with me in a store and not touch what they are told not to touch.

I constantly praise them for being good girls, for being helpful, for saying the right things and for doing the right things. When they have behavior problems, i remind them of how they are expected to act and i try my best to ignore inappropriate behavior. I know that sounds so strict, but it is much harder on me than it is on them at any given moment really. I am also sure to say positive things about them to other people when they can hear me. One of the most common comments about twins is "oh you must have your hands full!" to which I always reply "oh no, they are such good girls". It's become an almost self-fulfilling prophecy -- I expect them to be good and that what they are. I think kids do intuitively pick up on that.

I try not to expect anything from them that i don't feel they are capable of doing, such as riding longer than two hours in the car without having an overload. If something like that does happen i try to understand that it's just as much my own fault for putting them into that situation. I try to understand that most of their problem behaviors are due to being tired or hungry and that i am also cranky when i am tired and hungry but I have more ways of expressing my self than they do and I have more self-control than they do.

otherwise i just teach by example. I want them to pick up their toys at the end of the day, so from day one I made sure they saw me doing it. It's part of the routine of our house, and they have taken to it naturally. I say please and thank you when I talk to them and they are learning very well to say it when they talk to other people.

I took a lot of flack for breaking away from tradition. My family and my husband's family ridiculed me, but I stuck to what I was doing, and now they are praising how well-behaved these girls are. They all predicted that i was going to be overwhelmed by raising twins and that I was getting in way over my head. I think I was determined that they were going to be wrong!

i would love to be able to take all of the credit and say I am really on to something great here, but i do think that I have been unbelievably blessed with good tempered children which is where half of the credit goes.

[dadfor2]

lol......how depressing....lol

we adopted two boys from severe past abuse issues....so, i dont think we will ever have the best behaved kids in the world...lol.

mind you, when we first got them.....they were the sweetest things, and talk about polite.....lol. where is this special needs stuff they were talking about?.....

well, those days are over....lol.

however, structure and discipline is what we needed to do, and lots of it. We dont get excited, or yell....we just use the 1,2,3 method.....it seems to be working, i know some people have issues with it, but it works great for us. The fact the children dont like it, well, thats another issue, it must be working then.......but at least when i say 1, they stop doing what they were doing most of the time cause they know whats going to happen when i get to three.....good ol 'time out'.

the other night, my 5 yr old said, and these are his words "now daddy, i have an idea, when i say a bad word, by accident, and i say im sorry, and i apologize, then i wont go into time out, but if i forget to say im sorry, then i go in time out, isnt that a good idea?"

those were his words exactly...i nearly fell off the chair...especially when he said "by accident" hes already trying to make deals at 5 yrs old.....mind you, the words he uses...well, lets just say, this forum wont permit that kind of language.....

but again, they are special needs, and we werent expecting well behaved children anyway.....but there are some days when i think to myself..."what did i get myself into...' then i look at their faces, and i cant believe their my children and how blessed i am...

dadfor2

PS: his idea, though thoughtful, wasnt going to work...lol

[dadfor2]

oh, i forgot to mention, I will never miss an opportunity to acknowledge good things they do....throughout the day, they are always hearing postive things about themselves.......even if its something little like "please" im always watching and looking for postive things like sharing and things like that. I do believe you have to have balance, i rather tell them the good stuff then the bad.....

i think i just needed to say that so people didnt think all i did was put these kids in time out......lol

dadfor2

[SomeBunniesMom]

Dadfor2,
It actually sounds like you are doing wonderfully with your guys. The fact that they let go of the polite behavior, attests to how comfortable they are. It also sounds like you didn't have higher expectations that couldn't be met and that is one of the keys to both your apparent success and happiness.

Your story about the bargaining is really great. Similar to something one of my two year olds has done a few times recently. She learned a word from her grandpop that I wish she hadn't -- a colorful word for "poop". How does one un-teach something like that? i have been trying to get her to substitute a less colorful word. She will say the first one, then catch herself and say the second word to cover the mistake, then look at me and say, "I said _____". It's one of those things that's funny but it's not.

My best to you and your great family!

[dpen]

hmmmmm...well behaved kids eh....

I have 5 children, with whom I have tried to bring up all alike. With my first two I thought I was the best mom in the world, I (in my superior knowledge) would look at other children and think that I had it right!!! People would comment on how well behaved they were....I was on cloud 9!!!

Then came my daughter, who was a little more spirited then her older brothers, but still managable. Then came her twin brothers.......Well ,they are 11 and they do challenge me ! One in particular loves to see how much he can get away with!!! He is the daredevil...causing me a ton of gray hair!

What I have learned that it is definitly personality, what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. They are all indivuals with different needs and methods of disicpline. What may look like bad behavior now, might be respected personality traits when they are 40.(within reason of course!)

Here is an example of thier differences....thier grammer school has a bench that is used when a child misbehaves..my older 3 were in horror of being "sent to the bench". Not one was ever sent there. I smuggly thought what wonderful,well behaved children I have! I happen to walk into the school one day and there were my twins "on the bench", sitting, kicking thier feet, SMILING, they thought it was funny! They were in the first grade!! Thats when I realized I had challenges ahead.

There are plenty of books on how to bring up children, but they may not work for you...you have to find your own method. Another thing that I have realized in my od age is to try not to let other people's opinions influence you in bringing up your children. Parents can get VERY competitive, they may not have your childs best interest at heart. You need to devolp self confidence in YOUR parenting and only listen to those you truly trust!

My twins are 11 and my daughter is 13, heading into thier teen years.....please pray for me!!!!

Donna

[Peggy]

Well it is all relative. My daughter is far more well behaved then when she first moved in. However, she is by no means perfectly well behaved. In general I do the same things as dadfor2. I also use 123 magic, natural consequences, and praise. I try to keep the praise specific to an action, and not fluffy....she responds to it better. I give myself timeouts, so I can keep my focus, and not over-react, or be overly critical of my daughter. When your child moves in, go over a set of rules, but keep the rules short and sweet. (that advice I got from my sister, she said, whatever you make a rule, you must enforce, so if you have to many rules, you will make it to hard on yourself). Concentrate on one behavior at a time, and let some of the lesser ones go initially.

[debsdone]

With 5 children, it is often a challenge! I am told how polite my children are all the time. It's true! they are all really super polite. I tend to be polite also. (no cracks please) I talk to my kids ALL THE TIME. If they misbehave, I ask them how they think others feel around them??? Having them put themselves in others places seems to help. (now that they are older even more) Like Dpen, I was really challenged after I had developed an "ego" LOL My 4th was a nightmare baby! Poor little guy was always miserable. At about 10 months old he became a bit more "social" but he was still difficult. At 14, he is good. He dives me nuts, but that is mostly me! (I don't like this age much, lol)
The main problem about my family is that we are LOUD. We laugh really loud and are very animated. I love that, lol. I imagine it annoys some people, but we usually receive comments about how much fun we seem to have together! Kids, gotta love 'em!!! Love, Debi

[dkb60]

I have 2 mottos that I parent by. The first is "I am not raising children, I am raising adults". Some of the qualities that drive me nuts as a parent are very important qualities to have as an adult. An example is being self assured. An I can do it attitude is good in an adult but drives us nuts as a parent of a toddler.

My other motto, that I repeat often is "Now I know why some species eat their young." Somedays......

My children are well out of toddlerhood and in teenage years. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing you children succeed in their ( not your) goals.

[dadfor2]

one of the things we also did, like peggy, just picked a few things we would work on, the need to be consistant is the key....if you have too many rules...there is no way to be consistant....first few weeks we just started with major safty stuff....EX: stove, stairs......stuff like that, once they got that down, then when we started the behavior modification stuff....as the therapist told us..."choose your battles..."...lol.

like debsone.....we actually tried to do all the talking stuff with the kids.....lol. that didnt work, only cause they would say "i dont care"....and you know what? they didnt....lol.....we still do talk, but with our kids, they needed a consequence for their behavior....for some reason, they got that....they catch themselves all the time....so that does work for our kids.

dadfor2

[Rainbow mom]

Best advise my mother gave me is don't assume children have a brain (she said that lovingly).

In order to get them to be polite expect it from them. You get what you expect from kids (age appropriate of course). If you expect them to be polite just stand there when they request something and repeat please please please until they mimic you and then respond to their request. Then stand there and say thank you thank you thank you until they respond accordingly. I have heard it take 27 days of repeating something to create or break a habit. Manner's are good habits that begin at home.

Our two year old has had to have time out during dinner when she was acting crazy. We also allow her to play with her food (as long as it doesn't effect the next guy) and be two and not an adult.

[MissScarletLa]

I don't know that its a secret but this is what I have done and it seems to have worked this far. I have a dry erase board in the house with everything I expect them to do in the house as far as chores. Everyday is one special thing they have to do. All the others are basic things and as they do them they get to erase them and put a star on there calander for the day at the end of the week they get a treat of some sort or get to save them and get a big treat at the end of the month. This is how I have taught them to pick up after themselves, same thing applies when they are at others homes. Manners count for stars too. Lack of manners lose stars. I make sure I parise them every day for what they do and give them lots of love and attention. Basically its lead by example. I have to show them the example of good manners for them to follow. Everything is lead by example. When they do there choores I do mine so we are all working at the same time. When its homework time, I sit down to pay bills or do something where I am at the table with them so if they have any questions I am right there to answer or help with homework. This has been our system and it has worked. I'm very cautious about there friends and who they hang out with if they aren't a good influence then my kids don't associate with them. Right now its not my job to be there friend its to be there mom when there grown then I can be there friend, till then my job is mom first everything else is second.

Hope this helps

Terri