There are some helpful parenting ideas that I heard about after my kids were too old to implement them. I wanted to explain them here in a quick post as an aid to other parents.
1.Give each child a certain amount of money to spend on each vacation you go on. The amount could vary, obviously, with the age of your children, the nature of the trip, and your personal finances. I spent way too much time on vacations negotiating with my children in gift shops, trying to convince them they didn’t need whatever trinket or stuffed animal they had encountered and set their heart on. I also agonized over what treats to buy them and when. If I’d given them their own money, I could have saved myself a lot of emotional strain and relationship contention.
I also like this idea because it’s another way (besides weekly allowance) to allow children to learn about money, what it buys and how it feels to spend it, and what the value/worth is of the items to be purchased. When they are asking for a $20 stuffed animal, they don’t have a relative idea of how much that is. But if they were given a certain amount each trip, those prices would start to mean a lot more. There are many advantages to this trip souvenir strategy; I wish I’d heard of it sooner!
2.The second concept I learned about too late also relates to family travel. When you have many young children, you are obviously packing for all of them when you go on vacation. Instead of packing a suitcase or portion of a suitcase for each child with swimwear, church clothes, coats, etc., think of packing for specific events. For example, church clothes for all the children should go together. All their swimwear, all their hiking shoes, all their warm layers, and so on, could be packed together. Then when you get to that part of the trip you don’t have to look through four suitcases to find that specific apparel item. They will be all packed in one place. I got this idea from Saren Loosli’s post about family road trips. If you want to read the rest of her suggestions, click here.
3.The last suggestion is to have assign a child as a “kitchen helper” on a rotating basis. I did hear of this idea when my kids were young, but I dismissed it as too inconvenient. Chores tend to go slower, not faster, when moms have helpers! But, my girls ended up being somewhat picky eaters and that’s also inconvenient. I can’t say for sure that doing this would have helped their pickiness, but I had an experience that made me think it could have helped.
When my daughter Brooke was about ten years old I had her help me make dinner one night. Her task was to slice mushrooms and put them in a pan to sauté. They were then added to a sauce of some kind. Before this she hated mushrooms, gagging when we strongly encouraged her to eat them. That night she decided to try the sauce and said, “These mushrooms aren’t bad!” And she proceeded to eat the rest of what was on her plate. That occurrence helped me see the power of children helping in the kitchen. When they help prepare the food, they get to see it and interact with it in a different way and they have more of a desire to try something they made themselves. It’s difficult to continuously have kitchen helpers and keep track of the rotation, but if I could do it again I would make more of an effort to do have kids help on a regular basis.
4.One thing that I did do, and I would highly encourage other parents to do, is work with your children instead of telling them what chores to do and checking on it later. The second approach usually ends with the parent getting angry with the child for not doing the chore or doing it wrong. It takes a long time for children to learn to be independent cleaners (somewhere around age 10) so don’t expect too much of them too soon. Make sure you teach them how to do the chore and explain your expectations. Working alongside your child reduces tension, provides a good example, and can even be a source of bonding. See Go Clean Your Room! for more on this.
Better Way Parenting 