10 Daily Habits To Transform Your Family This Year

One of the most shocking facts us working parents of younger kids have to face is this: for most days of the year, we have just 3 hours with them. That’s an 8th of every 24 hours. And that’s if you’re lucky. Time-sharing your kids with an ex, or traveling everyday to and from distant work, will cost…

Tag: family-habits

As Christmas Looms, Here’s Two Kinds Of Different

‘Christmas comes next month, so I want to talk to you guys about Stikeez and seeds.’ With these opening words in my speech, I riveted the 100-strong crowd of four-to-six year olds. Let me back up to how I came to address the entire preschool where two of my children attend. With the Season on its way, the…

Tag: Christmas

Two Secrets of Parenting

Last week I got skunked. But all was not lost. I discovered ‘the two secrets of parenting’. Skunked refers to the surfer’s frustration of carving out a rare gap in your super-busy, responsibility-laden week in the hope of finding some glassy waves, only to find unsurfable drivel. I wasn’t skunked alone. A buddy (of 25 years) was at…

Tag: chores, unconditional-love

8 Invaluable Life-lessons To Teach Our Kids (And To Live By Yourself)

I believe that, for boys especially but girls too, the best classroom is outdoor adventure. Adventures serve up many teachable moments. That’s because they are a microcosm of life – the kinds of things that go wrong or come up mid-adventure are the kinds of things that do so in the decades of life. Adventures also…

Tag: life-lessons

3 Remarkable Research-based Tools to Shape Your Kids’ Behaviour

Depending on the age of your child, each child needs about 50 directives a day just so that your family can function. If the child doesn’t comply with say 30 of those, and you have 3 kids, that’s close on 100 moments of frustration a day. The result for us parents? Rapid aging, moments of…

Tag: reward-charts

4 Tools That Can Spectacularly Improve Your Kids’ Cooperation (And Your Sanity)

Not just dads, but moms too, need plenty of tools in their parenting toolbox. With the right tools, things click more easily into place. Coercion is not needed. Nothing can drive us parents more insane than when, hour after hour, our kids don’t do the things we’re telling them to do or not do. For…

Tag: enlisting-co-operation, patience, pep-talks, role-plays

20 Ways To Enlist Your Child’s Co-operation

Directing small kids is like herding cats. It’s enough to make you pull your hair out. I have five kids so I feel this acutely, but even my 2-kid friends seem to endure endless frustration when it comes to enlisting their children’s daily co-operation. ‘Come to dinner.’ ‘Stop that’. ‘Climb in the car.’ ‘Get your…

7 ways to parent through your example (Pt 2)

Like it or not, when it comes to parenting, your example overshadows your words. ‘In the final analysis, your child’s character hinges on the traits you exhibit as a parent. And who you are as a parent isn’t left to fate, luck, or chance. You can choose to be the kind of parent you want…

Tag: example

7 ways to parent through your example (Pt 1)

You know the scariest part of parenting? They might not hear a word you say. But they don’t miss a deed you do. Who I am and what I do will ultimately mark the kind of people my children become. They tend to receive not just my physical genetic, but my moral and lifestyle genetic…

Tag: example

Tired of arguing with your child or teen? (Pt 2) Four steps to defusing their resistance

I’ve had enough of the constant challenges to my authority (I have 5 kids). But I also dread becoming a tyrant. Is there a better way than coming down strongly on my kids every time? Mysteriously (for low-EQ dudes like me at least) the more I validate my kid’s feelings of disagreement with my decision,…

Tag: acknowledge-feelings, arguing-with-kids, authority, listening, overcome-resistance, responsive-listening