Best Parenting Practices

My mom has always been a very determined woman.  A great trait as an adult, but pretty hard to manage as a child.  When my mom was very little she had a screaming fit where she threw herself to the ground, kicking and raising a ruckus.  My grandma grabbed a hammer and nailed her skirt to the ground.

My sister Wowie had a hard time getting her 5 kids ready for church in the morning, so she put them to bed on Saturday night in their Sunday clothes.

When I would get sick as a kid, my mom would say:  "Get out of bed, take a shower, and you'll feel better."  Sometimes it worked.  If we stayed home from school complaining we were sick, we knew we would be scrubbing toilets if we got out of bed to play.

Grandchild #10 likes to clear the decks when he is being feed.  His mommy gives him healthy finger foods.  He throws it far and wide.  Then she takes him out of his chair, puts him on the floor, and he eats his dinner. 

John-boy is also a very determined individual, much like his maternal grandma.  I begged his pre-school teacher to please take him for both afternoon and morning sessions to help direct his energy, but she  refused. As a 3-year-old John-boy had a favorite pair of superman pajamas.  It was impossible to get him to take them off, even for laundry.  Solution: set up the wading pool to sit in, and run through the sprinklers every day. If he refused the pool or sprinklers, I chased him with a hose.