Successful parents don't react to their children's non-verbal body language.  If your child does the eye rolling to show frustration or nager, you can say, "Can you see your brains when you roll your eyes like that?"  And then drop it by walking away.

When you're having a serious discussion with your child about dicipline and you see a smile forming on his ior her face, please stop yourself from saying, "Wipe that smile off your face while I'm talking to you!"  Lecturing and threatening them will actually make the problem worse.  When you become upset by your child's nonverbal behavior, you have just let your child know what buttons to push to get you upset.  When you're upset, the child unconsciously knows you are not in control, he or she is.  Not a good place for you at all!

Your child needs to know you are stronger and in control ...   more »

Charles and Jim Fay wrote a great book titled, Love and Logic Magic:  When Your Kids Leave You Speechless.  They have a chapter on dealing with children who are picky eaters and complain about the food.

Myth #1:  If I don't make my kids eat their food, they'll starve to death.  This is never going to happen.  For you parents out there--take heed!  Your children use food as a battleground and you will never win and have control if you force them to eat.  I can think of more important battles for you.

So what do you do when the child refuses to eat what you have prepared?  Simply let it go, telling the child something like, "That's ok with me.  Your next time for eating will be at breakfast tomorrow (assuming this is the dinner meal).  Thank you for making that choice."  This way, the responsibility is placed ...   more »

Successful parenting happens when you take what the child offers you and turn it around to the child.  Take the martial arts practice Aikido for example.  When someone comes toward you, fighting, you don't confront the atatcker head-on.  Nope.  Instead, you use your center of balance to move quickly, turning the person to catch them off balance, with you in control.

When your child asks you, "why?" you smile sweetly and reply with excitement, "That's a great question!  Let me give you a sheet of paper so you can write out three possible answers for me.  Then pick up the one answer you think is best and come back and show me."

Some families ahve a "why" notebook so whenever anyone in the family says, "why", point them to the why notebook.

I think parenting should be about having fun instead of feeling frustrated.  If you have a child who likes to ask you silly questions or questions to which he or she already knows the answers, here are some responses you can use:

"That's a great question.  What do you think?"

Give the child a silly, illogical, off the wall response such as, "Maybe the birds were flying too low when they skipped over the barn this morning."  Then walk away while the child stops to figure out what you said.

If you have young children (or children that act like toddlers and preschoolers), you may have noticed they sometimes get upset when you want them to stop doing what they're doing.  I would suggest you give them a choice about how long they can play before they begin to play that will end their playtime.

"Honey, Do you want to play for 30 minutes or 45 minutes?"

"Do you want a 3 minute or 5 minute warning about getting ready to end your play so we can do sooemthing else?"

"When your time is finally up, are you going to come quick and snappy or will you show me turtle behavior and move really, really slow?"

If your children give you answers to these questions, they have a vested interest in following through.  Right beofre the time is over, ask the last question again and then see what happens.

In order for your child to develop better social skills, he or she will have to be able to interact, respond and reciprocate with others.  When you play with your child with activities that include adventure, variety, and something new, your child learns that surprises can be fun and new experiences with others can be pleasurable.

In these activities, you will want to make sure you have the following:

• Eye contact with each other
• Playing closely to the child
• Having fun together so your child learns there is more fun when interacting with others

The Go and Freeze Game