Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [73]
This is the biggest mountain of all in the life of a family. It’s a Mount Saint Helens, ready to blow your family sky-high. Everyone who is part of the family has responsibilities. You’re living in a home, not a hotel with wake-up service. Children have responsibilities to get themselves up.
My daughter Lauren is now 15. In all the time she’s been growing up, I can remember only one time when she didn’t get up for school. She had forgotten to set her alarm clock. I woke up at 8 a.m. and was startled to see she wasn’t yet up. For Lauren, that was a big surprise, since she always set her alarm and got herself out the door on time. So did I make a big deal of it? Of course not. It was a onetime event. I just drove her to school.
In many families, however, it’s a battle to get the kids up and out the door in the morning. Parents cajole, bribe, threaten, and yell, and children go running out the door without breakfast to get to the bus—just as it pulls away. And what do the parents do? They drive the children to school and risk getting a traffic ticket to make up the time the children lost by not getting up earlier. Now that’s crazy!
And how do you as the parent feel when it’s all over? You’re breathless from running around, and you feel like a lousy parent because you spent the morning yelling at your children.
If you want to see this end in your family, try this. Don’t be your child’s alarm clock. Let the child sleep in tomorrow morning. She’s going to wake up at 10:00 very unhappy because she overslept.
But that’s not your fault. You’re not the one who overslept.
The good news is that your child will require a note in order to return to school. And you get to write the note.
Dear So-and-so,
Sally has no reason to be late. She simply chose to sleep in. Do whatever you do with children who are tardy.
Many thanks,
Mrs. Anderson
Young children hate to go to the office. They fear the pink or blue slips. Older kids don’t fear the slips as much, but they fear the embarrassment of the peer pressure when they’re noticeably late. If you have to drive them to school because they missed the bus, they might try to pick a fight the whole way.
Your response should be this: “I’m tired of what we do every morning, so you’re going to have to figure out mornings.”
Your calm words, the child’s fear of going to the principal’s office, and the child’s embarrassment of being late in front of peers—all these will help you turn around the situation.
Nursing a Child
Every woman and expert you talk to will have a different opinion on this one. But in this book, I’m sharing my opinions. You don’t have to agree.
I encourage moms to nurse their babies. A mom who nurses her child builds in all kinds of positive health safeguards. (La Leche League has a lot of great information about this that is worth checking out. When my little grandson was born 3 years ago, Krissy received a fact sheet and immunity sheet from them.) So when you have a choice, I encourage breastfeeding. Even some adoptive moms have tried breastfeeding, with help from La Leche League. Is breastfeeding natural? Yes, but lots of moms struggle with nursing in the beginning because both the new baby and Mom have to learn how to do it. (That’s why there are lactation consultants in hospitals.)
My rule of thumb has always been to nurse a child for one year. This arbitrary year came from the suggestions of many pediatrician friends I have—a consensus of the medical community.
Some of you, just hearing that, are ready to go for my throat. Since a lot of mother’s needs (psychological and emotional) are met through nursing, it’s not uncommon to see children nursing at the ages of 3, 4, or even 5. But I think, when a child can say to you, “I’m ready,” he’s too old to be nursing. A year is plenty!
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
When I was in Atlanta for a seminar recently, a lady came up to me afterward and told me that she’d diagnosed her son as OCD, an anxiety disorder in which a person must go through certain rituals in order to curb their panic or irrational