Unintended Consequences
Otto and Etta love each other. Really, they do. But sometimes that’s hard to remember when they’re having one of their epic fights …
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Four Strategies to Keep the Chore Momentum Going
If you’ve ever started a new exercise program, you knows it’s one thing to begin an undertaking … and quite another to keep the wheels turning.
After many false starts, we’re in a pretty sweet spot where my kids do their chores consistently, without too many reminders or much complaining.
How did we get here? Read on for four strategies we use to keep the chore momentum going.
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Three Tricks I Use to Wrangle My Kids into Doing Chores
Do you make amazing, elaborate, beautifully-designed chore charts … that your kids completely ignore? Or do you manage to get your kids’ buy-in to your new chore chart system, only to find yourself doing all of their chores, AGAIN, after just a week or two? Or perhaps you’ve never made a chore chart and don’t know where to start, or why you’d even want one.
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How Old is that Dog Poop, Anyway??
Dog poop. It’s one of the less rewarding aspects of dog ownership. In our house, my two kids take turns scooping. And of course, being siblings, they argue. Or at least, they used to …
Not about whose turn it was that day (we keep track of that with my handy dandy chore charts–more on chore charts coming soon!) No, they used to argue about which piles of poop were OLD, and therefore, their sibling’s responsibility.
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A Different Way of Listening
“Otto honey, come sit down and listen to the rest of the story.” I patted the spot next to me on the couch, smiling at my four-year old son. We had been reading Thomas and Percy and the Dragon, one of his favorite Thomas the Train stories. When Percy the Small Engine suddenly saw a very frightening dragon, Otto leapt to his feet in excitement and started racing around the room.
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