NaBloPoMo – Page 9 – a hippie with a minivan

Re-post: my favourite parenting books…

After a comment was posted last night asking for book recommendations I thought it would be a great time to do a repost of my favourites.

I would guess that many of you already know and love these books but if you don’t, and you have kids, or have kids around you, you need to read them..

The difference between these books and mainstream parenting books are that these are not all “how to” books… they are not books meant to give quick fixes while putting parents into an “us against them” frame of mind with children. They are not all-in-one manuals and instead all compliment each other. These books will change the way you think about children, will help you communicate with your children and will give the tools to recognize that “bad behaviour” is often a symptom of an underlying need that is not being met.

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason: this book points out what is wrong with the system of rewards and punishments. Kohn focuses on parenting with unconditional love and respect and giving children the chance to make their own decisions.

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More: This might be a bit more geared toward the older child, but it is a great book to read while children are still young. Neufeld and Mate talk about how society has been putting an emphasis on opportunities to socialize and as a result children are forming attachments to their peers. They point out that attachment doesn’t stop in infancy and it is important to keep our attachment to our children, to be a strong and positive primary role-model until they are able to stand on their own as an adult….

The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost
: Jean Liedloff spent 2 1/2 years in the south american jungle and this is her account. The focus here is to be a very present parent by always having your baby with you but at the same time being very passive and not child-centered.

Playful Parenting: As a play-therapist Cohen shows you how to communicate through play. The book focuses on the importance of attachment in infancy and all the way through the teen years, and goes through all the problems of rewards and punishments, and permissive and over-authoritarian parenting.

Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around: This was written by Raffi, yes, “Baby Beluga” Raffi. Read his Covenant for Honouring Children.

Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane): This is not a parenting book per say, but it is a great read. This book gives you the tools to deal with fears we have as a parent and how to teach kids to be safe, without being over-protective. Listen to your intuition.

More Cleaning and Organization…

With my post the other day about toy clutter and clutter in general, I wonder what routines other parents (and non-parents) have.

There are way too many times that the weekends are for cleaning and we don’t have much time to do family stuff or get beyond the normal housework. I have never liked to clean and used to have a lot of trouble letting go of stuff. When I finally decided to make a change, and started to get rid of clutter I realized how much easier it was to take care of the house and how much better I felt.

I used to have a great routine at keeping on top of things but things happened, pregnancy, change of routine etc and that routine went out the window and the house became messy again. Of course, the more messy the house is, the less motivated I become and the cycle continues…

Now I am getting back into a routine…

I never got into Flylady (she lost me at wearing shoes in the house… to me that is a great insult) but one thing that I do think helps in keeping up a good routine is for the sink to be clean. When the sink is clean, the rest of the kitchen naturally follows. I hate to get the sink dirty again so I keep on top of things and the more I do so, the less daunting the task becomes and it only takes a few minutes to get things back in order. Because the kitchen is so central to the home, when that is done it feels easier to do the rest and it too naturally follows. Then I have time to do some of the “extras”…

Having kids in the house all the time of course can make thing harder because mess gets created often faster then it can be cleaned up. But they are also a great help and when they work together it goes quite quickly. We don’t do “chores” per say, but, everyday the kids have the job of cleaning up the stuff on the floor, and I follow behind with the broom, sweeper or mop. After eating, they put their dishes away and then all I need to do is clean up the table. I also ask them to help clean off the counters, put things back where they belong etc. I have also been asking them to head downstairs before supper and clean up the playroom/their room before we eat. I don’t see these things as “chores” and they don’t see the as chores… it is just part of being a family and having so many people live together.

Though I don’t put housework above the family, I do realize that when the housework is done, we are more inclined to just do stuff together. I also feel that when it is all done there is just less choas in general (or maybe I am just more patient) and that makes things just run more smoothly.

It takes time and effort to keep a routine in place but I really think that it is worth it…

What is your routine? How do you get it all done? Do your kids help out? Have chores? I want to know!

Always look on the bright side of life…

I was just starting to write a post for today and then Simon put this on next to me…

I couldn’t help but share 🙂

100!!!

A friend sent me a message this morning and pointed out that I have now been breastfeeding for 100 months (+ 1 week)

I can’t believe that it has been that long…

What an amazing Milestone!

Toys

Today Simon tackled the boys room and we finally went through the books and got rid of quite a few, next are the toys.

Toys are hard to de-clutter, especially with 4 kids. Some toys are played with, some are not, some are outgrown, some are just being grown into. In any case, we have way too many and the kids are not ready to let go. I don’t know what to do. I used to have an addiction to buying cheap used toys or other things. I found so many great deals but the mess and clutter just grew and grew.

A few years ago I finally decided to make the change. To stop buying, to stop cluttering up the house with stuff that we really didn’t need or wouldn’t use and start getting things under control. Over the last few years we have gotten rid so much stuff, including toys, often by putting them in storage and them having them disappear. Now I can often skip that step and no longer have such an emotional attachment as I used to. Xavier however, is a lot like me and has trouble letting go so it makes things hard at time.

If I could go back, I would have done things differently. I loved when I was at Annie‘s that there were just not many toys. A mess was easy to clean up. I wish that we would have stayed minimalist when it came to that, to everything really. But now that we have them it is such a hard thing to deal with.

Our problem is the bulk of the toys… the Legos, the Playmobils, the Star Wars figurines and ships. All toys that are played with often but all have little pieces that make a playroom look like a dump within the span of a few minutes…

We have tried so many things to keep things under control to no avail. The room is always chaos, and of course, when there is a mess, they are less likely to use the space; and when they use the space, they make a mess. It is a vicious cycle. The boys are in change of cleaning the space, and once in a while we would step in and help. It is too much though, for all of us and we have had enough of the chaos.

So, Today is the day that we are tackling it.

The things that have a home, can keep their home. The rest is up for grabs. We have a bin. A large bin with a top. What can fit in it can stay. The rest will go.

So… how do you keep the toys under control? Who is in charge of cleaning the toys space? How do you dea with kids that have trouble letting go?