Getting help from the kids around the house may be challenging but I think by making them at least do their own work, they won’t have trouble when they grow up and live alone.
Toddlers love to imitate those around them. Use this to your advantage by showing them how to put things away or how to fold socks. Make it a game and they will usually join right in. Things won’t always be done the “right” way, but remember, they are trying.
Help your kids help you. Sometimes you may need to make some adjustments so your kids can help. For example, if you want your toddlers and preschoolers to help set the table, you might need to invest in plastic or melamine dishes that your young one can carry to the table without threat of breaking.
Older children who are not used to helping out around the house will be a lot more reluctant to begin unless you approach the matter in the right way. Hold a family meeting so that everyone will be involved in the decisions you are making. Present the problem and explain that you would like more help around the house. After all, they, the children, live there too. Explain that there will be basic chores that everyone will need to do. This may include keeping bedrooms picked up, making their own beds and putting away their dirty clothes. Then, as a family, decide on what the other chores need to be around the house. All of these decisions are dependent on your own personal household.

Sometimes variety is the key. Rotating chores may keep boredom away. It also helps distribute the work load evenly. No one likes having the hardest job each week. If you assign one child the difficult job of scrubbing the filthy garage floor each week, while another gets to dust the living room coffee table, the first child might resent his/her sibling’s lesser chore.

Again I think it’s easier for everyone if the kids learn to help you around the house when they are small. Here are some of the things they can do and I know you can come up with more on your own:

• Pick up their toys.
• Set the table. Teach them where the silverware and napkins go.
• After dinner, take their dishes carefully into the kitchen (one at a time!).
• Wash the table. My preschoolers love to get a wet washcloth and scrub!
• Wash windows.
• Dust. Give them an old towel and have them dust the lower tables. (You may have to help them move things out of the way first.)
• Pull the covers up on their beds.
• Feed the pets.
• Put their dirty clothes in the hamper or laundry basket every day.

If your preschoolers are resistant to helping out, there are many ways to motivate them:

• Make It Fun! Sing songs or play music while you’re cleaning up. Some parents have a “theme song” where the kids know that if Mom or Dad turn on a certain song that it’s time to clean up!
• Never use the words “Work” or “Chores.” Always tell your children how much you need their help and what a big favor they’re doing for you!
• Don’t complain about your own work in their hearing. Let them see you enjoy making order from chaos.
• Start them out with simple tasks. Break big jobs down into little steps.
• Make a game of it. Have a race to see who can clean up the most toys.
• Never criticize your kids for doing their jobs “Wrong.” Gently show them the correct way to do the task—even if you have to do it several times and on different occasions. If your children feel like they’ll never be able to please you, they’ll be reluctant to help out at all.
• Be Firm. Make it clear to your children that they can’t move on to a desired activity, such as having lunch or watching a movie, until clean-up is completed.
• Only allow children to bring out one or two toys at a time. Before they can bring out something else, they must put their other toys away. This prevents messes from becoming overwhelming.
• Teach your children to help out when they’re visiting other children’s houses. If you want your children to be welcome playmates at other people’s houses, they need to have good manners and learn to help their friends clean up.
• Thank your children for helping you. This instills a sense of accomplishment and sets a good example. Do you remember your first days at college, or your first time living on your own?  Did you know how to wash your own laundry and cook your own meals?  If you answer yes to these questions you can thank your parents and the chores they had you complete as a child.

Think of chores as a way to learn responsibility, self – sufficiency and the positive feelings that come from a job well done; not as a way to punish your kids.
Have fun. Take care
 

If you live under the same roof everyone should contribute to housework. Well that’s my personal opinion. It depends on yours and your husband’s work load and schedule as well. Here are some tips to get help from your hubby:

• He may or may not know how to do housework, depending on how your husband’s family raised him. So, the very first thing you can do is to teach him how to handle some of the housework around your home.
• We all have our own ways when it comes to cleaning the home. For men on the other hand, they hardly even notice if the house is spotless or not, so it’s really important to discuss the housework and what their role is, not as “the helper” but an equal responsibility of keeping the house in order and clean.
• Most times the husband takes out the trash and handles the “manly” jobs around the house, such as building, fixing or working around the yard. If you want your husband to help you with housework you will need to compromise just a little by perhaps asking him what chore he would like to do. Does he like to dust? Does he like to prepare meals or do the grocery shopping? If so, perhaps he can take over some of these tasks.
• Do you both work outside of the home? If so, weekends are or should be a time to relax and rest. If one of you works from the home or is taking care of the kids, you just may find it even more difficult to get your husband to help with the housework. You will need to discuss with him about the possibility of taking on one chore at a time, so that you can free up your weekends to spend more time with each other and the family. Discuss a chore schedule.
• If you find that your husband will not help you out, call in the guards. Hire a housekeeper. When he sees the bill week after week, he may decide after all that it’s easier to help than to pay someone else to do it.
• This next tip may seem a little over the top, but in some cases this may just do the trick. Simply tell your husband that if he doesn’t help with the house chores that he’ll be spending some lonely nights without your company. A lack of loving will work on some husbands.
• Stop nagging, start talking – Explain it to him that you need some help around house.
• Renegotiate who does what – Try to switch chores to make it easy for everyone.
• If any of the above tips fail, your last resort is to do nothing. Yes, when I say nothing that means go on strike. Do no housework and go out with some friends and leave him with the messy house and kids to take care of. At some point he will get the message and then you can talk about your feelings and his lack of attention.

Explain to your husband that it’s not a crime to work around the house. Take care see you with another article…

Even if your child can study on his/her own, moms have more responsibility than dads [no offense] to check on them. So here are some tips to guide you through the process of helping your kid.

• Don’t let your child postpone studying until a day before the exams. It will increase the anxiety and stress levels of your child. Teach them that preparation is the key to success.
• Some children require more support while others are happier studying on their own. It’s each child’s individuality. But make sure that they know that you are there to help them.
• Have a question and answer session after finished studying so that your child will be able to recall it at the examination hall.
• Prepare a study timetable and make them study according to that.
• Older children should have done up to at least 4 years of past papers, so they are familiar with the format and they must be able to do it within the given time limit. By doing so they will have to assess on their own on how many minutes to spend on each question.
• Don’t allow your child to stay up or wake up too early. Make sure they get enough sleep. Discourage use of stimulants to remain awake.
• Do not pressurize your child.
• Make them take a break in between study time.
• Older children may benefit from group study [specially for the difficult subjects].On the day of the exam, serve the child light breakfast, and set aside time for disciplined revision.

The department of education and skills also have provided some tips:

• Encourage your child to eat healthy food and proper meals.
• Offer to help with testing and any subjects they are finding to difficult to revise.
• Make sure they read thoroughly former or mock exam papers.
• Know their revision timetable. Encourage them to tell you about what they are studying.
• Know the date, time and location for each exam and incorporate this into a revision plan.
• Make sure the alarm is set so they’re not rushing and have time to eat breakfast.
• Encourage them to take five minutes to check they have everything they need, like extra pens and pencils, calculators and math equipment. If they have a mobile phone, remind them not to take it with them into exam room.
• Say: “Don’t panic, don’t worry - just do your best.” Tell them to say it to themselves during an exam.
• Encourage your son or daughter to get enough sleep. Tiredness promotes anxiety.
• Remind them to avoid large doses of caffeine - it can cause tension and anxiety.
• Help them not to dwell on previous exams. This can also increase anxiety about later papers.
• Encourage them to try relaxation exercises. They can reduce anxiety levels and cope with panicky feelings.

Be average strict with your kid, they will thank you for it when they come with flying colors.

Here are some guidelines to help improve relationships with your step children, because we all know that it is a very complicated and rather uncomfortable [for most people] issue.

• Remember that in the relationship with your step child you are the adult - Being the older, wiser and more mature person in the relationship means that the adult has the principal responsibility for helping two people to develop and move the relationship along a positive course.  Children  in most cases are far too entrapped by all that is happening around them and as much as they might deny it, most look toward the adults around them, not to push or boss, but  to help and to lead. Being the adult doesn’t mean that you can or should force the relationship in any particular direction.  It means that of the two of you, you and your stepchild, you are the more likely to have the mental, emotional and attitudinal makeup to coax, guide and affirm a developing relationship between two people. Improving relationships with step children is not likely to happen; until you, the adult, step up and commit to the task. 
• Spend time together – Recognize the need to spend time together. Good relationships take time. If you value a good relationship with your step child, then you will make regular investments of minutes, hours, days, whatever it takes in the growing of that relationship.
• Know Your Role - Many children who have watched their parents’ divorce or lost a parent through accident or illness are often feeling the myriad of emotions that accompany such a gigantic change in their lives.  It’s important for step parents to realize that they are not the solution to the child’s pain. In fact there may not be an immediate solution to the pain other than to live through it and let time heal.  Step parents who try to assume the role of the missing parent are generally headed for trouble and often provoke the ire of step children ruining the chance for any kind of meaningful relationship.  Knowing your role means recognizing that no matter how much compassion you have for the loss experienced by your step child you are not the replacement mother or father. You might think of the word step in step mother or father as meaning a step removed or a step apart.  Children also are unlikely to want you to be there new best friend and they are right to feel so.  Children need other children to relate to and most kids are likely to find among their current friends others who have gone through a divorce in their own family and can provide wonderful kid to kid understanding and support. 

Your role is to be yourself, a caring and compassionate person, interested in the growth, physical and mental well being and over all happiness of a child.  Acting like an adult, spending time together, learning to communicate are all important steps toward improving your relationship with a stepchild.  But most important of all, and something that you won’t have to correct or alter down the road, is simply to be the best possible you that you can be and let your stepchild take it from there.  Hope my suggestions will help you in some way.
 

Hey there, this blog site is about family life. Well the topic says it all I suppose, but here is a brief idea on what is in store for you. We will be talking about ways to improve our day-to-day family life.  Items like: essential tips for running a successful home, how to build family relationships, dealing with children, and much more. Ample suggestions, advice and guidance will be given, so bookmark and check back often. Take care have a great day!!!

We started our day this morning with my 5-year-old daughter in tears, as I drove her to kindergarten.

Yesterday, at her after-school program, her second-grader brother had devised “homework” for her. She had to do some addition and subtraction and write some words. When I picked them up last night, she was jubilant about the “homework.” I looked it over, praised her and told her how proud I was of her. Then I took it along with a handful of other papers and threw them out.

Yes, I just said: Threw them out.

I wish I could say I save every scrap of paper my children draw, color or write on, but I don’t. If I did, we’d have no room to live in our house. So I save the pictures and post them near my desk at work. I save some pictures in their scrapbooks. We post others in their bedrooms or on the fridge. But as a general rule I don’t save everything.

That turned into a mistake this morning as my daughter looked in her backpack and found the paper gone. She burst into tears. “Mommy, I was going to show my teacher,” she cries.

Now, she hadn’t told me that. But I still felt terrible. Here she is so proud of her achievement and wanting to show her teacher, and she’s thwarted — by me. I tell her again and again how sorry I am.

And then I do what any dutiful mom would do. I dig through the kitchen trash. When I get to the pile of school papers that are soaking wet from a mound of week-old mashed potatoes that landed on them, I stop. “Chloe, I’m sorry I threw out your paper, but we need to leave for school,” I say.

Maybe I run the risk that in 15 years she’ll be sitting in a therapist’s office saying, “And then my mom threw out my homework,” but we need to move on. I still feel badly, but the truth is, it’s probably only the better moms who feel like the worst moms in the world. The really worst moms probably don’t feel bad at all. (Does that make any sense?)

She knows her dad and I love her. She gets our support all the times. She’ll survive this. I hope.