Teaching Your KIds to Read Made Easy!

Reading is something that almost every child eventually learns.  Our schools do a pretty good job of building a child’s basic reading skills.  But that’s not what this article is about.
This is about teaching kids to really enjoy reading.

Personal story:  My oldest daughter, Anne, was born very late in the calendar year, meaning that she started school as one of the youngest kids in the class.  She’ll always be very young compared to her classmates.  In the junior grades, a year is a big deal.  She was slower to learn to read.  But after Grade 2 she suddenly fell in LOVE with books.  She devours them.  She reads nearly a full chapter book every night before going to sleep.

When you enjoy reading, you get smarter faster.  You end up being more successful.  Who doesn’t want that for their kids?
The Benefits of Reading Include:

Better vocabulary. When a young reader comes across unfamiliar words, he’s more likely to ask what it means or look it up in the dictionary (or in Google these days!).  This helps kids learn new words.  Or if they don’t look up the word, they eventually learn it through context, just as we learn language by speaking.  Nobody tells us the meaning of words.  We learn them by hearing them and figuring out their meaning.  Reading exposes kids to new words.

By the way, some some people think only writers benefit from an increased vocabulary.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  The writer rarely looks up new words.  Se writes from her existing vocabulary.  You learn new words by reading, not writing.

A faster brain.  Reading is very much like a workout for the brain. Reading (and comprehending) makes your brain focus on the words.  But to make sense of them inside of the brain, the reader has to turn them into a visual representation (like a mental movie) or imagine the words being read aloud.  When the brain learns to focus, kids can think on their feet and learn quickly.

A powerful imagination.  Reading lets your imagination soar without the over-stimulation of TV.  When you watch a movie or a television show, your imagination is limited to what you’re seeing.  If Edward Cullen is shown with Robert Pattinson’s face in the Twilight movie, then that’s all that you’re getting. You’re force-fed the full visual and auditory sensations.  With a book, the human brain gets to create whatever scene it wants.  The words get turned into a wonderfully imagined movie complete with sounds and feelings.  Modern TV is problematic because the scenes change so fast.  It is designed to over-stimulate our minds.  It is not restful.  Reading is great before bedtime.  TV is not.

Quality entertainment.  You can let the hours float by while reading a book.  Once kids move past basic reading, a good chapter book can last for hours.  Compare this to a TV show or movie that has a much shorter duration.  Books can be enjoyed longer.

Flexible thinking and being open to new ideas.  Reading is fantastic for letting you learn from stories.  Kids get to discover conflicts of opinion, emotions and different ways of solving problems – all by reading someone else’s experiences!  When kids learn to see both sides of a story it helps them to be more emotionally intelligent.

Better discipline. Kids who read benefit from the skill of focus. Kids who can focus on tasks require less discipline. And for those times that discipline is required, they’ve got the skills to cope.

Better performance in school. I put this last because I don’t think we should measure our kids based on grades. But it sure is nice when they do well on their report cards. Kids who read will be better problem solvers. Surprisingly, they’ll do better in math and science compared to kids who don’t read. My own daughter started getting amazing math scores ONLY after falling in love with books. As a father who’s first university degree was in engineering, I really want my kids to learn to love math, so I was proud!
How to Raise Kids Who Love Reading

Ok, so we agree. A love of reading is one of the most amazing gifts we can give to a child. It’s also budget-friendly. You’re giving your child the power to visit castles, islands, rivers and oceans. They can dance with kings and sail with pirates, or travel to outer space. Reading allows your child to experience a lot of things without having to be there. It’s a rare magical feeling that only people who read can experience.

How do you make it happen?

Read in front of your kids. Kids love to copy their parents.  So even if your child can’t read a single word, go ahead and show your kids that you read books.  Curl up with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning and enjoy a book.  Have some kids books (picture oriented) in the same room.  Your goal here is simply to show your child that you love reading.  No pressure.  You can even encourage your child to sit beside you and pretend he’s reading too.  Children are such great copycats.

Here’s a part of an email sent to me by my reader:

“I’ve always been a wide reader myself, and I never specifically intended to teach my children to read but they’d always see me with a book. They started just sitting with me while I read until they ask for their own books when we go to the bookstore and now they’re both readers themselves.”

Everyone says this, and it’s true:  Read with your child from an early age! Make reading out loud to your child a part of your daily routine. Studies have shown that listening to sounds is one of the earliest ways a baby can learn, especially when the sound they hear comes from their parent. When you read to your child, you are not merely talking but you are also incorporating a visual aid (by pointing to the pictures). Learning is just much easier when you’re both listening and watching at the same time.

Keep books all over the house. Give your child easy access to books by having books around the house. Have a couple of books on her bedside table, in the living room and other places she frequents. Exposing your child to books is one of the best ways to develop her interest in reading. Don’t be surprised if your child has a favorite and wants to keep coming back to the same book.  That’s fine!  The point here is to ENJOY the reading.  If your child is picking a book himself you’re winning at this goal!

Let your child drive the bus.   It would be helpful to have your child choose which books she likes when you go to the bookstore. Engaging your child in decision-making when it comes to books/ reading will make her feel that you are asking for her approval and not merely pushing her to read books. You can also have your child flip the pages of the book and make sure to give her enough time to look at the pictures and ask questions.

Interactive reading makes it FUN.   Young children have short attention spans, so you need a couple of things on your side.  First – pictures!  Kids love pictures, and the visual stimulus helps hold their attention.  Second – use interruptions to reset their attention!  Stop the story after a couple of pages and ask questions about what’s happening, or talk about the picture.  Resetting a child’s attention helps re-establish focus after, while keeping it fun.

Choose books according to your child’s interest. Children always have something that they’re crazy about – dinosaurs, dolls, Dora the Explorer. Choose books that you know your child will be interested in reading. It will be easier to interest them in a book about dinosaurs, if that’s what they’re into, instead of making them read books about planets.  My own daughter is a MAJOR dog lover.  She started reading a series of books called “Puppy Place”, and they never grow tiresome for her.  Every book has beautiful pictures of dogs on the cover.
But Be Careful About…

Immediately correcting your child. While teaching a child to read, be careful about correcting mistakes.  Remember that your goal is to establish a belief in your child’s mind that reading is FUN.  Anything you do to wreck the fun will wreck the formation of this belief.

Proper lighting.  Read with enough lights on, or in daylight.  You don’t want your kids reading in the dark, straining to see the pages. I’m no doctor, but I got this advice directly from our eye doctor.

Being pushy and setting expectations.  Nothing good ever comes out of pushing a child to do anything – the more pressure you put on your child, the more it will make her want to fight you.  You’ll get more flies with honey than with vinegar (as my mom always taught me).  Keep your child interested by making sure that reading is an unconscious cue for a positive emotional state.  If reading is fun, your child will want to read.  The fun is attached not just to the books and the words.  It’s attached to everything that contributes to their feelings.  How YOU act is perhaps the biggest factor here.

You Can Develop Your Child's Interest in Reading using this Fun and Easy Method

Reading is something that almost every child eventually learns.  Our schools do a pretty good job of building a child’s basic reading skills.  But that’s not what this article is about.
This is about teaching kids to really enjoy reading.

Personal story:  My oldest daughter, Anne, was born very late in the calendar year, meaning that she started school as one of the youngest kids in the class.  She’ll always be very young compared to her classmates.  In the junior grades, a year is a big deal.  She was slower to learn to read.  But after Grade 2 she suddenly fell in LOVE with books.  She devours them.  She reads nearly a full chapter book every night before going to sleep.

When you enjoy reading, you get smarter faster.  You end up being more successful.  Who doesn’t want that for their kids?
The Benefits of Reading Include:

Better vocabulary. When a young reader comes across unfamiliar words, he’s more likely to ask what it means or look it up in the dictionary (or in Google these days!).  This helps kids learn new words.  Or if they don’t look up the word, they eventually learn it through context, just as we learn language by speaking.  Nobody tells us the meaning of words.  We learn them by hearing them and figuring out their meaning.  Reading exposes kids to new words.

By the way, some some people think only writers benefit from an increased vocabulary.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  The writer rarely looks up new words.  Se writes from her existing vocabulary.  You learn new words by reading, not writing.

A faster brain.  Reading is very much like a workout for the brain. Reading (and comprehending) makes your brain focus on the words.  But to make sense of them inside of the brain, the reader has to turn them into a visual representation (like a mental movie) or imagine the words being read aloud.  When the brain learns to focus, kids can think on their feet and learn quickly.

A powerful imagination.  Reading lets your imagination soar without the over-stimulation of TV.  When you watch a movie or a television show, your imagination is limited to what you’re seeing.  If Edward Cullen is shown with Robert Pattinson’s face in the Twilight movie, then that’s all that you’re getting. You’re force-fed the full visual and auditory sensations.  With a book, the human brain gets to create whatever scene it wants.  The words get turned into a wonderfully imagined movie complete with sounds and feelings.  Modern TV is problematic because the scenes change so fast.  It is designed to over-stimulate our minds.  It is not restful.  Reading is great before bedtime.  TV is not.

Quality entertainment.  You can let the hours float by while reading a book.  Once kids move past basic reading, a good chapter book can last for hours.  Compare this to a TV show or movie that has a much shorter duration.  Books can be enjoyed longer.

Flexible thinking and being open to new ideas.  Reading is fantastic for letting you learn from stories.  Kids get to discover conflicts of opinion, emotions and different ways of solving problems – all by reading someone else’s experiences!  When kids learn to see both sides of a story it helps them to be more emotionally intelligent.

Better discipline. Kids who read benefit from the skill of focus. Kids who can focus on tasks require less discipline. And for those times that discipline is required, they’ve got the skills to cope.

Better performance in school. I put this last because I don’t think we should measure our kids based on grades. But it sure is nice when they do well on their report cards. Kids who read will be better problem solvers. Surprisingly, they’ll do better in math and science compared to kids who don’t read. My own daughter started getting amazing math scores ONLY after falling in love with books. As a father who’s first university degree was in engineering, I really want my kids to learn to love math, so I was proud!
How to Raise Kids Who Love Reading

Ok, so we agree. A love of reading is one of the most amazing gifts we can give to a child. It’s also budget-friendly. You’re giving your child the power to visit castles, islands, rivers and oceans. They can dance with kings and sail with pirates, or travel to outer space. Reading allows your child to experience a lot of things without having to be there. It’s a rare magical feeling that only people who read can experience.

How do you make it happen?

Read in front of your kids. Kids love to copy their parents.  So even if your child can’t read a single word, go ahead and show your kids that you read books.  Curl up with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning and enjoy a book.  Have some kids books (picture oriented) in the same room.  Your goal here is simply to show your child that you love reading.  No pressure.  You can even encourage your child to sit beside you and pretend he’s reading too.  Children are such great copycats.

Here’s a part of an email sent to me by my reader:

“I’ve always been a wide reader myself, and I never specifically intended to teach my children to read but they’d always see me with a book. They started just sitting with me while I read until they ask for their own books when we go to the bookstore and now they’re both readers themselves.”

Everyone says this, and it’s true:  Read with your child from an early age! Make reading out loud to your child a part of your daily routine. Studies have shown that listening to sounds is one of the earliest ways a baby can learn, especially when the sound they hear comes from their parent. When you read to your child, you are not merely talking but you are also incorporating a visual aid (by pointing to the pictures). Learning is just much easier when you’re both listening and watching at the same time.

Keep books all over the house. Give your child easy access to books by having books around the house. Have a couple of books on her bedside table, in the living room and other places she frequents. Exposing your child to books is one of the best ways to develop her interest in reading. Don’t be surprised if your child has a favorite and wants to keep coming back to the same book.  That’s fine!  The point here is to ENJOY the reading.  If your child is picking a book himself you’re winning at this goal!

Let your child drive the bus.   It would be helpful to have your child choose which books she likes when you go to the bookstore. Engaging your child in decision-making when it comes to books/ reading will make her feel that you are asking for her approval and not merely pushing her to read books. You can also have your child flip the pages of the book and make sure to give her enough time to look at the pictures and ask questions.

Interactive reading makes it FUN.   Young children have short attention spans, so you need a couple of things on your side.  First – pictures!  Kids love pictures, and the visual stimulus helps hold their attention.  Second – use interruptions to reset their attention!  Stop the story after a couple of pages and ask questions about what’s happening, or talk about the picture.  Resetting a child’s attention helps re-establish focus after, while keeping it fun.

Choose books according to your child’s interest. Children always have something that they’re crazy about – dinosaurs, dolls, Dora the Explorer. Choose books that you know your child will be interested in reading. It will be easier to interest them in a book about dinosaurs, if that’s what they’re into, instead of making them read books about planets.  My own daughter is a MAJOR dog lover.  She started reading a series of books called “Puppy Place”, and they never grow tiresome for her.  Every book has beautiful pictures of dogs on the cover.
But Be Careful About…

Immediately correcting your child. While teaching a child to read, be careful about correcting mistakes.  Remember that your goal is to establish a belief in your child’s mind that reading is FUN.  Anything you do to wreck the fun will wreck the formation of this belief.

Proper lighting.  Read with enough lights on, or in daylight.  You don’t want your kids reading in the dark, straining to see the pages. I’m no doctor, but I got this advice directly from our eye doctor.

Being pushy and setting expectations.  Nothing good ever comes out of pushing a child to do anything – the more pressure you put on your child, the more it will make her want to fight you.  You’ll get more flies with honey than with vinegar (as my mom always taught me).  Keep your child interested by making sure that reading is an unconscious cue for a positive emotional state.  If reading is fun, your child will want to read.  The fun is attached not just to the books and the words.  It’s attached to everything that contributes to their feelings.  How YOU act is perhaps the biggest factor here.

The Right Way to Teach Kids to Share

If you have a toddler or child of any age, chances are you’ve run struggled with how to teach sharing. Most of the basics of life are instinctual. You don’t have to teach a child how to eat, sleep, or talk. They just figure it out. It’s built into our genetic code. But sharing? It doesn’t come naturally. As parents, we need to teach our kids to share.

Just how important is sharing anyway? And how do you teach sharing?
The Importance of Sharing

We don’t always want to share things. Admit it. Do you really want your friend borrowing your clothes, or driving your car? Most of us don’t. We want our things to stay in our hands. It’s natural.

Have you ever noticed that toddlers and kids are 100% honest about their feelings? If they don’t want to share they are very clear about their feelings. We shouldn’t try to get our kids to ignore their feelings. Instead, we need to work on changing how our kids feel towards sharing. Just keep in mind that selfish behavior is totally normal.
Sharing Feels Good (this is the magic)

In March 2008, three professors published an article in Science magazine entitled, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness”. This shouldn’t really be much of a surprise, but their research showed that people feel good when they spend money on others. Now, we’re not talking about millions, thousands or even hundreds of dollars here. We’re talking about as little as sharing $5 – the amount used by the group in their final study.

Here’s another cool example. Doug Eaton celebrated his 65th birthday by doing random acts of kindness. He stood on a street corner and gave out money to complete strangers. He “spent” $375 and if you watch the video below you’ll see how it made him feel. Imagine taking a depressed person off their anti-depressants and instead “prescribing” random acts of kindness?

Doing things that feel good causes your body to release a hormone called Oxytocin. Paul Zak, the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, showed this in his research. People feel good when they share, and their bodies release Oxytocin, helping relieve stress and boosting immune function.

But here’s the cool part: When you share with someone, you make them feel good too. They get an Oxytocin release. They get the same health benefits from the social interaction.

These are just few of the benefits of sharing. I could go on and on and on, but we’d run out of space.
Sharing Among Kids

It isn’t easy to get a young child to share. Here’s an adaptation of a common joke about toddlers when it comes to possessions:

If I like it, it’s mine.
If it’s yours, it’s mine.
If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.
If it’s in your hand, it’s mine.
If it looks like it could be mine, it’s mine.
If I’ve EVER come in contact with it, it’s mine.
If I can touch it, smell it, see it, taste it, hear it or think about it, it’s mine.
If it’s mine, it must NEVER appear to be yours in any way.
It it’s mine, it’s mine FOREVER.

Toddlers are developing their sense of self, and they tend to see their things as an extension of themselves. This is why they are overprotective of their belongings. Sharing their toys or food is like giving away a piece of themselves, and that’s not really an attractive idea for anybody.

According to Tovah Klein, Ph.D, director of the Barnard Center for Toddler Development of Barnard College:

“Even though it’s sometimes hard for parents to accept, there is a developmentally appropriate time for children to be selfish, and this is it”.

So, in case you’re wondering, yes, being selfish at 2-3 years old is perfectly normal.

Now that we know that being selfish is embedded into your child’s brain at this point in his or her life, is it possible to teach a young child to share at all?
Teaching Kids to Share

Until your child is at least two-and-a-half, it might be fruitless to teach the child to share. What you can do is to slowly introduce him to the concept of sharing.

It’s also important to remember never to push or punish a child for not sharing. You should never force your child to share. It really does have to be something they do on their own. Otherwise, it won’t feel good and the benefits completely disappear.

Slowly help your child understand that just like how some things belong to him, some things belong to other people too. Demonstrate through your own actions that sharing feels good. Teach through example.

Here’s a story one of my readers sent in. I think it’s worth sharing with you.

“I wanted my kids to learn how to share toys. So I bought two big boxes and wrote one child’s name on each box. I made sure that the boxes had different designs to avoid confusion. I explained to the kids that each of them was the owner of their toy box. Everything in the first box belongs to child # 1, and everything in the other box belongs to child # 2. If you want a toy from the other box, you have to ask permission from the owner first.

Did it work right away? It didn’t. In fact, it took me a couple of times to explain to them that ‘This box belongs to you and the other belongs to your sister.’ After about a hundred explanations though, they finally got what I meant.”
Teach by Example

Kids learn by imitation, so you have to be a good example. Take every opportunity to share with your child. Ask him if he’d like to share your sandwich with you, ask him if he’d like to help mix the batter for the pancake, or if he’d like to play on your iPad. Make sharing a common practice in the family.
Use Selfishness as a Tool for Good

Here’s a crazy theory: People are selfish 100% of the time. I’m totally serious. Even if we do things that appear selfless (giving), we’re doing these things to feel good. We enjoy the rush of Oxytocin that we get from giving. And that’s good! Just ask Doug Eaton, the man who gave $5 to strangers on his birthday. Giving is selfish because we (the giver) get something out of it. And that’s fine! It’s a good thing. Encourage it.

So teach your child to share because of the good feeling they’ll get. This is the emotional reason to give. This is so much more powerful than justifying sharing as “the right thing to do” or anything based on logic.

You want you child to share? Let them experience how good it feels! Then they’ll do it to be “selfish” in a good way, right?

You can’t make this happen by forcing a child to share, that’s for sure.
Positive Reinforcement by Emotional Coaching

When your child does share, what should you do? I suggest you ask questions to amplify the feel-good emotional state. This is a heck of a lot better than saying, “Wow, I’m so proud of you for sharing”.

Let’s say my daughter, Anne, shares a toy with her playmate, Kaitlyn. I might later say to her, “Anne, that was very nice of you to share your toy with Kaitlyn. Did you notice how she smiled when you did that? …How do you think she felt by what you did? …And how did that make you feel?”

By doing this you’ll help your child to connect the act of sharing with great emotional feelings. This is the absolute KEY to teaching your children to share.
Sharing Among Siblings

Getting a child to share with a brother or a sister may just be one of the hardest things to do as a parent. But the same principles apply. Kids will share only when they want to. And they’ll want to share because it feels good. Always remember this!

Find what works for you and your kids. Here are some examples you can follow:

Set a “safe zone”. Assign a safe zone for each child where everything in it is his and everybody else have to ask permission before they can play with it. Ideally, it’s the child’s bedroom but if they don’t have their own rooms, it can also be a closet, a toy chest, etc. If it’s in a common area like the living room, then the item is for everybody and it’s strictly “first come, first serve”.

Take turns. If more than one child wants to play with a toy, set a timer for five or ten minutes. When the timer rings, the child playing with it should give it to the other child – no extensions and no excuses. In the long run, one of the children will get tired and find another toy to play with. But when toys are new and neither child wants to share a jointly-owned toy, a rule like this can keep the peace.

Play nice or lose the toy. With shared toys, there is now owner. My daughters have doll houses and all sorts of dolls that they love playing with. Most of the time they play amazingly well together for hours. But when moods turn sour, they fight over who “gets” to use the toys. What do I do? I just remind them to solve their own problems. If they can’t solve the problem on their own then I solve it by taking the toys away. They always get fair warning, and they’ve learned that the natural consequence of fighting is to lose whatever they’re fighting over.

Schedules. If the item being shared is something that they can’t use together, you might need to establish a schedule. An example could be an electronic gadget like an iPad, where each kid wants to play a different game, or watch a different show on Netflix. Involve your kids in creating the schedule. This establishes their buy-in to the solution.
The Bottom Line on Sharing in Toddlers and Kids

Getting a child to share takes a lot of patience, and a lot of people can attest that the earlier you start your child on it, the easier it will be. Just like everything else with a toddler, expect a few snags along the way. Stick to the simple rules and ideas I’ve outlined here and you’ll do well.

Realize that sharing is not a natural skill. Until your toddler is 2-3 it’s probably not worth spending a lot of time on this beyond teaching by example.

Teaching by example is THE place to start. Be a good role model.

Encourage kids to realize how good it feels to share. This is the only reason people enjoy sharing!

Don’t force kids to share their things. This works exactly in the wrong direction in terms of motivating your child to share.

Good luck, and enjoy your children!

How to Develop Your Child's Interest in Reading

Reading is something that almost every child eventually learns.  Our schools do a pretty good job of building a child’s basic reading skills.  But that’s not what this article is about.
This is about teaching kids to really enjoy reading.

Personal story:  My oldest daughter, Anne, was born very late in the calendar year, meaning that she started school as one of the youngest kids in the class.  She’ll always be very young compared to her classmates.  In the junior grades, a year is a big deal.  She was slower to learn to read.  But after Grade 2 she suddenly fell in LOVE with books.  She devours them.  She reads nearly a full chapter book every night before going to sleep.

When you enjoy reading, you get smarter faster.  You end up being more successful.  Who doesn’t want that for their kids?
The Benefits of Reading Include:

Better vocabulary. When a young reader comes across unfamiliar words, he’s more likely to ask what it means or look it up in the dictionary (or in Google these days!).  This helps kids learn new words.  Or if they don’t look up the word, they eventually learn it through context, just as we learn language by speaking.  Nobody tells us the meaning of words.  We learn them by hearing them and figuring out their meaning.  Reading exposes kids to new words.

By the way, some some people think only writers benefit from an increased vocabulary.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  The writer rarely looks up new words.  Se writes from her existing vocabulary.  You learn new words by reading, not writing.

A faster brain.  Reading is very much like a workout for the brain. Reading (and comprehending) makes your brain focus on the words.  But to make sense of them inside of the brain, the reader has to turn them into a visual representation (like a mental movie) or imagine the words being read aloud.  When the brain learns to focus, kids can think on their feet and learn quickly.

A powerful imagination.  Reading lets your imagination soar without the over-stimulation of TV.  When you watch a movie or a television show, your imagination is limited to what you’re seeing.  If Edward Cullen is shown with Robert Pattinson’s face in the Twilight movie, then that’s all that you’re getting. You’re force-fed the full visual and auditory sensations.  With a book, the human brain gets to create whatever scene it wants.  The words get turned into a wonderfully imagined movie complete with sounds and feelings.  Modern TV is problematic because the scenes change so fast.  It is designed to over-stimulate our minds.  It is not restful.  Reading is great before bedtime.  TV is not.

Quality entertainment.  You can let the hours float by while reading a book.  Once kids move past basic reading, a good chapter book can last for hours.  Compare this to a TV show or movie that has a much shorter duration.  Books can be enjoyed longer.

Flexible thinking and being open to new ideas.  Reading is fantastic for letting you learn from stories.  Kids get to discover conflicts of opinion, emotions and different ways of solving problems – all by reading someone else’s experiences!  When kids learn to see both sides of a story it helps them to be more emotionally intelligent.

Better discipline. Kids who read benefit from the skill of focus. Kids who can focus on tasks require less discipline. And for those times that discipline is required, they’ve got the skills to cope.

Better performance in school. I put this last because I don’t think we should measure our kids based on grades. But it sure is nice when they do well on their report cards. Kids who read will be better problem solvers. Surprisingly, they’ll do better in math and science compared to kids who don’t read. My own daughter started getting amazing math scores ONLY after falling in love with books. As a father who’s first university degree was in engineering, I really want my kids to learn to love math, so I was proud!
How to Raise Kids Who Love Reading

Ok, so we agree. A love of reading is one of the most amazing gifts we can give to a child. It’s also budget-friendly. You’re giving your child the power to visit castles, islands, rivers and oceans. They can dance with kings and sail with pirates, or travel to outer space. Reading allows your child to experience a lot of things without having to be there. It’s a rare magical feeling that only people who read can experience.

How do you make it happen?

Read in front of your kids. Kids love to copy their parents.  So even if your child can’t read a single word, go ahead and show your kids that you read books.  Curl up with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning and enjoy a book.  Have some kids books (picture oriented) in the same room.  Your goal here is simply to show your child that you love reading.  No pressure.  You can even encourage your child to sit beside you and pretend he’s reading too.  Children are such great copycats.

Here’s a part of an email sent to me by my reader:

“I’ve always been a wide reader myself, and I never specifically intended to teach my children to read but they’d always see me with a book. They started just sitting with me while I read until they ask for their own books when we go to the bookstore and now they’re both readers themselves.”

Everyone says this, and it’s true:  Read with your child from an early age! Make reading out loud to your child a part of your daily routine. Studies have shown that listening to sounds is one of the earliest ways a baby can learn, especially when the sound they hear comes from their parent. When you read to your child, you are not merely talking but you are also incorporating a visual aid (by pointing to the pictures). Learning is just much easier when you’re both listening and watching at the same time.

Keep books all over the house. Give your child easy access to books by having books around the house. Have a couple of books on her bedside table, in the living room and other places she frequents. Exposing your child to books is one of the best ways to develop her interest in reading. Don’t be surprised if your child has a favorite and wants to keep coming back to the same book.  That’s fine!  The point here is to ENJOY the reading.  If your child is picking a book himself you’re winning at this goal!

Let your child drive the bus.   It would be helpful to have your child choose which books she likes when you go to the bookstore. Engaging your child in decision-making when it comes to books/ reading will make her feel that you are asking for her approval and not merely pushing her to read books. You can also have your child flip the pages of the book and make sure to give her enough time to look at the pictures and ask questions.

Interactive reading makes it FUN.   Young children have short attention spans, so you need a couple of things on your side.  First – pictures!  Kids love pictures, and the visual stimulus helps hold their attention.  Second – use interruptions to reset their attention!  Stop the story after a couple of pages and ask questions about what’s happening, or talk about the picture.  Resetting a child’s attention helps re-establish focus after, while keeping it fun.

Choose books according to your child’s interest. Children always have something that they’re crazy about – dinosaurs, dolls, Dora the Explorer. Choose books that you know your child will be interested in reading. It will be easier to interest them in a book about dinosaurs, if that’s what they’re into, instead of making them read books about planets.  My own daughter is a MAJOR dog lover.  She started reading a series of books called “Puppy Place”, and they never grow tiresome for her.  Every book has beautiful pictures of dogs on the cover.
But Be Careful About…

Immediately correcting your child. While teaching a child to read, be careful about correcting mistakes.  Remember that your goal is to establish a belief in your child’s mind that reading is FUN.  Anything you do to wreck the fun will wreck the formation of this belief.

Proper lighting.  Read with enough lights on, or in daylight.  You don’t want your kids reading in the dark, straining to see the pages. I’m no doctor, but I got this advice directly from our eye doctor.

Being pushy and setting expectations.  Nothing good ever comes out of pushing a child to do anything – the more pressure you put on your child, the more it will make her want to fight you.  You’ll get more flies with honey than with vinegar (as my mom always taught me).  Keep your child interested by making sure that reading is an unconscious cue for a positive emotional state.  If reading is fun, your child will want to read.  The fun is attached not just to the books and the words.  It’s attached to everything that contributes to their feelings.  How YOU act is perhaps the biggest factor here.

Going Nuts and Being a Helicopter Parent

Is it just me, or is this parent going completely overboard?

Not to far from my home in Toronto, a woman is trying to convince the local school board to remove all of the oak trees near her childrens’ school. It’s bordering on nutty, in my opinion, and I’m not afraid to say so.

Here’s the deal: The woman has two teenage children who suffer from anaphylactic reactions to certain foods due to allergies. She’s worried that the acorns, the hard nuts that fall from oak trees at this time of year, pose a threat to her kids and others who suffer from severe allergies.

So she’s gone ahead and asked the school board to remove the trees.

Seriously?  Medical experts are saying that you’d literally have to eat these acorns to cause any kind of allergic reaction.  And people don’t eat these things.  Squirrels eat them.  People with severe allergies could handle the acorns and not suffer any reaction.

What can parents learn from this kind of behavior:

1. It’s easy to get emotional about a situation and over-react.  Who knows what caused this woman to suddenly want to take action against the oak tree “danger”.  It’s easy to us to say that this woman is being irrational, because she is an adult.  But remember that when our kids are irrational, we often try to use logic to persuade them to take a different view.  Logic rarely works.  Parents should focus on dealing with the emotional states, which drive the behavior.

2. Helicopter parenting is the phrase used to describe parents who watch over their kids WAY too closely.  Avoid becoming one of these hovering parents.  Unless there is real danger, let your kids make their own decisions, let them explore the world (or playground, or toy box, or whatever) and stop micro managing.  It doesn’t help.  My guess is that this woman, petitioning to kill the oak trees, has not even bothered to ask her kids if the acorns worry them.

So she’s likely making a problem where there is none to begin with.  If the so-called “problem” affects the kids, then ask them about it.  See what they think.  This should remind all parents that your kids are pretty smart.  When you have an issue and don’t know how to handle it, and it involves them … ask them!  Ask your kids what they think?  You’ll be surprised sometimes at what you learn.

Enjoy your children

Forget Ice-Cream: Feed This Healthy Dessert to Your Kids

Last week I sent out an email to everyone who is subscribed to my newsletter.  It was a pretty simple rant.  The bottom line is that too many parents are unaware of the dangers of feeding their kids too much crap.  And make no mistake – most food that comes in a package these days is crap.  Most of it is laced with way too much sugar, processed wheat, or other cheap ingredients that wreak havoc on our body’s immune system.  They spike up insulin levels and promote obesity.

On the flip side, too many parents seem to be unaware of the need to eat healthy fats.  Fat does not make you fat.  Excess sugar and processed carbs make you fat.  Focus more on quality protein and fat, and get your carbs from healthy sources.

In the email I asked for your replies.  TONS of you wrote back to me thanking me for the healthy desserts book recommendation.  I bought this book a couple of weeks ago and love it.  But you also asked for me to publish some of my own ideas.  So here goes:

Ice cream is a health disaster.  Yes it tastes amazing, but commercial  ice cream is made from sugar and unhealthy fats (mostly).  It also comes in gigantic containers, prompting us to serve ourselves (and our kids) way too much!
Making your own Healthy and Thick Chocolate Fruit Smoothie Dessert

One frozen banana (peel before freezing, it’s easier!)

A handful of frozen mango and blueberry (combined total fruit is about 1.5 cups)

1/4 cup coconut milk.  Buy a brand that is sulphite free. 

One heaping teaspoon of cocoa

Enough water to allow it to blend into a thick smoothie. 

A bit of chocolate chips (the only junk part) to decorate the top
Directions

1. Break the frozen banana into chunks, and combine with mango, blueberry into a container. The exact amount of fruit is not important.

2. Add the coconut milk, cocoa and eyeball the amount of water you’ll need to allow it to blend.

3. Blend.  I use an immersion blender, but a proper kitchen blender will be faster.  You’re dealing with frozen fruit, so if you use an immersion blender, expect it to take a minute or so.  Go slowly as you pulverize the fruit!  Add extra water if needed.

4. Scoop it into small bowls and decorate with some chocolate chips
Some of the important things to understand:

What’s really in this?  Whole fruit, some cocoa (which is a healthy ingredient on its own), and coconut milk.  The chocolate chips are there for misdirection.  They make it look more like a junk food.  There aren’t enough of them to make this dessert unhealthy.

Coconut milk is an incredibly healthy food.  The fats in coconut oil are what “medium chain triglycerides” (MCT).  They are processed as energy by the body very easily, without spiking blood sugar and generating a huge insulin release by the pancreas.  I use coconut oil and coconut milk in many recipes.

The size of the bowl matters.  You can’t really tell from the picture, but these bowls fit in the palm of my hand.  They are about 3 inches across.  They don’t hold much.  This allows me to fill up the bowl all the way, and it appears to be a much larger dessert than it really is.

If all you do is cut down on the serving size of store-bought junk by using smaller bowls, your family will be healthier.  But of course I’d like to see you take it a step further by making healthier treats.

Next time I make this recipe I will probably add in a scoop of high quality Whey protein powder.  This will give the dessert some added protein with almost no change to the texture or flavour.  Try it and tell me what you think.  Drop a comment.

This was my own recipe.  But if you want a whole book full of healthy recipes I highly recommend Guilt Free Desserts.  Brownies, chocolate cakes, cupcakes, and even a copycat of peanut butter cups made from healthy ingredients. We made them and they are awesome!

To your health, and enjoy your children.

Toddlers and Toys: How to Deal with Toddlers who Grab Toys at the Park

I received a great email from a customer, John, in California the other day asking for help. I decided to turn my answer into a blog post because it’s one of those questions that you just know millions of other parents are dealing with. The father who wrote in is struggling with his 3 year old son. The boy seems to be grabbing toys from other children in the playground. When the father corrects the matter (presumably taking the toy away and returning it to the other kid), his son cries and screams.

I love getting emails like this. It takes me back to the days when I too had “toddler toy takers”. So many parents go through this phase with their kids, and it’s a perfectly normal. Kids have to develop. They have to go from knowing nothing about social etiquette, and right from wrong, to actually understanding these things. The only way to get there is to experience these situations first hand. John, you are not alone!

As parents, I’m sure most of us can relate to the stress and frustration of dealing with this problem. Despite logically understanding that these child behaviors are normal, we all somehow think that the other parents will see our kid as a thief in the making. It causes parents to worry and feel embarrassed. The good news is you don’t need to feel this way, and your child will grow out of this behavior as he or she develops socially skills. This is all apart of growing up.

So how can you, as a parent, make this situation easier to deal with? How can you speed up the learning process while avoiding the tears as much as possible? Here are some ideas:

Enter your child’s world. I use this expression a lot, and for good reason. As a parent you need to really understand what it is like to be in your child’s shoes. The toy taking behaviour could be as simple as your child’s curiosity, or your child’s way of trying to engage in play with another child. Most likely he doesn’t realize he’s doing anything wrong.

Approach your child with a gentle hand, no matter how you handle it.

Set expectations while you are not at the park. In a non-threatening manner have a talk about the child’s behavior. Do this at home before going to the park. If you only bring up the topic when the offence has taken place, emotions are engaged and you’ll get nowhere. A three year old can listen and express himself just fine.

Role play. One way to discuss this at home is to role play. Have your child hold a toy and pretend he’s at the park. You play the role of another child.

Go take the toy away. Ask your child how he’d feel. Then do something else instead of toy taking. Askyour child if you can play with him. Ask if you can borrow the toy. Role playing will teach better social behavior.

Use logical consequences. Once your child understands the social rules, you can implement logical consequences. Again, you have to communicate the consequence ahead of time, so explain what happens if your child was to steal toys away from another child. A good logical consequence is to leave the playground. A poor consequences is something like “no dessert tonight” – because that would be totally disconnected from the behavior Logical consequences must be communicated in advance and relate to the behavior.

Avoid emotion. When you implement a consequence, always remember to be unemotional and calm. No nagging or whining. No guilt trip. Think of it like a policeman writing you a parking ticket. You get a fine, not a lecture.

Think outside the box. Here’s another idea that I bet you won’t have thought of – Ask the caregiver of the other child to politely take the toy back and explain that it doesn’t belong to him. Your child will likely be shocked and confused by this. I suspect this will be a much more powerful lesson to your child since it isn’t mom or dad (or a usual caregiver) correcting the problem. He may cry and come running over to you. That’s fine. You can then remind him of social rules, or explain to him what just happened. You’ll be in a supportive coaching role rather than trying to police the situation. Encourage your child to go back and politely ask to join the other child in playing.

Teach “use your words”. Always encourage your child to use their words instead of grabbing. Over time, they will see the benefit in this.
Want to learn three more powerful language tricks? Listen to this free audio lesson. Do it now because you’re going to love it!

Enjoy your children.

Fix These Fatal Mistakes When Enforcing Consequences with Children

I’d like to give you some quick tips on threatening and enforcing consequences with your children.

No matter how good your parenting skills are, you’ll face plenty of times when toddlers and young children will misbehave. And you’ll need to enforce some kind of consequence.

Lots of people have emailed me asking how to get one child to stop hitting a sibling, to stop throwing food, or any other such punishable offense.

I want to keep this article short and sweet, but still deliver real valuable help to all of you So I’ll get right to the point.
Tip #1: When you need to threaten consequences, you must pick something that is realistic.

Let’s use the example of a child who is throwing food at the table. If you’ve warned him that this needs to stop, and it doesn’t, then you have to take action. You can’t keep asking him to stop or you’ll be teaching him that you are a talker, not an action taker.

If you’ve explained what the consequence of throwing food will be, you have to enforce it. And in order to do so, it needs to be realistic.

You can’t say to your child, “Johnny – if you do that ONE more time I’m going to cancel our trip to DisneyLand”

… or even worse, “You’ll have to stay home from DisneyLand all by yourself”.

Clearly these are not realistic threats, and depending on the age of your child he or she may actually realize this. But regardless, you don’t want to put yourself in a position where your child repeats the offense and calls your bluff.

If you make a threat and do not carry it out then your child learns this pattern. They learn that you are not going to follow through. Then you are in bigger trouble.

So – make your threats realistic and then enforce them when you have to.

Tip #2: Establish consequences that are logically related to the offensive behavior.

If Johnny is throwing food, a logical consequence would be that dinner time is over for him. If you can’t behave at the table, you don’t eat at the table. If you can’t behave around food, you don’t eat the food. This may sound harsh to some, but no child will allow himself to go hungry for very long. Instead, they’ll fall into line and realize that you mean business.

Most other consequences (for throwing food) won’t be logically connected to the bad behavior. Cancelling a play date, or taking away iPad or TV privileges, for example, are not connected to the problem of throwing food. So the consequence will seem unfair, and will actually prevent the child from learning anything!
Tip #3: Be unemotional when enforcing consequences.

If you get all upset and emotional, you will come across as weak and whiny. These are the same characteristics you don’t want your children to have, right? So don’t model bad behaviours yourself!

If Johnny is throwing food you don’t want to whine at him, “Johnny, I really Haaaaate it when you do that. Stoooop it. You’re getting food all over my clean floooooor!”

When kids hear their parents whining about behavior, they model this behavior and feed it back to you.

The better alternative is to be matter of fact. Be crisp. Be unemotional. After all you’re just laying out the consequence. You’re the police man informing a driver he was speeding, and now has a fine to pay.

“Johnny – I see you’ve chosen to keep throwing food. That’s not acceptable. Dinner is over for you. You may go do something else now. I hope you make a better decision at the next meal.”


You don’t need to scream at your children when you state rules and enforce them through consequences. You simply need to make them aware, in an unemotional way, that their behavior led to a certain outcome (consequence / punishment). That is your entire goal.

Customers who have purchased my audio course, “Talking To Toddlers” have also learned how to to introduce a consequence such that the child is much less likely to repeat the offense.

We accomplish this by making the punishment feel very vivid and real in the child’s mind. We do this in a very caring and compassionate way and it WORKS.

Getting your kids on board with healthy food choices

Do you really care about healthy eating? Many parents say they do. They claim healthy eating is high on the priority list. But then they fall down because it’s either too much trouble to find healthy food choices, or their kids push back and argue with them until the parents fall back to Fishy crackers and other processed junk.

My wife and I have made the same mistakes. We’ve gotten busy, and felt too tired to deal with healthy snacks at times. If we didn’t have enough choice our two girls would get bored and complain.

So what’s the solution? We put healthy snacks on the agenda for our weekly family meeting a few months ago. The family meeting is a time to bring up problems that need solving, and then everyone works towards a solution. Our solution was very easy. We all agreed to come up with a list of after-school snacks and pin it to the bulletin board in the kitchen. Now we’ve got 5 healthy snack choices for Monday-Friday and they are in full view for the kids to see. We’ve agreed on these in advance, and if the kids get bored of the snacks they can bring it up at a future family meeting.

The idea of using a family meeting to solve problems is not mine, but it is worth stealing. It can be used for a variety of problems, not just for healthy eating. There are two main benefits that I want to explain:

    The influential power of buy-in. Using a family meeting to solve a problem means getting buy-in from everyone. If you can come up with a solution that everyone agrees to, in advance, it prevents fights. It’s a great example of using Dr. Robert Cialdini’s persuasion principle of “commitment and consistency”. Want to see a great example of this in action? Read this article where I share how I got my daughter to want to put sunscreen on while up at the cottage on a summer day.  She had previously refused to wear sunscreen.
    It’s unemotional. Family meetings are calm, unlike emotionally charged problem situations. If you try to solve a highly emotional problem right when it is happening, you may find it much more difficult.  If you instead put the problem on a family meeting agenda, everyone can discuss it without the emotional charge.  This makes finding a productive solution much easier.  We’ve used this tactic to solve fights over who gets to use the iPad, or who picks activities for family games, and a bunch of other problems.

If there is just one piece of advice I can pass onto you here it is this:  Involve your kids in planning and problem solving.  Assume they are smart enough to help in a meaningful way.  They are.

As for healthy snacks,  plan ahead and make your grocery shopping more efficient and economical.  If you need some ideas I found this awesome article online.   It has 20 different meal / snack ideas.   Check it.  I know we will be giving some of them a try.

Enjoy your children!

Why You Should Coach Your Kids to Interact with Adults

I think we can all agree that we want our kids to grow into happy, heathly and confident adults, right?

So how do we achieve this? Well, there are many ways to approach it. And this is by no means an exhaustive list of things that parents should be doing. Instead, this post will discuss one simple thing you can encourage your kids to do to put them on a path towards confidence. But before I begin, I want to reinforce something important.
Being a parent is being a coach.

Most of our parenting behavior, if we are doing a great job, comes from a place of coaching our children. We do this by example (role-model), or by offering suggestions, or by teaching, or inspiring our kids in some way. We help them to grow up understanding acceptable social behavior and how to interact socially, among other things.

With that in mind, it’s important that you give your kids plenty of time, starting very early in life, to practice their social skills in public. Basic conversation skills are a necessity in life. You want your child to be able to engage with their peers, to exchange information and to be able to express their thoughts and feelings. And you want your kids to have the confidence to step away from negative peer pressure. It’s our job to help our kids build coping skills, to be present and supportive, to answer questions and help them develop problem solving skills.
How do we do this? Encourage them to interact with other kids AND adults.

Begin in the home. Start teaching your children how to communicate in the home first. This usually involves you (the parents), siblings, and friends who come over for play dates. That’s the obvious first step. When your child wants something, encourage him or her to ask on his own, not come over to you and pester you to ask on his or her behalf.

Then take it to the next level. Have your child practice their adult interactions. If you’re at a corner store give your kids the money and have them pay. If you’re having dinner at a restaurant, don’t order for your kids. Just direct the waiter to take your kids’ orders just as they’d take your order. Encourage your kids to speak up for what they’d like to eat on the menu, or ask questions. They’ll naturally look to you to ask, and you can simply say, “That’s a great question, Matt, I don’t know the answer. I bet the waiter can tell you.”

Teaching kids to interact with adults will build up confidence, because they will realize it isn’t that scary after all, and speaking your mind is a good thing. It will also encourage problem solving, because you’re pushing kids to use communication to solve a problem. Very often in life problems are solved by collecting information. This is done by communication, right?

Obviously, it’s best to have your kids practice these skills in a safe environment and when mom and dad are there to help if needed. And of course school should be considered a safe environment (otherwise wouldn’t you move your child to a new school?)
Example: A Trip to the Library

My daughters love to read, so we take a lot of trips to the local library. My daughter, Anne, is in grade 4 right now. Every month she has to submit a book report to her teacher. The first project this school year was to read a biography. When we visited the library to find a book for her, I didn’t know where to look any more than she did. We knew we’d need help finding the right section. My daughter has been to this library many times. She’s become accustomed to walking up the librarian to ask for help. So she didn’t hesitate to go find the nice lady and ask, “Excuse me, but do you know where I can find biographies?”

I was very proud of my daughter for having the guts to speak up rather than begging me to go solve her problems. And it didn’t end there. The librarian had to ask her some questions about the kind of books she was looking for. I stood back and let my daughter handle the whole situation herself. You know what? She didn’t have nerves of steel and hammer out confident answers the way I would have as an adult. But that’s the whole point. She isn’t an adult yet. She’s learning. And she learns more by doing than watching.

She ended up with a perfectly age-appropriate biography about Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. She figured out where to find the books by asking for help herself. She picked the book herself. We helped her organize her thoughts for the report. She earned a tremendous sense of accomplishment from doing this. I’m proud of her for getting an A on the report too. But I’m more proud of the effort she put into getting it all done.

The reason that my daughter has become comfortable interacting with adults is because we’ve encouraged it over the years. At the local toy store she’ll immediately ask for help finding a toy or a book. If something she wants to spend her allowance on isn’t in stock she’ll confidently leave them with her name and phone number (with our permission, of course). It’s also amazing to see her younger sister, Liz, model this same behavior. Liz sees that her older sister can speak to adults with confidence, so she gets the message that she can to. And she’s right! She can.

There’s no science to this. Practice, practice, and practice. Your children will build their self-esteem, boost their confidence and feel empowered the more they get to practice interacting with adults. The more they get to do this, the more successful they will become as adults.

Let Kids Decide Their Own Spending

There’s a lot of debate in the parenting world on whether or not children should earn an allowance. And even without a formal allowance kids will still get money from grandparents, or from the tooth fairy, etc.

My wife and I both agree it’s important to let kids learn the value of money early on. We started giving our kids an allowance when they were 5 years old, and I happily admit we could have started this sooner. Even by the time my girls were 6 and 8 year old, they were only getting $1 and $2 per week respectively.

We setup these allowances to reward the girls for basic skill building. They make their beds, get dressed for school in the morning and they love to help set and clear the table at (and after) dinner. They also occasionally get money from the Tooth Fairy, garage sales, lemonade stands and their grandparents.

We’ve always encouraged our girls to save up for things they really want to buy.  Catalogues from the local book store and toy store often help motivate them to save. Just by putting them in charge of a small amount of money it encourages them to better understand arithmetic, and to put a value on money.
Saving money is important but so is learning how to spend it.

And for that matter, learning now NOT to spend it. The other day I was at the toy store with my youngest, Liz.  She’s 6 years old as I write this. She’d saved up about $20 from weekly allowances and a garage sale where she parted ways with old toys in order to raise money for new ones. Liz knew she wanted to buy a new stuffed animal called a Beanie Boo. They’re very cute, and not overly expensive.

As she chose her stuffed animal, I looked at books with my older daughter, Anne. After a few minutes, Liz came over to me with two stuffed animals. And this is the part where I had to remind myself it was her money, and she had to decide how to spend it. Being frugal, I immediately thought to myself, “Kid … you have about 20 of these things at home already. Do you really want to waste almost $20 of hard-earned money on this?”

I bit my tongue. Instead, I asked a casual question.“Oh I see you’ve picked two really cute stuffed animals. How much will that cost?” My thought was to let her answer the question, or help her with the math so she’d have a full understanding of the cost. Then she could decide what to do without any pressure from me.
Whenever your child spends money, one of two things will happen:

    She will spend the money and be totally happy with her purchase. If Liz was going to look back on her purchase as money well spent, who am I to tell her it’s a bad choice?

    She will suffer buyer’s remorse. She’ll play with her stuffed animals for a bit. But then she’ll realize she’s out of money the next time she wants something even better.

    No matter what, both outcomes are great. If she’s happy with how she spends her money, then she made the right choice. If she later regrets the spending, then she’ll learn an important life lesson. And she’ll have learned this lesson very young, when the dollar figure is small.

Action for parents: Loosen your grip. Let your child make his or her own decisions with his or her money. They are going to make mistakes. Mistakes are valuable. Mistakes are part of learning. If you want your children to grow up understanding how to budget and save, and have healthy thoughts about money, let them screw up. It’s actually helpful in the long run. It’s also a nice way of getting them engaged in doing some early math, when they might otherwise have no interest in sitting down to do arithmetic problems.

You might even consider opening your child his or her own bank account!