Mealtimes

Children need to be feed every 2 - 3 hours. Feed you children what you are eating and eat up the table with them. Children watch us and learn thei habits, so if you don't like veges why would they? Feed each meal - breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and depending on bedtime supper. Give your child a variety of food, when mealtime is over tip the food out or feed it to the dog and don't feed your child again the next meal (they will eat the things they like so if you are trying to increase their range of foods, keep these foods to a minimum but do not cut them out completely).

Don't bribe or threaten, children on average need a food presented 20 times before they eat it.

If you are having problems with an older child (7 or over) cut out morning and afternoon tea.

Give them water to drink, milk and juice are foods and will fill them up.

Bedtime

Watching your angelic child sleep snoring softly, absolute bliss.  Waiting for your excited, somewhat hyperactive, bouncy child to reach his/her angelic state can be very tiresome.

My children had a bedtime routine, dinner, bath, song, I then kissed them and out I went. Jaimie followed, I tried ignoring her, spanking her (once), not talking and just putting her back to bed. When I turned around there she'd be the cutest grin on earth. In the end I lay down with her till she fell asleep, I read and didn't reply to her.

Thankfully most children aren't this stubborn and will stop coming out if consistently put back in bed for 3 to 4 evenings.

Sibling rivalry

I personally believe sibling rivalry is a result of jealously and/or not feeling unconditionally loved.

Jealousy - Jealousy happens when one child appears to get an unfair amount of attention - they may be younger, be a high need child or are sick or disabled.

Unconditional Love - we all love our children and would do anything for them including giving our lives for them. Sadly our children don't always feel this.

Things that will help both situations.

Eye Contact - Use eye contact positively, look at your kids when they please you, when you hug them and say I love you. Don't stare kids down when they misbehave.

Physical Contact - Hug them, stroke them as you walk past, tickle them.

One on one time - if you have more than one child this is the hardest one to do but there are ways around it - each parent can have a date with each child each month (dates can be anything from going for a walk, a hot chocolate or a meal - a date is not sitting in front of a movie) , read to children individually, do a chore with one child (e.g. chat over the dishes).

As a single mum I didn't have the opportunity to have date nights, what I did was each night I sang to my children on there own (once they were 7/8 they asked me to stop since I can't sing) and I tried very hard each day to speak to each child individually, all my kids knew if they needed me they did need to let me know.

Michael

Michael is my miracle, I never knew I wanted. I grew up in a family of girls and went to all girls schools from a young age so was terrified about having a son.

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Thankfully I have my darling son. Michael had the misfortune and privilege of being the fourth child, I say that because he never really go the chance to get into trouble, although he did manage a doosie when he was 6. He had the priviledge of being fourth and having a very confident mother who knew when to say yes and no.

With Michael I was most worried about this boy becoming a man with mainly females around, this I realised was futile when at ten months he picked up a toy car and said, "Brooom, brooom." an action none of the girls had ever done. From the age of 15 months he could point out different makes of cars which really amazed me since I had no idea.

Jaimie

Jaimie has an innate love of life, Jaimie has always been my adventurous child. At the age of two she could cook her own peas (her favourite snack food). At 4 cooked pikelets on her own. Prior to Jaimie turning five she never let me out of her sight, then when she turned five she seemed to look around at the big wide world and I've barely seen her since (hehe). 

When Jaimie decides she wants something there's not alot anyone else can do to dissuade her. A great example is when she first cooked peas.  I was breastfeeding Chloe and Jaimie was hungry, starving even (poor child hadn't been fed for about an hour). I said, " I will get you some peas when I'm finished here." and the reaction was "I want them now." so I said, "You need to wait or make them yourself."Jaimie got out a pot and the peas so I told her what to do and she cooked herself peas.Jaimie is a social butterfly, is great fun to be around, its almost contagious and because of that I do believe she'll do everything she wants in life.

Chloe

 Chloe, Chloe, Chloe, well there is only one way to describe such a unique person and that is with a story.

When Chloe was four she went to a meeting with my dad and as they walked into a room with 20 adults sitting around the room on chairs, Chloe looked around the room and said "Don't talk to me I'm shy." At the same meeting one of the ladies asked Chloe, "What do you want to be when you grow up?". Dad said Chloe looked at the lady like she had 3 heads and said "An adult" in a confused voice, what a great goal, so many people grow up and seem to miss becoming an adult.

The opportunity to raise Chloe has been a blast, I love the way she naturally thinks outside the square, no-one ever had to tell her to. Her love of life is infectious.

Chloe's ability to think outside the square helped her in many areas, when my kids were younger we knew a few bigger families and when we had meals together an adult or older child would wash the dishes and the rest of the children were handed tea towels and lined up to dry the dishes. In the lines you would see Chloe getting closer to the front then she would go from second to last, something no-one else thought of. Reality of course is she would have probably spent less energy just drying dishes, not my Chloe.

Teaching Colours

When we went to playcentre many years ago a fellow mother gave me this idea and although it was too late for Sarah and Jaimie, I used it for Chloe and Michael.

Each week choose a different colour and focus on it e.g. blue, there's a blue car, the sky is blue, this top is blue, blue playdough and my kids even had blue baths.

I taught them the primary colours first red, blue and yellow and then the secondary colours with the rest following. To teach them secondary colours I put a primary colour at each end of the bath and we would watch them magically become another colour. To colour the bath I used food colouring - the bath never stained and neither did the kids.