6 items or less…apply this experiment to parenting

Posted on July 24, 2010 by viviankirkfield

Have you heard of the 6 items or less experiment? It is a global phenomenon that sets out to see if a person can “survive” for 30 days with only 6 items of clothing (or less) from their closet.

As I thought about this minimalist approach to life (and having just watched “The Book of Eli” where Denzil Washington says “people kill for things we used to throw away”), I realized that this 6 items or less theory had a lot going for it and could be applied to many different parts of our lives.

So, today I’d like to list the 6 items I’d pull from my parenting rules closet.

Help your child to master tasks and skills and develop individual responsibility.
Encourage your child to value her own strengths and qualities.
Help your child feel appreciated, loved and valued.
Encourage your child to express his feelings, both positive and negative.
Help your child to acknowledge and cope with her fears.
Encourage your child to respect his body and feel safe in his environment.

Just 6 rules. Follow them and you will be helping your child develop a positive self-image. You will also be building a life-long parent-child bond and creating balance and harmony for your entire family.

How many parenting rules do you have?

Carpet installation fiasco

Posted on July 23, 2010 by viviankirkfield

At 9am this morning, there was a knock on the door. It was our carpet installers, here to install new carpeting for our downstairs floors. For the past week, I had been working like a mad-man (or mad-woman) to clear off tables, empty bookcases and clean out cabinets so that the installers would be able to move the furniture in preparation to laying the carpeting. Of course, it doesn’t help that our furniture is HUGE, a carryover from our days in a 14 room house. Even though we sold, gave away, threw away LOTS of STUFF when we downsized to a small 6 room townhome, everything we have is BIG.

After the carpet installers came in, they spent an hour moving much of the furniture to other places (outside patio, garage) and they began measuring the floor so they could determine how the carpet should be laid. When they went out to their truck to call the carpet store and were gone for quite a while, we began to worry. And, as it turns out, we had good reason to worry. When they returned, it was to tell us that the man who had done the measuring (from the carpet store) had under-measured the length of the living room by 2 feet!!!!!! So, they had to move back all of the furniture and the carpet store is ordering a new length of carpet to be laid next Tuesday. How frustrating! Will I put back all of the books, knickknacks, and other STUFF that I had boxed up and put in the garage? You bet I won’t!

I’ll wait at least until the carpet is down on the floor. And maybe, if we haven’t needed the STUFF by then, we actually don’t need it at all.

That’s one way to get rid of clutter!

I’d love to hear other carpet installation horror stories…perhaps it will make me feel better.

Dental visits: Pain or Gain?

Posted on July 20, 2010 by viviankirkfield

Yesterday I went to the dentist for my routine cleaning and checkup. Fortunately, everything looked fine. It made me think back to when our children were young and we tried to find a way to encourage them to take care of their teeth. My husband and I came up with an interesting plan: If their checkup showed no cavities, they got five dollars. If they had cavities, they had to pay fifty cents from their allowance for each cavity.

Needless to say, all three had very few cavities as they were growing up. I’m not sure if it was the incentive of receiving five dollars, or if it was having to part with fifty cents for each cavity that encouraged them to brush their teeth regularly and refrain from eating too many sweets.

Our children are all in their 30’s now…two of them have children of their own and are probably dealing with that same age-old issue of getting their little ones to properly care for their teeth. When I talk to my grown children on the phone, if they mention in passing that they have been to the dentist and have had a perfect checkup, I still send them a five dollar bill in the mail. Although five dollars can’t purchase the same amount of goods that it could 20 or 30 years ago, it still buys a good dental checkup.

Hey, where’s my five dollars?

I’d love to hear other parent’s ideas for encouraging children to take good care of their teeth.