News at Proactive Parent

The ProActive Parenting newsletter is back. I took a couple of years off from writing the newsletter to write all new seminars, redesign the website, and a bunch of other things.

March’s newsletter introduces a more colorful design, I'm not 100% happy with it - stay tuned!  We have a couple of different sections now too. I’m sure the sections will change and evolve, just like things change and evolve during childhood.

The newsletter will also take on a shortened blog-like format, please forgive the grammatical shortcuts. Let’s get started.

What you’re reading now is now called News at ProActive Parenting and is where I’ll put the business updates, live seminar announcements and new products  from ProActive Parenting.   

The next section is called My monthly Rant it's where I’ll rant and rave about something that’s gotten my attention.   

The next section will still be From a Parent’s Perspective and is written by Janet Gonzales-Mena, my mentor/friend. She has a wonderful way of looking at parenting; I think you’ll enjoy her work.

Next will be Look How Much We’ve Changed. This will be a fun look back at how far we’ve come as parents, men and women.

Following that will be Look What I Found. This section will list all sorts of websites, maybe some green products and/or fun products I’ve found to make your life easier.

And the last section will be called A Parent’s Place. This section is from you, the parent!

I don’t have time for a blog yet, this is as close as I can get right now. This section will evolve over time and just like a blog it can include almost anything you’re interested in!

Send me a question, and if I think it applies to the majority of the list I’ll answer it in here.

Share your success stories after you've successfully used a ProActive Parenting method; everyone loves reading them. Also send me your parenting tips, natural cleaning hints or any other suggestions you have that makes life easier for you! This only works if you send something in, let’s see how it goes! Send all inclusions to: sharon@proactiveparenting.net

My Monthly Rant

Here’s my mini-rant.

It’s spring break and I have a question for you. When was the last time you did something to make your life easier?

When was the last time you just let the “schedule” go?

When was your last lazy day? Have you ever done breakfast for dinner, or let everyone stay in their pj’s all day?

And when was the last time you made life easier by focusing on solving a parenting issue? We can help!

Finally, all 10 of the ProActive Parenting Seminars On-demand have been uploaded in an audio form.

Now you can have access to parenting information when you want it, day or night, at home or in the car. Life is just too crazy these days to put solving a behavior issue on hold because you don't have enough time to make it to a live seminar!

Celebrate new growth this spring by making life easier for you! Make some meals ahead of time and freeze them so when you don't feel like cooking you've still got dinner, fix a behavior issue with some new parenting information, have a stay in your pj's lazy type of day or simply plant some flowers so when you are busy and walk past the flowers it can help you remember to breathe and slow down!

Happy Spring SS.

From a Parents perspective - By Janet Gonzales-Mena

Pick up that Mess

How do you get children to pick up their messes? Here are some simple guidelines.

Make it easy for them to know where things go. That old saying, “a place for everything and everything in its place,” is a good rule to go by. Children develop a sense of order when they live in an organized environment.

• Make clean up time fun. Young children can be enticed into thinking they’re playing a game rather than doing a dreaded chore. If they have that attitude young, they may grow up without knowing the difference.


• If the time should come that they don’t regard cleanup as fun, take a problem solving approach. Avoid power struggles. Discuss, negotiate, and figure out together how to restore order.


• Model orderliness by picking up after yourself. It’s amazing how well children imitate what they see you doing.

Simple. Just four guidelines and your problems are over, right? Wrong!

If it’s so easy, why is it that if you came over to my house to visit me you’d be likely to find a mess? Writing guidelines is easy; following them is the hard part. Knowing about something and doing it are two different things

Where I fall down is in modeling. I’d like to finish and put away one project before I start another, but I don’t always manage. Sometimes one is a long-term project, and another calls for my immediate attentions.

Since I’m tolerant of myself, what can I say to a child who is in the middle of building a huge block structure when he suddenly decides he needs to go out and ride his bike for a while? I can understand that need. I also understand that he is still working on the block structure. I let him go. Order suffers.

And I also have a problem with a place for everything. If new possessions didn’t keep arriving, or if the old ones self destructed, it wouldn’t be so hard. But organizing and reorganizing takes time, and I always have so many other, more pressing and interesting things to do than clean out closets and cupboards. I also have trouble making clean up time fun since I’m often a grouch about it myself (just as my mother, and her mother before her). My kids can pick up a true attitude in a minute, even when I’m pretending something is a fun game.

But, I don’t have trouble with problem solving, negotiating, and figuring out a solution together about how to get the place picked up when there’s a real need to. At those times there’s a real sense of urgency and the energy behind that gets me looking for the cooperation I need to make things happen. So we do not have periods of real order at home.  You can come over and find the place clean and tidy-just be sure to let me know when you’re coming.

If you’re still looking for more hints and tips about cleaning up, purchase Seminar  # 7: Listening!  Okay, you caught me, sometimes I will mention what ProActive Parenting has to offer too, you can’t blame a woman for marketing her own business!

Look How Much We've Changed From 1951-Now

Mother’s Encyclopedia – Compiled by the editors of Parent’s Magazine Printed in 1951

Entertaining The Teens
Parties for boys and girls in their teens require just as much planning in advance as the most sophisticated party for adults. From thirteen to sixteen is a difficult time, when our sons and daughters feel they have put away childish things but are only on the brink of being able to carry on an articulate conversation. They must be planned for, therefore, and directed or they will prove as uninteresting to themselves as they are destructive to the furniture.

Start them Playing: I have learned from experience that two or three young guests will doubtless arrive before the appointed time, and I am ready for them. I keep them well away from the scene of the dinner itself because I have discovered that tables, set with condiments, plates, cards, any accessories, are too much of a temptation. The guests will either make away with the nuts or change the seating arrangements. So, in the summer, I try to have them gather out of doors. A croquet set or a ping-pong table can ease over the first twenty minutes of a supper party better than the best intentioned artificial conversation. I start them playing, as soon as the first two arrive. In winter, the cellar can provide the same advantages as the lawn in summer, or the phonograph will come to the rescue. It seems to me better, for this occasion, than the radio because the young are so attuned to contemporary music that they will find additional amusement in selecting pieces of popular music of their own choice. Besides, the radio creates confusion at a time like this and the important thing is to set the mood of the party by having an easy, good time, right from the start. 
By Sophia Yarnall        

Oh my, can you imagine hosting a party like that for teens today! SS

Look What I Found

Mother's Encyclopedia Compiles by the editors of Parent's Magazine Printed in 1951

Since my rant this month is about making life easier, I thought I would include products to do just that, make life easier. Here we go.

• If you’re like I am and miss things you really need at the store because you forgot to write out your list, this will work for you.There’s a product that helps you record everything you need for your next grocery shopping. It’s called Smart Shopper and you can find it on Amazon. 


• Tired of hearing, there’s nothing to do, play with me? Then go to familyfun.com. This site has what they call“printables”. They are activity pages for kids. The kids choose what they want to work on and you print them out. You can all sit at a table, they color and you can read. You’ll get some quiet together time!


• Tired of trying to decide what’s for dinner? Try recipeformom.com. They have family friendly recipes. Simply choose a recipe and begin! If what you hate is needing to think about what’s for dinner each night try the Food Network and go to Quick Fix Meals with Robin Millers. She does what I did as a mom with young kids, and it really works. Her example is: She chooses menus that have you cook an extra amount of chicken on Monday so the chicken is all ready for Tuesday’s meal. She does three meals at a time.


• Finally. Teaching children to honor the birthday’s of others or to send thank you notes can take a big chunk out of the day.

Try going to Kids.Yahoo.com and have the kids create and send their own cards online!

This is also a place where parents can have their “Look what I found” listed, send in what you’ve found too.

Now on to A Parent’s Place to read a great story about a Mom’s AH HA moment.

A Parent's Place

By: This story comes from someone in 2003. I no longer know who shared this wonderful story. If it was you, email me and you’ll get credit next month. This story shows a magical method to correct really young children’s behavior, it shows how to correct behavior lovingly yet firmly, and it shows how shifting your perspective can actually lead to a solution.

This is a great story!  A Lesson Learned  By Kristin DeBaldo

I had a interesting experience recently with my children and wanted to share the very simple lesson I found amidst the moments of repeated frustration. I have two boys, ages 2 and 5. The 2 year old tends to be fairly mellow, happy-go-lucky and does a great job of entertaining himself. The 5 year old is equally delightful although much more intense in both intellect and emotion. 

One day while sneaking away from the children for a moment to read my e-mail, I was loudly interrupted by my 5 year old who was running up the stairs yelling for me to come immediately because his younger brother had just written in marker on the pillar downstairs. The above mentioned pillar mind you, is centered between the entryway, the great room, and the dining area of the kitchen - obviously not a place where said “writing” could be easily camouflaged. I immediately joined the furor and rushed downstairs with my 5 year old racing behind me with the supposed guilty weapon in hand – fortunately a water-color Crayola marker. Without so much as taking a moment to breath, I automatically sent my 2 year old to his room and explained to him that writing on the walls was unacceptable. I then rushed to the rag drawer and went to wiping off the “artwork.” Needless to say, I was greatly relieved when I discovered that for the most part, I was able to scrub it all away.

 About a week later, the identical scenario played out.  My reaction the second time, however, was to take a breath and then in my best “ProActive Parenting” behavior, to calmly  remark to the 2 year old (albeit while biting the inside of my mouth), “Uh oh, looks like you have some cleaning up to do,” while I handed him a wet rag and showed him how to clean up his mess.

Unfortunately, the above scenario played out several more times until one day, the offending implement was no longer so tame!!  This time, my 5 year old came running up the stairs calling for me with a BLACK PERMANENT MARKER in hand. As I came running down the stairs with the 5 year old right beside me, I could feel my blood pressure rising and I shared a few short words with the 2 year old as I surveyed the awful damage.  He had managed to write on EVERY side of that pillar in the brilliant black PERMANENT MARKER. I was beside myself when I raced over to where the rest of the permanent markers were stored in a drawer in our kitchen island. As I opened the drawer to grab the other markers, I suddenly realized that said 2  year old could not even reach those markers without pulling up a chair. Never mind that he had no concept of what a permanent marker was or that they were stored there. 

So… I suddenly had a light bulb moment – yes, I know I was really slow on the uptake, – and realized that my 5 year old was actually the felon here. After finally getting his confession, it occurred to me that perhaps he had been guilty every time there had been writing on the wall. Yes, once again, I was really having a hard time seeing the “writing on the wall!” Once he was able to confess to all the “crimes,”

I told him that I was really perplexed and that I would have to think about how he could make it up to his father and me for the damage he had done. While he was in his room, I called a fellow parent who had also taken ProActive Parenting to get her advice.

Just talking to her helped me to calm down a bit, but I came away feeling like I still didn’t have a logical consequence that was appropriate enough.

After all, there were several layers to be dealt with here. First, he had lied REPEATEDLY. Second, not only had he lied, but he had knowingly placed the blame, and therefore the wrath of mom, on his little brother.  And third, he had decorated the pillar with PERMANENT black marker.

 After some quiet reflection of my own, I finally asked my “felon” why he had done all this. And in his response, I found the gift of the answer I had been desperately searching for. He told me he did it because he liked it when his brother had to go to his room so that he could have mom to himself for some “special time.” Oh my!  All this supposed felon wanted was some tender loving care all to himself.

It was a center-stage, all-cameras-on-you, light-bulb moment for me and I don’t think I will ever forget the lesson learned, especially since it was written for me in “permanent marker.”

If I had only considered first who my kids are, I certainly would have saved myself from so many frantic trips down those stairs! 

PS – If you have an artist in the house who doesn’t discriminate when choosing his/her canvas, you must know that Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser sponges are miracle workers and yes, they even take permanent marker off of flat paint!!


Great story Kristen!

There you have it, March’s newsletter. Don’t forget last month’s tip about Magic Eraser sponges—wear gloves.

I hope you enjoyed the newsletter and will consider sending in your success stories and tips.

See you next month