Here is a list of techniques to try with your kids when you hit those moments of despair of responding to …”so…you can’t make me do it”.  Yes, they can be cute a lot of the time, but don’t kids just love that feeling of control and knowing that you can’t make them physically do anything that they don’t want to do.  So in these moments (with kids older than 3 especially) …

1. Take a deep breath, kneel down and get on their eye level and make eye contact as you explain firmly the benefits of doing the thing that you want them to do.
2. Explain a scenario of how it has benefited them in the past.
3. Explain how doing it will make you feel (but don’t dwell on how not doing it will make you feel).
4. Try a bit of positive reinforcement i.e. highlighting the benefits for them doing the thing that you want to do going forward.
5. Try a bit of negative reinforcement i.e. getting them to avoid the thing that will happen if they don’t do it.
6. Reward older children with a pocket money scheme for doing things that you want them to do.  Reward charts can work for younger children.
7. If all else fails resort to bribery!  That usually works.

What techniques work for your kids?  What about younger kids?  Please contribute your views below.

Izziwizzi Kids Play TV will be coming to you soon with video toy testing reviews, fun, games and gift ideas for you and your kids.

Keep posted by registering for updates and you will receive full details of the launch.

At what point does being keen and enthusiastic for your child to participate in sports that they are not all that bothered about become pushy? At what point do you let them make the decisions not to participate? Can we be too pushy in children that are very keen on sports?

When turning for guidance on these matter, the world is rife with conflicting messages.

On one side of the coin we have – “If he doesn’t want to participate, just leave him be and let him decide what is right for him”. But at what age to children become old enough and capable of knowing what is best for them?

After all participating in sports promotes a healthy lifestlye, builds confidence, promotes working in teams and learning to think from the perspective of others. These are all invaluable in terms of a child’s growth and development. This leads on to an argument on the other side of the coin where the benefits are tremendous, so isn’t it worth pushing through the barriers and persevering to get your child enthusiastic to participate?

As a six year old (Alex), my little boy says he does not want to play football. He says it makes him feel nervous, he hates confrontation and the idea that he could get hurt. But every week I go through the pain of taking him and sometimes feel like a pushy parent…why?

Because when he is doing it, I can see a seed of pleasure and enjoyment about what he is doing. Although he says he doesn’t enjoy it, clearly there are some aspects that he does enjoy without realising it. When he scores or saves a goal he loves the sense of belonging (the high fives), when he races he loves to win.

I have found the key to getting my kids motivated is to give clear direction about what is going on and asking for extra support from others around me. For example, asking coaches to give support so that it is not always ‘mum nagging’.

I strongly believe that he will gain so much more from overcoming his fears and gain greater pleasure from participating over time, than the pain he thinks he feels up until now.

Advice from the Experts
———————–
I asked Lewis Howes (sports networker and ex-american footballer) for his advice and guidance for parents on the subject of sports participation.

“Playing a sport can be one of the most important things a child ever does growing up. It encourages competitiveness, helps you grow physically and mentally, and gives you opportunities to fail, but more importantly gives you opportunities to get back up once you fail.

Parents should encourage their kids to participate in some type of sports because those kids will have team building, and leadership skills throughout their entire life that they may have never learned if it weren’t for the experiences they gained from playing sports.”

Summary
———

This week, Alex has turned to me and said he was sad because there wasn’t any football. While we may still have our ups and downs, this is most definately progress. Oh and did I forget to mention that it’s taken me over 9 months to reach this point.

As an experienced parent, what are your thoughts and experiences on pushy parenting when it comes to sports? Please do leave your comments below.

We recently asked our grandparents what challenges they face in being a grandparent and we thought we’d share the information we found back with you. We welcome your comments and feedback. We felt that publishing the information would not only be useful to gather any further thoughts, but would also give you as a grandparent peace of mind that you are not the only one experiencing these challenges. The research exposes a number of re-occuring challenges facing grandparents and we are working at exploring ways that we can help you in overcoming these challenges. The top 5 have been listed as a summary.

Keeping Up With The Pace of Change

Our research suggested that the biggest challenge of being a grandparent is keeping up with the pace of change in the modern world. The pace of change includes keeping up with how things have changed since our grandparents were parents with young children, keeping up with the rapid pace of change with the volume of information available and keeping up with the rate at which the children themselves change their mind. One week they like peppers and grapes…but the next week insist that they have never liked them. Inconsistencies in contact with grandchildren can make this even more difficult to keep up with.

Giving Grandchildren the Right Amount Of Time

Time was of the essence for many grandparents who completed our survey. Grandparents feel challeged between giving up enough of their time and sharing this equally amongst all of their grandchildren and balancing this with not being too overbearing for parents. Distance was also a big challenge for many parents. As the world has grown smaller, many grandparents do not live locally and face difficulties in spending enough quality time interacting with their grandchildren.

Keeping Grandchildren Busy with Activity Ideas

A large challenge for grandparents is thinking of activities to do with their grandchildren, but also not just duplicating what children do with their parents and grandparents.

Having Enough Energy

As bodies grow older, minds remain with the same enthusiasm to enjoy time together, but bodies do not allow grandparents to do the things they used to do. Grandparents expressed an interest in finding products that helped them physically in making more of the time with their grandchildren.

Biting My Tounge

Grandparents reported it being challenging to have strong opinions around interaction and discipline between parents and their grandchildren, but it being difficult to gague when to and when not to give their opinions. Grandparents reporting of the need to bite their tounge.

Do you identify with these challenges? How would you like to see these challenges overcome? Add to your lively debate below…

No more nappies – make potty time fun!

With a unique potty-shaped cover, these brilliant toilet training books are perfect
for helping your child make the transition from nappies to pants in no time.

Full of fun rhymes and pictures that will show your child how to use their potty,
the Potty Time series are ideal for any place and time, from before bed to
out-and-about. Bright colours and photography make the books engaging for young
children, and fun and friendly advice helps take the worry out of potty training for
parents and toddlers alike!

Each book also includes a sheet of special reward stickers which can be used for any
type of reward system, providing that final encouragement for children to become
nappy free!

Buy from Amazon

WIN Your Copy of Boys or Girls Potty Time

Izziwizzi Kids has 6 copies of the book to give away (3 girls and 3 boys). Just answer the following question and submit your entry below.

Competition Now Closed

Competition Rules
—————–

1. One entry per household
2. No entries from employees, family or friends of IzziwizziKids.co.uk.
3. Competition Closes 31st May 2010.
4. Competition is run by Buzz Internet Marketing.
5. By entering the competition you agree to receive communications from IzziwizziKids.co.uk. Your details will not be shared with 3rd party companies.

Just in case you find it difficult to get out during the half-term with the cold weather, we’ve put together a handy free activity guide with practical indoor games and activities to burn off some energy, stimulate kids brains and give them a great time. Hopefully helping to keep frustrations and tantrums at bay….at least for a short while anyway.

The activities suit children from as young as 2 years old up to 10 years old, so you can keep siblings entertained together. Please forward the guide to all of your friends to spread the word about Izziwizzi Kids and don’t forget to post your comments right here.

Why is Izziwizzi Kids built upon 8 imaginative ways to play and learn? Because in running Izziwizzi Kids we take time to understand the principles around how children learn through play, in addition to relating to personal experiences bringing up 3 children all aged under 6. In essence, children learn in lots of different ways and it is often difficult at a glance to understand why different types of play are important and how a child benefits from different types of play.

The priniples of the 8 imaginative ways to play and learn in their essence are based on the development of essential life skills and do not change. However, from time to time, educational principles change and are updated. The 8 Imaginative Ways to Play and Learn are…

1. Independence
2. Family Time
3. Educational Toys
4. Creative Corner
5. Let Off Steam
6. Ideas for Grownups
7. Little Helper
8. Free Play

Our aim is to give you the confidence and make life easier in knowing how your child learns and how you can support your child’s play and learning without having to think about it too hard. Our ideal is to give you you more quality time and energy to spend with the children in your life.

A final point on Izziwizzi Kids being adult as well as child focussed. Adults are often forgotten in the whole equation when it comes to toys and are often expected to know and get on with it. Building your confidence, sharing ideas with like minded people we hope will ultimately boost your relationship with the child or children in your life and other adults too.

So please post your comments, suggestions and ideas below. We’d love to hear from you.

Is living with clutter around children an issue? When I first established Izziwizzi Kids, one of the main inspirations was that all too many toy shops are willing to fill our lives with lots of gadgets and ugly looking toys with lots of little bits to them, but nowhere to put them. The packaging is all to often not much use for storage either.
Does this sound at all familiar to you? When we bought our first house we created a lovely space together making it just as we wanted it. Then we decided after 10 years together it would be nice to start a family. Nature took It’s course and fortunately for us, it wasn’t long after trying that we were expecting our first bundle. We were amazed by the brilliance in design of the nursery decor, furniture through stores such as Mamas and Papas, in addition to the range of very nicely designed push chairs. Everything was very pleasing to the eye.
But why couldn’t the toy shops follow suit? Why were we encouraged to fill our house with ugly looking toys, with very few ideas about how to store them or to keep them organised. Ikea offered a range of plastic storage tubs, but nothing that was a toy box that I would have wanted on display. This was one of my many reasons for creating IzziwizziKids.co.uk, to find out whether other people out there in the world experiencing similar types of problems and sure enough many like you do. Toy storage seems rare, but whenever we see some nice toy boxes etc, we are sure to get them in store. And if toys are too big to go into toy boxes, then it’s important that they are at least nice to look at in your living room, or wherever else they might be. So…when the kids go to bed you still have some level of tranquillity and a space to call yours.

Encouraging your child to be tidy can be hard work, especially if you like me and not the tidiest person in the world yourself.

Here are a few tips picked up from experts that I have found to work:
- Dedicate a specific time/s of the day to tidy up time where the focus is on tidying e.g. create a tidy up time just before dinner;
- For younger toddlers it is easier to make a game out of tidying up, such as find all the red blocks, blue blocks etc.
- Have a toy box or a focal point for your child to put everything in to. Otherwise you could well end up with a large heap in the corner of the room.
- You may like to try a reward system such as a sticker…particularly if tidying up is unprompted, or is not mess they created themselves.

Encouraging children to be tidy is an issue raised by a number of parents that we talk to. What experiences or ideas can you share? Please post your comments.

After picking Alex aged 5 up from school we had an evening filled with challenging behaviour. Tantrums, answering back, rolling eyeballs and shouting at his younger sisters. When I questioned Alex about his challenging behaviour he replied to me…

“Mummy…I can’t help it you see. My bones are good, my arms are good, my legs are good, my skin is good. It’s this brain of mine. It keeps telling my body to do bad things. I never thought I’d say
this but …. I want a new brain. I want to take this one out and
get a new one that tells my body to do good things.”

You can’t beat his logic to remove all personal responsiblity. If I have ever found it hard not to smile when I absoloutly shouldn’t it was now. I’m sure you’ve experienced this too.

When I sent out a survey a few weeks ago, dealing with all this type of behaviour was a consistent challenge for so many parents. So I thought I’d make a blog post to share ideas and experiences. Tell
us about the times you have dealt with challenging behaviour successfully and share with us some of the funny things that have happend to you where you’ve found it hard to resist a smile.

One extra thing that I’d like to share is that we seem to experience spells of challenging behaviour linked to growth spurts. We go through tantrum after tantrum for a few weeks and then Alex has grown out of his trousers. I’ve heard other people experiencing this. Is this something that you have experienced too?

Keeping sane together throughout the absurdity of it all.

Alison
Izziwizzi Kids

Getting children interested in cooking is a popular TV theme in combatting childhood obesity along with Jamie Oliver’s quest to encourage cooking in parents and children as a diminishing skill. Izziwizzi Kids supports healthier lifestyles for children, encouraging active play, cooking and extends this to participation in to many everyday activities. When children participate in any everyday routine activity from a young age, they learn a huge amount of skill. Children start developing physical and intellectual skills at an early age. Everyday activities can often prompt questions that lead to engaging conversations helping to develop lanuage skills in context. Children also get lots of satisfaction and confidence through completing easy tasks. The educational benefit of these activities is the meaningful context they provide for abstract concepts. For example, counting spoons, knives and forks as you lay the table helps children understand a reason for counting.

Encouraging and trusting children to get involved in activities such as cleaning and tidying, baking, laying the table, making the bed, feeding the pets, sorting the washing matching socks and gardening gives them a sense of self-worth and personal satisfaction. They also love the one to one time spent with you.

So don’t feel bad about getting children involved in chores. They love to be involved, chat away and having that special time with you!

But, a word of caution. Expect that things will not go exactly to plan. Be prepared for jobs taking longer than normal, but the rewards are immense and provide valuable learning opportunities.