Have you been following along on our journey to incorporate the 4 Step Process to Setting Healthy Limits & Sticking to them with Success? When used together, Proactive Agreements, Empathy, Restating Agreements, & Choices, helps kids feel respected, empowered & at choice….which leads them to respect your limits better and more consistently.

Over the last month, we’ve covered the first three steps:

1.) Making proactive agreements to make them part of the team

2.) Using empathy right away to help our kids feel less like aliens, and more like they belong (resulting in a diminished desire to misbehave)

Now this week, we’re moving on to:

3.) Restating the agreement – simple and easy “What was our agreement?” or “Remember what we talked about in the car before we walked into the playdate”?

And now…our final step is…CHOICES!

4.) Choices – give kids an A or B kind of choice & let them choose.

• Do you want to walk to the car or have me carry you?
• Would you like apples & almond butter or celery & dip/dip (instead of a cookie)?
• Do you want to get out of the bath now & have time for 3 books, or wait longer and only have time for 1 book?
• Do you want to wear the red shoes or blue shoes?
• Do you want to leave the park now or in 5 minutes?
• Would you like to buckle your carseat buckles like a cheetah or a racehorse?
• Should we listen to the music loud or soft when we get in the car?
• Would you like me to be the DJ or you choose the music once we’re buckled in?

By offering empathy as the first step in this process, your creativity will naturally be engaged, to help you think of some choices that will work for the situation at hand, but if you can’t think of anything, don’t panic….just give your self a second to breathe & think. Something WILL come to you. And if it doesn’t, that’s ok, just try again tomorrow! It will get easier with practice to come up with choices, I promise you!

---

 

What if you could be an effective, firm & kind parent WITHOUT relying on fear, force, bribery & rewards?

Imagine learning a new way of firm (AND kind) parenting so you can end painful generational parenting cycles and create family legacies & memories YOU are proud of?

All while getting your kids to cooperate with your rules and boundaries with ease.

IMAGINE … Parenting your kids with calm & confidence each day in a way that causes them to do what’s asked of them because they WANT to (not because they HAVE to) … because you’re helping to build essential life skills that have them behaving well & being respectful when you’re NOT looking! The Firm & Kind Parenting Blueprint is your step by step plan & video training to help you build the family of your dreams. Click HERE to learn more now!

---