It is so frustrating when you’ve given instructions to a child only to find them distracted with something else and your original instruction lost in la-la land.

Two of my children have been easily distracted – for different reasons. Here are some of the things that I have found helpful:

• They need to be emotionally disconnected from what they were doing (often just moving them away from the activity will help here – giving the instruction “Come to Mummy” or me going and getting them and moving before giving an instruction helps)
• I make sure I have eye contact before I talk
• Hold their hands – so you are feeding their need for touch and movement (rub their hands with your fingers as you talk)
• Get them to verbalise back the instruction (maintaining eye contact)
• And then the last thing is keep their boundaries tight – which may mean go with them to ensure they do what they’ve been told, or watch them from a distance, and it certainly means inspect what they’ve done.

Though this takes time and is tiring we need to keep our eyes on our main goal. Is our goal to have them say, wash their hands (which, yes needs to happen) or is our goal to get them to focus and pay attention? We need to set our actions consistent with what our training goal really is.

We need to see boundaries as the thing that will help them do the right thing. When we send them off to do something, knowing that they are likely to be distracted we are setting them up for failure. If our presence helps, then that is the boundary they need to have. Which means if we’ve asked them to wash their hands, as soon as they go towards something else (toothbrush / shower curtain – whatever the distraction may be) we can redirect before they are connected with that something else – if we are close by.

A few other tools:

• A routine helps with a lot but of course that doesn’t help with the incidentals like ‘go wash your hands’.
• Having something to hold – like a card with a visual prompt of the instruction may help. Some people hang these prompts around their children’s necks.
• As they get older and have a sequence of activities to remember (like chores or routine activities or school assignments) a list will help – this could be visual using clip art or words once she is reading.
• They need to learn to be accountable – to report back or to tick off a list etc.

Each one of us – whether we are labelled ‘easily distracted’ or not have a set of coping skills which come into play whenever we are outside of our comfort zone. This is what we need to give our children – coping skills. When we have this mindset we change from being frustrated that they get distracted to being proactive in our parenting with their well-being as our motivation.

Read another post on the Distracted Child: Focusing for the Distracted Child

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I’ve written another article for HSB – this time about manners. If our children don’t know why manners are important we only get outward compliance. Manners need to come from their heart – we need to teach to the heart. Read Manners – touches the heart

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I was recently collating some links and resources for Character training and thought I would share them with you here:

We use Character First from about 3-4years old. The elementary school programme has songs, actions, craft, games etc as well as stories and key ideas to teach. We supplement it with Biblical content from Character Journal and Instructions for Righteousness. Though the Character First material is the base of all I teach. As the children grow older we use the Character First Business Bulletin for the basis of our discussions.

If you want to read good short stories then we’ve enjoyed the Hero Tales series by Dave and Neta Jackson. They also have a compilation book called the The Complete Book of Christian Heroes

Then there is:
Family Times
Kids of Integrity
Hubbards Cupboard
Children and Families

Some of the above is free online and others are resources we have purchased.

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I do three things to create my shopping list:

1. We keep a list of anything that we empty from fridge or pantry. The kids are responsible for adding to this list (they’ve had this responsibility since they have had the privilege of using the kitchen). If it isn’t on the list I’m not necessarily responsible for buying it!
2. I have staples that I like in my pantry and I check for those each week (I’d like to make a check list but haven’t got there yet, the list is still in my head)
3. I write a menu (for 2 weeks) then create a shopping list from that. I check my pantry/freezer first and write a menu from what is in there, and I make sure I don’t have anything on my list that we already have on the shelf.

I have my shopping list written up in Excel (Spreadsheet) – each column is an isle in my grocery store. (It took a while to make this and it needs tweaking whenever they change the isles but generally speaking it saves so much time in the store.)

Once I have typed up my shopping list (I’m a fast typist so it doesn’t take long but I have a friend who prints out the same shopping list form and fills it in by hand), so once it is all ready I cut it into strips – so a column/isle per strip of paper. I then sort out which children can best shop in which isle. I give my children several strips/isles and we all go shopping together. We do about 4 isles each and are in and out of the store for a 2 week shop in 30minutes. (I buy fruit and veg. a couple of times through the week).

Unfortunately the sales come out on a day that is awkward for me to incorporate sales products into my menu. So if I have time midweek I’d duck into the store and buy the specials for those staples that we keep in the pantry or freezer. I would then use those to make my menu the following week.

shopping list 2010

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Though my children are no longer toddlers this post Taming the Toddller Chaos with Audio reminded me about the learning opportunity of mp3!

I am so enjoying my teenager children – my heart connected with this post: Driving you Crazy or Driving you Closer?

Jasmine reflects on how to keep her heart (and other young girls’ hearts) pure and yet still have friendships with the young men in her life. Excellent!

Women Living Well reflects on a teaching session by Sally Clarkson on parenting. Wish I heard it live!!

I’m using this list What does the Bible say about Prefer One Another to build our family devotion thoughts.

I just love this quote from Children Desiring God – The greatest need of the next generations is to know and cherish the infinite value of God. Therefore we want them to become so saturated with the Word of God that they treasure Jesus alone as the One who saves and satisfies the heart.

In my last newsletter I linked Character Training and Praise.

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