Parenting Advice: Mother’s Day with a Twist

by LisaBunnage on May 12, 2012

This is to all you moms who are tired, stressed and just plain worn out.  Mother’s Day is only one day but it can make a huge difference in the rest of your week, or even several weeks.  Rather than having the family just take you out somewhere so they can enjoy the day also, why not make a huge list of chores for them to do.  Make it clear that’s what you’d like instead of being taken out.  If they object, say it’s supposed to be your day and it would make your day to see them working around the house.

Here are some suggestions:

  • Clean theirkids gardening 150x150 Parenting Advice: Mothers Day with a Twist rooms
  • Clean the garage
  • Help you collect everything to sell in a garage sale, price tags and all
  • Clean all the windows
  • Give you a manicure/pedicure
  • Clean your car
  • Dig up the garden ready for planting
  • Plant flowers, vegees, etc.
  • Get all the family bikes cleaned up, tires pumped, etc.
  • Paint a room

You can either stay home and supervise, or go out for a leisurely lunch with your Mom.  Then the whole family can order pizza for dinner and eat it out on the patio.  Let them sit there exhausted after working around the house all day instead of you icon smile Parenting Advice: Mothers Day with a Twist

Lisa Bunnage, Parenting Coach & Mom (email: lisa@bratbusters.com)

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Parenting Advice: Mommy needs to play too!

by LisaBunnage on May 10, 2012

aerobics 150x150 Parenting Advice: Mommy needs to play too!Us moms are so busy scheduling our kids play dates that we forget about us.  Find something you like to do and see if you can’t schedule that to include your kids.

My idea of fun was aerobics.  I’d go to the gym every day with the kids.  I’d do aerobics and have coffee with friends while they played and had snacks with their friends.

The hard part was giving up the gym for about 21 months:  pregnancy then waiting for them to get up on their feet.  I just couldn’t get myself to drop them off in gym daycare when they were crawling … germs, dirt, fingers getting stepped on.  Also, they weren’t really interacting with others so would just sit there waiting for Mommy … heartbreaking.

But, once they were walking they loved going to the gym and would cry on days we didn’t go, which were rare.

What do you do for fun for yourself?  Can it incorporate the kids?

Lisa Bunnage, Parenting Coach & Mom (email:  lisa@bratbusters.com)

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Parenting Advice: Family Behaviour Board

Here is my Family Behaviour Board (as seen on Global Morning News with Steve Darling & Sophie Lui). Notice that Mommy & Daddy are included on this board. If you would like full instructions on how to use this system, it will be included in my next Newsletter.   Lisa Bunnage, Parenting Coach (Email:  Lisa@BratBusters.com) [...]

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Parenting Advice: Sons at War

Here is my parenting column from The Sunday Province.  This is the last column as The Province are going away from the parenting section altogether.  I’ll sure miss hearing from the readers. Q: My kids are at it again: fight fight fight! You’ve said in previous columns to separate fighting siblings but that didn’t work [...]

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Parenting Advice: 14 year old daughter partying with 20 year olds

Here is my column from The Vancouver Province about partying teens:  (Excuse the picture, thought it was particularly appropriate as is Hugh Grant caught partying with a bunch of college girls … ewwwww.  Young girls are often attracted to older guys … it’s up to us parents to stand guard and prevent something like this [...]

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Parenting Advice: How to help your kids be Popular

Here is my segment on Global Morning News with Sophie Lee and Steve Darling. Popularity is EVERYTHING to children.  Their whole world revolves around having friends, being included, being liked, etc.  The key is to make their world as big as possible.  Get them involved in anything and everything inside and outside of school.  That [...]

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Parenting Advice with Child in Charge

Here is my column from The Sunday Province: Q: We are wondering if our seven-year-old son has some serious psychological problem. He has violent outbursts that can last for hours. He got so mad one day that he got out a bag of flour and threw it all over the living room. It took us [...]

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‘Hot Problems’ video: Would you want your daughter in this?

This ‘Hot Problems’ video has gone viral.  It’s gone viral because it’s done by and about teenagers and they’re all over stuff like this.  They are looking up exactly what these girls have put in as their keywords/tags (hot girls, double take, hot problems, blonde, hot, girls, teen).  These tags would indicate that boys were [...]

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How to Parent Fighting Siblings

Here is my column from The Sunday Province: Q: We have two sons who have often fought but now that they’re 12 and 14 the fights are getting more serious. I came home from work to find a hole in the wall of our family room. They were arguing and the 14-year-old threw a glass [...]

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How to protect your kids from the Internet

Here is my column from The Province newspaper: Q: We have two daughters (9 and 11) who each have smart phones, tablets and laptops. We hired a tech guy to set up their devices with as many blocks as possible to protect them from questionable content. He told us that there’s only so much he [...]

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