Parenting Idea

So Aaron and I are taking a parenting class. I decided to post a small note on what I gained from the class. Hope it can help out someone. This week we talked about Competition vs Cooperation. It was awesome. She said we need to be careful breeding competion in our home. Kids will inevitably face competion out in the world and we can not stop that, but we can control the competion in our home. Instead of saying, "The first one ready for bed gets ice cream first!" say "when everyone is ready for bed, we can have ice cream." Make our home a WIN-WIN situation. Have games where everyone wins: (i.e. family score rather than individual scores). Like if you go bowling say, "if we get a family score of 300 we can go for ice cream." Yes kids will learn there are losers and winners out there in the world, but we need to make them feel that at home they will always be a winner. I will be posting some thoughts about past lessons later.