Learning the right attitude from my son...

I am quite finicky about letting my kids handle food, juice or anything for the matter. I always think that they don't pay attention and so more often than not end up spilling it all over the place. Hence, whenever they take a can of juice from fridge I will be giving them a running commentary on how they should concentrate and what they should do. And if they spill it when I am not around I would raise my voice and say "Who asked you to take it? You could have asked me", "Didn't I tell you so many times not to take the juice yourself?", "It is fine if you want to take it but pay attention".  Argh! I hate myself for being such a bad father. I know I should not be saying all of those things while all my kids are doing is being independent. Sure I would have also spilled my share of stuff while I grew up.  Anyway, it was not until my son gave me a shocker that I realized I need to stop myself doing that. And what did my son do?...

One day I spilt a whole glass of juice on the kitchen floor, along with some chips. Yeah, the tray just slipped out of my hand. Hearing the sound my son came running in, looked at the mess on the floor and said : "It is alright papa, we will just clean it".

Shame on me!

Be ready to act it out for kids

Many a times I have to give a clear message to my kids, like, not to play with electric gadgets. I have found that acting it out works better than telling them.

So rather than telling them that playing with electric gadgets is dangerous, I would do a dramatic acting of getting an electric shock. I would go to the extend of talking to the doctor over phone regarding it, and telling my kids that doctor scolded me for not being careful. That works much better than any long lectures.

In cases where I can't really act it out, like when explaining them the dangers of crossing road without paying attention, I rely on youtube! I first tell them, then show couple of youtube videos of silly road accidents and then reinforce it by telling what went wrong. With kids, it seems, seeing is believing!