Parenting with ABA Blog
Find a ton of fun and free resources for all parents to harness the power of behavior science to save your sanity!
Do You Want to be the Bringer of the Grins or the Bringer of the Power Struggles?
Do you know what one of my favorite parenting tools is? You guessed positive reinforcement, didn’t you? Close- but today I’m going with HUMOR! When things are tense- can we help ourselves and our kids to crack a smile to defuse the situation? When my kids are in a bad...
Family Meetings: Is this something we should actually be doing? Why?
Have you heard of family meetings? Do you have them regularly in your home? Have you ever tried to? What exactly is a family meeting? Why should any of us try this? And how do we do it? Let’s break it down.These are my 4 P’s of Family Meetings: Pump Up, Problem Solve,...
Are You Depending on Santa to Get Your Kids to Behave?
Earlier this week I rewrote the Elf on the Shelf to remind you that Christmas season is a time of joy- not threats of losing your gifts or getting coal in your stocking. So why stop there? How about Santa? In the spirit of focusing on what your child needs, meeting...
Make Your Holiday Traditions About Joy, Not Fear
How do you feel about the Elf on the Shelf? I’ve found that you either love it or hate it. There’s no middle ground. I’d like to rewrite the elf’s story to make it fit our positive, compassionate parenting style. Will you allow me that creative freedom? Here we go....
Whose behavior needed to be fixed? The kids’ or the parents’??
At a recent family meeting, I had put an item on the agenda- listening to mom and dad so we don’t have to repeat ourselves. In the past week, I had noticed that I was having to say things many more items than usual and my husband and I had both raised our voice more...
Attention quality vs quantity. What’s more important?
Which of these have you heard before? Your child is acting out because they need attention. Mommy, look at me! Mommy, watch! Just fill their bucket by giving more attention. A misbehaving child is just looking for more attention. I know you are WITH your child all the...
Why Sam I Am Was Actually a Useful Guy
One of the easiest behavior tools in our whole behavior toolbox is this: offering choices. Our kids want to have some control over things in their world. They want some autonomy and independence. So why don’t we give it to them? Give them some choices to give them...
Fill their bucket. Okay. But what does that really mean?!
Fill their bucket. You’ve heard me say it a million times. But what does that even mean? Picture a bucket that gets tipped out a little at a time. Water splashes out here and there all day long. Sometimes you pour it out in large quantities left and right. When the...
What do you prize? Outcomes or hard work? Do your kids know?
Praise what you prize. You’ve heard me say it a thousand times before. Praise what you prize. But what do you prize? Instead of focusing on achievements and outcomes, with a growth mindset, we focus on the process, on the effort, on the growth. We want our kids to...
Big movement before calm? Seems counterintuitive, right?
We all know that exercise is good for us, right? We know that we should be exercising multiple times a week. It’s good for our hearts, it’s good for our muscles, it’s good for our minds. Yadda yadda yadda. We get it! We need to get moving! But what about our kids?...
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