New 18: Positive Parenting course

I'd been meaning to give this a course for a few years and I finally enrolled. Two for the price of one new things with this one as it was on at the Arncliffe Community Centre which has been open for a couple of years but I hadn't made it in there.

 

The course was great (and free!! thanks government). It was 4 weeks of "Positive Parenting". I thought it might be useful to do before Connah went away to cut down on the frustration and yelling. It was really excellent. It was done in a way that was easy to understand for my tired brain at 6-8pm on Thursday nights too.

 

One of the many things I got out of it was that us parents should make an effort to make the environment interesting for the kids so I made a bit more of an effort when we went on holidays to have some engaging things for them to do (balancing it out with Connah's theory of "they won't be able to entertain themselves until they get bored").

 

The big thing with positive parenting is to try to teach the kids how to solve their own problems so my new biggest saying is "what are you going to do about that?"

 

Nana, Poppy and the kids and I went down to Culburra for the week of school holidays. We were extremely lucky with the weather. Absolutely perfect beach conditions.

Above we have a couple of our activities - some plastic farm animals and dinosours from Vinnies to go with the sandcastle making. Second activity chalk to draw on the pavement. That was fun! and we can keep doing it on the footpath outside our house.

I also bought a craft bucket for $10 that I'd been eyeing off at Kmart for a while. It was a bit disappointing as the paint didn't stick to the styrofoam balls. Still at the price for 6 activities, it was ok.

Another new tradition which emerged was the "Mummy's special dessert". Toby is modelling the final nights dessert which included cake, yogurt, custard,a lamington and part of a candy cane. Gourmet food, it's not. The night before I did triffle (after we'd cooked the most amazing cake - just the plain vanilla but turned out perfectly when handbeaten by little people and in strange oven).

We also bought a cricket set and played cricket for the first time. It really was a great holiday.