Kids don’t come with instruction books, mores the pity, but if Supernanny has taught me anything about raising children it’s that we get out what we put in.
Is your child always jumping into bed with you in the middle of the night? Does your kid take hours to finally settle into bed? Do you have to bribe your child with lollies to get them to behave downtown? Are you forever tripping over their toys around the house?
What you need to get your head around is this: these are primarily your problems, not your child’s, because you’re doing something wrong. In a nutshell, it’s not a genetic fault, it’s your fault.
This was a real penny-drop moment for me when I realized this. I thought my wife must have eaten a bad prawn or something during pregnancy and it had caused brain damage to the fetus.
And the key to fixing these problems is consistency and structure.
As the Supernanny says, kids thrive on structure. If you start skipping bath time or homework or holding off making dinner for two hours because you’re tired, they WILL react and whine and kick up a fuss. If you make the kids pick up their toys sometimes but not others, don’t expect them to know which day you’re okay with spraining an ankle on Barbie’s pink VW and which day you’re not. If you tuck them into bed with you at 2am in the morning because you think it’s cute or can’t be bothered walking them back to their beds, don’t expect to ever have sex again.
If your child’s behaviour is frustrating you, look first at your own behaviour in relation to what they’re doing and see if you’re encouraging it somehow. And watch Supernanny – she knows her stuff.
