Strictness and fun in the upbringing of children

Once, as a teenager, I helped my mother cook dinner( I quite freely use the concept of "helped", as you'll soon see).Of course, my mother actually cooked, and I just had to bring frozen polka-dots to her from the refrigerator. For some reason, I can not explain which, I took a packet with peas around the corner and cut it off with scissors just below my own fingers. Naturally, the package( except for the small corner that remained in my hand) fell to the floor, and all the peas scattered in the kitchen - under the fridge, stove, dishwasher and our feet.

I looked in horror at my mother, who already had enough cares with meat, sauce and vegetables. I waited for the inevitable rebuff *. .. But instead, my mother suddenly burst out laughing.

And you know what? Since then, I've never made this mistake again( yes, I'm aware that most people somehow manage to live life without allowing it at all).The moral is that I did not need to arrange a disgrace to teach me not to do so in the future. In my opinion about the mother and our relationship, her laughter was influenced much more and better than what could have been influenced by the conversation about what kind of fool I was( which, frankly, was quite obvious).

Of course, it was pure coincidence, albeit idiotic. And how to be in those cases when children purposely exasperate you or freak you? Even then, you can often turn the problem into a joke. If you are joking or gentle, loving teasing children at the right time, you are likely to destroy their determination to poison you with the next five minutes of life. As a result, you will all have fun and become even more friends.

John Berningham's excellent children's book "What do you like. .?"( Would You Rather. .?).The author asks the children what they would prefer: for example, to get smeared into jam, get wet in water or get dirty in mud, after driving on the ground after the dog?(I highly recommend you - the book, of course, and not fouling in the mud.) My younger children love her very much, and from time to time, when they start to play about, I resolve the situation with a question like: "What do you like best: stop it now, go to your room for five minutes or endure thirty seconds of tickling? "They start giggling and are distracted from what they were about to do, and it seems to me that it gives them pleasure that I do not swear at them. And after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that some adults could be helped by the same method.