parenting tip of the week

I just got back from a week long vacation with my family in San Antonio. It was heaven. Good food. Good times. Surprisingly well behaved kids.

For those of you who don't already know, I have a very large family. I'm the youngest of six kids. Two of my sisters and one of my brothers are married with children. All together there were twenty-one of us living together this week.

It is interesting to see the different parenting techniques that my siblings use. I think they are all good parents but they are all different too.

My brother Mike and his wife Kelly have been taking a parenting class through their church. It's hard to say if the change in their daughter, Ella, is because of the parenting class or just because their daughter is 8 months older than the last time I saw her, or if it is because their daughter has had surgery to fix her very painful throat since the last time I saw her but the difference is night and day. I never saw the girl cry once. She is a happy little girl.

So I asked them what they learned at their class. The most interesting trick they learned was "couch time." Kids want their parents to be together. The kids are happier when you show them that your marriage is one of your priorities. The trick is simply to sit down on the couch, with the kids, and talk. Take time for one another.

I asked if sitting on the couch watching TV counted as couch time. Nope. Nor does making dinner together. Not even taking a walk together. The key is to not be doing anything else, just focusing on each other.

So what are the benefits of couch time? The kids are more secure in your relationship and that makes them happier, but the real benefit that the parents have found is that the kids no longer feel the need to come into the parents' bedroom at night. Often times the bedroom at night was the only place that the kids would see the parents together not doing anything else. Now that they had couch time the kids didn't need to come into the bedroom. My brother said that it worked right away. And then after a couple of days of not having couch time, their daughter started trying to come into their room again!

I like being the youngest- I get to see and learn from the mistakes and discoveries that my older siblings make.