Children: The Challenge

I am reading this book recommended to me. The author is Rudolf Dreikurs and the book was originally published in the 1960's. I have read the first 4 chapters and it has been good so far. I can tell that this book is going to help me to be a better mother.

I am going to post about the book as I read it, because there is useful information here. Last night I read about helping your children to feel natural consequences of their actions instead of punishing them for their behavior. For example, if your child repetitively makes bad decisions such as forgetting their lunch every day, allow them to experience what happens when they forget their lunch - in this case, not having a lunch to eat. Luckily, this isn't something that my kids do...because I don't know if I could do that or if the school would be very appreciative of that, but the concept is good. I think that so many of us try to do everything for our kids and it is frustrating to us, but it is how we train them...that we will take care of EVERYTHING no matter whether they help or not. So, I am going to try to implement this...the best example of this for our family is meal time. I originally planned not to be a short-order cook for my children but somehow I have become one anyhow. I am going to make a plan to have them eat what we are having for meals and if they choose not to eat, then they will have to learn that they will have to be hungry until the next eating opportunity. On most nights I usually do not fix them a separate meal, but I do let them have a snack sometimes later in the evening...so, I will not use dessert as a reward for eating and I will not force them to eat their meal, but I am going to have them wait until the next meal if they choose not to eat the meal with us. I will attempt to implement this in other ways as well and see how it goes. What do you think? What do you do with your children to help them learn appropriate behavior?