It’s so interesting that once our babies start toddling around, creating a lot more mess in their insatiably curious and neverending activity, we expect ourselves to have a perfectly tidy home. When your baby was younger you probably imagined that once she started sleeping through the night and playing independently you would get a handle on the chores. Surprise!

Mothering a toddler is fun but constant vigilance. Not only are you concerned with her physical safety but you are rightly concerned with her emotional health as well. You want to have fun and play with your little one but as an adult, you have a need for some order. What to do? Here are some tips that have worked for many other Moms.

Rethink Housework & Define Your Minimums

Try to lower your standards a bit. If your house could pass the white glove test before you had kids and you try to keep up that standard now, you could drive yourself nuts.

If you have a lot of trouble doing this, then think for a moment about why. Are you trying to live up to someone else’s idea of what your house should look like? Are you worried about what your mother, mother in law or neighbors might think? In any case, if you’re feeling judged, take a look at that and decide what’s more important to you. Do you want a perfect home or do you want to have a happy toddler whose Mommy has time to play?

Decide what is important to you and figure out how to do those tasks as quickly and easily as possible. For instance, you may hate to feel dirt under your feet when you walk across the floors but a little dust doesn’t bother you. Keeping that chore done consistently will make the house feel clean to you.

Make Some Lists

Grab a sheet of paper and decide which chores can be skipped, which chores can be simplified, and which chores you can get help with. Is it really essential to fold underwear or can they be placed neatly in a drawer? Can socks be tossed into a drawer and the wearer match them himself? It is really necessary to separate all the kid’s laundry or can most things be washed together?

Clear out clutter as much as possible. Clutter makes housework more difficult, time consuming and downright dangerous (like when you are tripping over things in the basement or having items fall on your head in closets). Go through your house with a large trash bag on a regular basis and throw things out if they don’t make you smile when you look at them. Donate it to charity and feel good about yourself!

I Helped!

Your toddler can do a surprising number of household chores and will probably be delighted to imitate you. When you dust, hand her a microfiber dusting cloth and let her “help”. Toddlers love to splash their hands in water. Maybe she could “wash dishes” in the sink next to you. She may not be so great at folding laundry, but can she dig out all the socks and put them in a pile for you? Perhaps she can help unload the dishwasher by handing you the spoons and forks. At this stage, the point is not to have her doing chores but rather to keep her happy and close while you get some work done.

Can you hire out some of the household chores? Don’t dismiss this right away. If your budget is slim, you might know a teenager who is in need of some extra cash who could come over and help you out. Or maybe you would be willing to forego a dinner out here and there to pay for an occasional housekeeper.

Make Cleaning Convenient

Keep non toxic cleaning products and tools handy so that when you have a moment or two, you can go a quick task.

When your toddler is in the bathtub you have to be in the bathroom to supervise her anyway. Why not clean the floor, sink and toilet while you’re in there? Baking soda sprinkled in the sink and toilet will scrub effectively and sweeten the air too. For an inexpensive multi purpose cleaner that you can use around little ones: fill a 32 ounce spray bottle with water, and add a teaspoon of dishwashing liquid.

Keep It Fun

Make picking up a game by asking your child to “find all the red things and put them into the toy bin”. Or have them pick up 5 things then come find you for a great big bear hug or tickle. You can also plan something fun after cleaning to create a natural incentive to get things done. “As soon as we pick up all the toys, it will be time to go to the playground!” Kids respond well to quick cleaning sessions. The “10 second tidy” where everyone picks up and puts away as quickly as possible work well. And the effect is lost on me, but a lot of kids love to sing the Barney clean up song when they’re tidying.

Life with little ones around is a bit like using spaghetti for bookends: fun but certainly messy. Enjoy it while it lasts!

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Angie was brought up by rigid, authoritarian parents who kept her on a tight leash. They rarely considered her feelings about anything, showing a complete lack of empathy and compassion for her feelings and desires. If she came home five minutes late from school or from an activity, she was punished. Yelling and hitting were their favorite forms of punishment.

Angie was a good girl. She did well in school and did what she was told, but was often sad and lonely and never felt important. When she married and had her own children, she knew that she didn’t want to treat her children the way she had been treated. She wanted to consider their feelings and needs. She wanted them to feel valued and important.

Angie was a very loving mother. She spent lots of time with her children, playing with them, listening to them, and giving them much affection and approval. However, because it was so vital to Angie that her children feel valued and important, she often put herself aside and gave in to their demands. Because Angie had never felt important, it was easy to put herself aside. She actually believed that her children’s feelings and needs were more important than hers. As a result, Angie swung the other way from her own upbringing and became a permissive parent.

The consequences for Angie of authoritarian parenting was that she didn’t value herself. The results for her children of permissive parenting was that her children grew up with entitlement issues, thinking they were more important than others, and often not being caring and respectful toward others.

Neither authoritarian nor permissive parenting is loving parenting. Loving parenting is parenting that values both the parents’ and the children’s feelings and needs. Loving parents do not attempt to control their children - other than in actual situations of health and safety - nor do they allow their children to control them. They do not violate their children with anger, blame, or hitting, nor do they allow their children to violate them. They do not expect their children to give themselves for others, nor do they give themselves up for their children.

Loving parents are parents who deeply value themselves enough to not worry about being rejected by their children. They are willing to set solid limits on unacceptable behavior and are not available to being manipulated by their children. Their identities are not tied into their children’s performance in school or in other activities, such as sports. Nor are their identities tied up in how their children look. They are accepting of who their children are as individuals, even when their children are very different from them. They do not impose their way of being onto their children, yet at the same time they solidly reinforce a value system that includes honesty, integrity, caring, compassion, kindness and empathy.

As much as we want to be loving parents, unless we have done our own inner work to heal our own deep fears of rejection and domination, we will automatically be acting out of these fears without being consciously aware of it. If you grew up with fears of rejection and/or domination, you will automatically protect against these fears in your relationships with your children. You may find yourself trying to control them out of a fear of being controlled or rejected by them. You might be controlling with your anger or with your giving in and giving yourself up. Fears of rejection can manifest with children through trying to control them with anger, or through trying to control their love through giving yourself up to them. Fears of domination can manifest through controlling them with anger or violence to avoid being controlled by them. Insecurities can manifest through attempting to get your children to perform in the way you want in order to define your worth.

In one way or another, whatever is unhealed within you will surface in your behavior with your children. Raising healthy children means first healing the wounded child within you - the part of you that has your fears and insecurities, and your desire to protect against rejection and domination.

Our society has swung back and forth between authoritarian and permissive parenting and the result of both is far less than desirable. We have only to look at the number of people taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, as well as the number of alcoholics and drug addicts, as well as the rise of crime and the number of people in prisons, to know that neither method works to raise healthy individuals.

Perhaps it is time to accept that we need to be in the process of healing ourselves before becoming parents.

About The Author

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone sessions available.

margaret@innerbonding.com

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Even as a busy parent, I’m sure you’ve seen a poker show on TV or at least heard your friends or relatives talking about it. You might even be someone who’s caught up in the poker craze of the past two years, riding the wave of a steep learning curve. As an avid poker player and father of two, I realize more each day how my poker skills help me raise my kids. Want to know how? Here are four ways to turn your poker skills into parenting thrills:

Play the Hand You’re Dealt
No Limit Texas Hold Em is exciting to play because any hand can win. And that’s what separates a professional from an amateur — the ability to win pots with bad hands.

The same is true for fatherhood. The “hand we’re dealt” is the family environment we grew up in. Let’s face it — none of us grew up in an ideal environment, just as none of us gets dealt a pair of aces every hand. But the beauty of No Limit Texas Hold Em — and fatherhood — is that any hand can win; it all depends on how you play it.

Give Action to Get Action
In poker, you should occasionally play hands you wouldn’t normally play, in order to “give action” to other players. Then when you have a good hand and bet, those players are more likely to give the action back to you.

So what kind of action are you giving your kids? Do you play games they like to play, even if they seem silly? Do you regularly attend their school events? Are you there during difficult times? Even if you’re not interested in the activity, your involvement shows genuine interest in your children. They might not understand that message, but they will feel it, and that’s much more important.

Look for Diamonds in the Muck
We’re never quite prepared for the shocks and challenges that life deals us. Our daughter, Ashley, was only two when my wife and I discovered she had diabetes. Our lifestyle changed dramatically as we learned to control this disease.

What can parents do when experiencing a bad beat like this? Look for diamonds in the muck. In other words, look for the positive in a negative experience.

One of the positives of Ashley’s diabetes is learning to be disciplined and have self-control. She can’t simply follow her impulses to eat whatever she wants, whenever she wants. As a diabetic teenager someday, that discipline will help her when she is studying in high school.

The Thrill (and Chill) of Going All In
“I’m all in” — three words every poker player loves to say. It’s do-or-die when you commit all your chips. So what does going all in as a father mean? It means making an all-out commitment to your kids.

Dropping them off or picking them up from daycare or school. Eating some dinners together as a family each week. Helping them solve problems with their friends. What commitments do you make on a consistent basis?

Fatherhood brings lots of work and responsibility, so going all in can be chilling — a daunting task with little reward. If you think of all the little ways you’re building a relationship with your kids, going all in is thrilling — and many of the rewards come years later. But that kind of sums up parenting doesn’t it?

To learn more about relating poker to parenting, research on fatherhood, and fatherhood organizations, go to http://learninginterface.com/ and click on Tele-seminars. Treat yourself or a father you know to Mark’s tele-seminar on June 16, a unique Father’s Day gift.

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