I’d like to introduce you to the best parenting tool that I have come across for years. It’s one of these.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Really? A night-club bouncer clicker is one of the best parenting tools you’ve come across in years?”
Well, yes it is and let me explain why. We parents, I think, are busier than ever. We’re dashing around to and fro at the weekend. Taking our children to sports clubs, trying to see relatives, getting the household jobs done, we’re distracted by our phones, and it’s really, really difficult to be courageously honest about our parenting in the busy flow that we’re in. I find one of these interrupts that flow by just setting myself a weekly challenge, or a weekend challenge, or even an hourly challenge, to monitor some of my behaviours. I find that, actually, this little device and clicking really helps me be reflective in the middle of a busy, frantic time with my children.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get to the time that my children leave home, and then suddenly start thinking, “My word, I wish I’d done it differently.” This little device interrupts my thinking, and enables me to start to change the way in which I behave. So let me give you an example. Just a simple thing about praising and encouraging my children. When my children are praised and encouraged about what they’re showing or displaying it helps them continue to develop that, it helps them feel good about themselves, it helps them feel loved. But in the business, I sometimes forget to do that. I set myself a challenge for getting 20 clicks on a Saturday morning or for example not looking at my phone. I set myself a challenge of not being distracted by my phone more than five times and I keep a clicker in my pocket and every time I pick my phone up I might click it. It sounds a silly little gimmicky thing but honestly, give it a go. When we interrupt our thinking patterns it enables us to create new ones. This is why each week in my newsletter I have a weekly clicker challenge, to enable all parents to interrupt thinking patterns and create new ones.
Being courageously honest as parents is all about reflecting and improving and playing to our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses. Click here to see where to buy one of these and make sure you sign up to my weekly newsletter where I send a weekly parenting clicker challenge out for you to try at home with your family and with your children and while you’re here, why not subscribe to my youtube channel.