Kids, Things I've learned.

• Give the kids half of what you expect to give them for a meal, not al of it, 'cause if they throw it on the ground, you still have stuff left. You can also judge how hungry they are by how each polishes off what you do put in front of them. "Do you want more?".

• Don't make them clean their plate like my parents did. Esp females, you don't want eating disorders. Let them figure out for themselves how much they should eat.

• get the veggies out for dinner first so that they are eating the stuff that would otherwise be hard to get them to eat at the beginning of the meal, when they are most hungry. I like do oing raw veggies at the start of dinner because it gets them out of my hair so that I can finish dinner.

• baby lead weaning... get them eating real food early, nawing on the same food as the adults as soon as feasible (I have toddlers who eat curry and olives and stuff like that.)

• Never fill their cup all the way, when they tip it over it's not as big a mess, and if they want more , no big deal.

• Let them try alcohol early ( 3 years old even ). Explain that it's an adult drink.

• include the children in the plan. Let them know what the plan is as soon as you can. Consult them as to what they would like to do. Consider providing them with options so that they can be part of deciding what the plan is.

• Let them try to do what ever they want. As much as possible. Cooking, Cleaning, Laundry, Feeding the cat, Gardening, painting, shoveling snow.

• Introduce them to the heat of the stove manually. With Sibs I did this at around 2 1/2 years. Here's how I do it. While making dinner I pick up the kid and walk over to the stove. I explain what I'm doing. I talk about cooking food. I hold my hand out and say warm , hot , hotter as I move my hand closer. I encourage the kid to put his / her hand out and feel the heat. "Do you feel the heat?". Points of note: 1. I am very careful that the kid is not close enough to be able to reach out and grab the pot ot pan or what ever is cooking. 2. something else i don't recall. I'm over all not worried about the kid getting burned because it's a good lesson and with me right there it can't be a big burn. It's what I call a "supervised" lesson. I do this several times. The lesson is about cooking and heat and the danger of heat. In many cases the kid is too small to see what I'm doing while I cook. So of course they want to see what I'm doing. So Lift them up and hold them on my hip and explain doing dinner and cooking.

• Once I'm sure that the kid gets heat and cooking and burns ... I then introduce matches. I show them a match that's not lit, then I show them how to light a match and the heat it makes. So far so good.

• don't put hazardous chemicals for cleaning in the cupboard under the sink. Don't put locks on cupboards, there is no reason why the kids can't get into the cupboards. I like to let the kid explore the cupboards, pots and pans, mixing bowls, tupperware stuff, let them figure it out. It's noisey and messey and they won't clean up , but they will have fun and it's not dangerous.