Adventures in Parenting

 One of the challenges we have been facing is getting our son to be cooperative, especially when we are in a hurry. Invariably, we sometimes get to the point where we end up telling up " You have to do this right now, or else...".  We don't like using this approach, but when we are stressed, and the child turns rebellious, I'm sure most parents end up getting into this mode.  I finally have found great solution for this, which has been working quite well this past week.  It is this wonderful book called "1800+ Reward Stickers - Ideal For Teachers And Parents". The book is filled with small stickers which say things like 'Awesome' , 'Excellent', 'Great job', 'Fantastic'.. It has some star stickers, some of animals etc. The sort that would appeal to any kid.  So now, when we want him to do something, but he's not in the mood to cooperate, we try to tell him 'Do this like a superboy, and you will get a superboy sticker on...

 When our son turned about 3, we got him a real bicycle with support wheels. After about 6 months, my wife felt it was time for us to remove the support wheels  and that it was time to teach him "proper' cycling :) I felt it was a bit too early, but my wife was confident.  So,, she took off the support wheels, and took him out to cycle every evening. This was also the time I no longer had work from home, and I was flooded with work. After about a week of trying to teach my son to cycle, my wife came back to me and said " It's only the men who are teaching the kids to cycle. Women can't handle this. So, you teach him ' ;p  So, I started. The trouble was figuring out where to hold the cycle while he pedalled the bicycle. I tried holding the handlebars for a while, but quickly realized it was too intrusive. Pretty much the only other option was holding the backseat. Now, this required me to bend down a lot, and I was struggling with backpain in about 10 minutes....