Stress Center Peer Support

I have been using the 123 Magic book the past couple of months and after reading all the posts I realized there is a lot less whining in the house. I have 4 boys ages 10 down to 3. I never knew that temper tantrums would continue throughout childhood in different stages. Of course as I started posting, my 3 year old comes to ask me something, which the answer was no. "Mommy, can I watch..." "No, tonight is movie night..." cry and whine and asking mommy "Pleeeeaaaaase" I said, "You really like that show, don't you", "Yes, may I please watch it", In a friendly, silly mommy voice "Noooooo, you just watched it the other day. You may watch it next week" sniffle, sniffle, asking again to watch it today..."Oh, you don't want to watch it next week?" "I do" and off he went to play.
I didn't think counting was the best way to handle that. I also use Dreikurs techniques found in the book Children: The Challenge by Rudolph Dreikurs, M.D. This has helped me with a lot of issues as well.
I have to find a way to get my 10 year old going in the morning without being told over and over again to the point of my yelling "YOU"RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR THE BUS....!!!!"
Motherhood sure is an adventure in learning self control.

I will have to search out Dr. Dreikurs book. I like the title. Motherhood is way more difficult than I thought it would be. When I was pregnant, I read someone saying that after having children, she "found patience she didn't know she had." Well I found out I was just as impatient as I thought I was!! It is definitely a struggle to realize there is sometimes little we have control of. I don't know if this would work with your ten-year old, but we use a "token" reward system, and my oldest is 8 next week. We got a bunch of poker chips at the dollar store and made a list of all the things we really wanted him to do by himself and assigned token values for each. We have jars..one with his name and one is the bank. The list has things like "clearing plate after meals 1 token", or hanging backpack up after school 1 token", trying a new food is 5 tokens, etc. Then he helped us make a big list of things he can spend his tokens on: Trips to Chuck E Cheese 100 tokens, picking a movie for movie night 25 tokens, staying up 10 minutes late costs him 10 tokens. He was really excited to come up with things to put on his list. Anyway, just an idea.

Thank you very much for that idea! I will definitely try something like that.
Please take care.