Questions Part 1

I am always open for questions....I love to ask questions!!! You learn a great deal from asking the right questions! I am super transparent and I have sometimes put myself in bad situations because I asked a question that I wished I could take back. Have you ever been there? But over all I am glad I am so curious because I have asked questions that others want to know but would never ask!!! Anyway.....I am asked the most random questions by people sometimes they are thoughtful sometimes they are funny. I am surprised by the number of you guys who email me with questions but do not ask them here! I thought I would answer some over the next few blogging times. I will not attach any names of those who have emailed me a question or asked it in person but feel free to ask a question here if you want to ....I do not promise to know the answer but I will attempt one anyway!!

1) How did you potty train your kids? First......Don't stress!! The short answer is they were naked A LOT!!!! They ran around naked or only in their undies a great deal of the time....It is just easier! We had lots of rewards and claps and showing daddy...He always made a BIG deal but I am sure he was less than thrilled to come home from a long day at work to have to get excited about poop that had been waiting in the potty for him!!!! But he is a great daddy so he played along!!! Some of mine were super easy....some not so easy. A couple of them started going pee quickly but it was a good 6 mos later for the poop. Honestly, there isn't a magic age or time. If you try to push this you will be frustrated about something that will eventually happen.

2) What is the craziest thing you have ever tried raising your kids? Well there are many of these but in light of the first question I will give you this one!! When I was a new first time mother....16 years ago I read an article about potty training an infant. This seems to be a big deal today for some as it is all over the web. I tried doing this very diligently for about a week and then I started asking myself......And why am I doing this?? I think I just wanted to be able to say that I had trained my baby to pee on the potty before she could even hold her head up good???!!!! Nuts! Well if you want to do this go for it and if you did do this....awesome!! However for me it was definitely up there in the "what was I thinking category!" By the way this is not my child...although I must confess that I do have a picture of her! 3) Do you spank? Yes!! Absolutely! We have spanked all of our children although some more than others....some much more than others! Always for direct disobedience and we certainly used other forms of discipline. Just for clarification...this is NOT a beating.....this is not hitting, slapping, humiliating! Do they hurt...of course but they were not beatings. I had a parent tell me that she couldn't very well tell her child not to hit and then turn around and hit them. To which I turned to my then 8 year old son who was playing near by and asked him the question...."Has Mommy or Daddy ever hit you? Ever? Ever?" His answer..."No way" To which I replied to the woman...."I spanked him this morning" You see he did not equate it the same in his head....not in our house anyway. A spanking was controlled and given as a consequence not a reaction to the child in anger. I can't tell you an exact age that we stopped spanking them but I will say around 9 -10......why? Well, because the major direct disobedience things were under control by then! We punish differently for things as they get older. I'll leave that for another question time!

Love those babies!