You are fed up. After doing so much for your kids, they still throw a tantrum when they don’t get their way. Here is how to change spoiled behavior in your kiddos.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Your child brings home a page of a page of double-digit subtraction problems.

You know… the kind where you have to “borrow” from the tens place to do the operation in the ones place.

You got this, you think…

But no, your kid politely informs you. You aren’t supposed to borrow. Instead, your child needs to use a method where he “counts up” from the number.

What in the world? This isn’t subtraction…at least not the way you learned it.

How are you expected to help your kid when the method doesn’t even make sense?

Every time I attend one of my daughter’s dance performances, I see this mom who looks like she’s in a constant state of panic.

She leans forward in the front row watching every step and studying every move.

When the dancers leave the stage, she corners her daughter. I hear her say,

“That was great, but you need to smile more.”
“Next time, kick your leg up a little higher.”

The criticism is all well-meaning.  She’s being nice and I can see that all she wants is for her daughter to improve.

I get that.

Her daughter retorts with an “OK mom, OK” and walks off.

It’s this gigantic indoor wonderland.

Ziplines racing across the ceiling.

Kids climbing rock walls and jumping off 20-foot towers on my left. As a kid, I would feel like my parents took me to Disneyland.

But NOT my son…

“Mommy, it’s too loud”

“Mommy, I don’t want to do anything here.”

“Mommy, Sissy won’t wait for me. She’s running too fast.”

Sigh.

“NO! I don’t like anything! I’m not going to eat!”

We had just arrived at the Guinness storehouse during our Dublin vacation.

You picture vacations as these idealized wonderlands, but, when you have kids, NOTHING goes as planned.

I come downstairs to see a pile of dishes in the sink. I hate dishes.

Unfortunately, I’m in this tough spot where I don’t want to do them and yet I have not yet assigned responsibility of them to anyone else.

Sure, we say its our kids’ job is to unload the dishwasher.

However, it doesn’t happen automatically.

I call to my kids, “Hey, the dishwasher needs unloading”

“OK,” my four-year-old yells, “I’ll do it when I come home from school!”

How does he know how to procrastinate at 4? I know what happens. He promises to do some household chore and then conveniently forgets when he comes home.

“Mom, I can’t do this. I’m scared”

My daughter glares at me from the backseat, ready to cry. I can see it.

Recently, she’s developed a fear of bumpy and windy roads. Every road trip we take, her first question is always, “Will it be bumpy?”

I have no idea how this started or how the fear originated, but man, she can work herself up to the point where she starts feeling stomach aches and refuses to eat.