The days may be getting shorter but the summer holidays are getting long,so here are some helpful hints to avoid the little angels ending up on the barbecue before bedtime.
- Go to the loo & take your book – they’re often worse with an audience, if you shut the door the noise isn’t so bad and you can get ahead in your holiday reading.
2. Invite a friend or two – dilution sometimes works, and even if it doesn’t you can look forward to the day one of yours gets invited back.
3. Head it off at the pass – when they start give them a chore to do, if they don’t work it out and calm down at least you’ll have the dishwasher emptied and their rooms tidied.
4. Take the dog for a walk – alone. Depending on their age of course, if they’re old enough nip the dog round the block for a justified breather, my dog is exhausted, I have thighs of steel and they’re still bickering when I get back, but it was a lovely 20 minutes.
5. Divide and conquer – there are two ways of doing this, if they have any sibling loyalty then punish one of them quite hard, the other will leap to their defense. If they don’t be really horrid to both/all of them and within minutes they’ll be huddled together moaning about how mean you are.
So that’s it for the Do’s, here are a few Do Not’s:
- Do not threaten things that will damage your own sanity, for example banning TV, Ds for the day or even worse, you’ve heard of the saying “shooting yourself in the foot"?
- Do not think that tiring them out in the day is the answer, it isn’t. They’ll just be knackered, grumpy and horrid all evening, and so will you.
Finally, when things get really bad, imagine you’ve just received a phone call saying they’ve been in an awful accident, and be happy they’re bickering – it’s character building after all, for them of course - not you.
