Play-date rules are a necessary part of staying sane. How many of you have nearly sat down and cried at the end of a play-date, and vowed never to have another one?

Rules for children are important, but you can’t guarantee the other parents will feel the same way. You need to make it clear that the rulses of the house apply to their children too before they drop them off at your house for an afternoon or a sleepover.

Make a card with the basics:

Our House Rules -

No hitting
No cursing
No calling names
No running in the house

And so on

I’m sure we all have certain hard and fast rules!  Don’t be embarrassed to hand the parents a card letting them know how children in your house are expected to behave!

Thing about kids, they will try and push it. Mine already know I don’t care if we have company - if they deserve a time out or a spanking, they will get one!

Of course I wouldn’t spank anyone else’s kids, but I will demand a time out for bad behavior, or I will call their parents and send them home if we have a serious problem.

Guess what? Play-dates at my house go quite smoothly. My kids tell their friends that I am dead serious if I have to threaten, and everyone behaves pretty well!

Ever have a fight with a sibling as a kid? Did your mom lock you in a room with each other till you kissed and hugged and made up?  For many parents, kids that fight constantly are shrugged of as “Oh, it’s sibling rivalry”.

The thing with kids, though - they will push you as far as you let them. My two oldest were always exceptionally close - until this summer.

All of a sudden my daughter, who is nine, decided she couldn’t stand her brother (aged seven).

Well, I could brush it off as sibling rivalry (and ignore my seven year old’s tears - he LOVES his sister) or I could do something about it.

Every time she takes her friends side against her brother or says something mean, she gets grounded.

She’s gotten grounded a lot this year, but she is getting better. My son is ecstatic that she is playing with him again, albeit a little grumpily.

On the other side, I am trying to see her point of view, that she is trying to grow up (one of those pesky things about kids, growing up)!

I try to take her on girls only outings once in a while, and sometimes she goes with Daddy to run an errand while I play with the boys.

We are all much happier now!  How do you deal with ‘Sibling Rivalry’?

I just wanted to share one of the terrific yard ideas I found this summer and did with my kids!

We wanted to make our yard a place where parents, kids and pets would be comfortable and enjoy ourselves. We built benches along two sides of the concrete patio, and put a fire pit in the middle for cold winter nights.

We ran a small fence with a gate along one end of the yard, and made it a sanctuary for the kids so they could play without our big dog knocking them down. We decided to plant a little garden in the middle, and so we started by letting the kids dig a hole.

After they wore themselves out, we tidied away the remnants of sod to make a perfect circle and dug the soil down about eight inches. We stuck long bendable metal rods in the ground around the outside of the circle and gathered them together at the tops to form a teepee.

We scattered handfuls of seeds around the base of each rod and wrapped chicken wire around the back and sides of the teepee and were done. It was the end of April, so  I was constantly rushing about, kids were busy with end of the school year activities, and we didn’t really get back out into the children’s yard for almost a month (although I made it a point to water lightly once a day).

By the time school let out the end of May, plenty of sprouts were sticking up through the soil! The kids were amazed, and I gave them the chore of keeping the sod from growing back into the circle.

The teepee gradually was covered with vines, as squash, beans, mini melons and tomato plants wound their way up the chicken wire! We had planted a row of sunflowers behind the teepee for shade, and the squirrels were a sight as they bounced on the huge flower heads looking for seeds!

I am already making plans for our garden tepee next year - the kids are lobbying for each to have one of their own. I actually got them to eat some of the veggies that grew this year, and they had a great time hiding in their green shady wigwam!

Have you ever seen the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”? It is the adorable story of a mouse that meets a little boy, who makes the mistake of giving him a cookie. The cookie leads to a glass of milk, which leads to a milk moustache, which leads to… well, you get the idea! It is great for reading with kids.

I used to read this story to my little boy every night when he was two. We found these cheap butter cookies at the store, the kind with the hole in the middle. I would give him one cookie, and he would stick it on his finger like a ring. He took one little mousy nibble for each page we turned!

It became our nightly ritual, and I would always get the book off the shelf, and call - Where is my little squeaky mouse? I haven’t heard him squeak all day - and he would jump up and go SQUEAK! It’s funny; kids will latch onto a ritual like that and keep it going for years.

He is a big boy of seven now, almost able to read the book himself, but he still wants a cookie, a hug, a kiss and a mousy sniffle on my neck every night before bed! That’s what I love about kids and books - they open the imagination and make so much more fun than just for one night!

Sarah P.