Update

We have been working at removing the junk from the girls diets especially that in the form of "snack bars". We have bought a Breadmaker, makes brillient dough for home made pizza and I am playing with various bread recipes. I have also started to bake.... yes actually creaming butter and sugar, flour and baking powder type cooking, not prepackaged cake mix, but from scratch. The oldest girl has complained a bit about how she eats homemade while her friends eat yummy LCM's etc, I told her that her frinds are probably thinking yum, homemade chocolate shortbread. We have noticed a big change in the girl's behaviour, whether this is because of the diet changes, or the lifestyle changes or a combination of both I am unsure.

I have done sooooooo much reading on parenting of late, I have read so many different philosophies and theories on child rearing written by many people from many walks of life, we have used a number of the ideas in these books and have really enjoyed the changes we are seeing in the girls. A big success we have had is settling at bedtimes... now we ask the children to go to bed at about 7pm, they are told they can read for as long or as short as they see fit. We have found consistently that number two calls at about 730pm for tuck in and prayer, when she calls we also do the goodnights and prayer with older one except we allow oldest to continue to read as she likes, usually we have to turn her light out when we go to bed, she will inevitibly be fast asleep with a book fallen over her face. This new bedtime routine has stopped the 10:30 "I can't sleep, I'm scared" visits from youngest, it has also stopped her cries of injustice that the oldest gets to have the light on for longer because youngest dictates her own lights out so can not comment. Funnily enough we find that the youngest goes to sleep sooner now that she has lights out control that she did before, it also means that oldest is not longer hiding her night time reading practice from us so therefore is not be deceitful. Maybe some would see this as a battle lost to the parents, but do not think this at all. Our children are happier, they are sleeping better and mum and dad are no longer fighting children to get them to go to sleep. They are fully aware of the consequence of reading till midnight, and that it will be their problem if they are tired at school, however, this has not happened at all. I have learnt that kids need boundaries but they also need these loose enough that they can have the room to make age appropraite decisions and learn that choices have consequences. This is just one of the amazing changes we have seen since we have changes our parenting style. I could type for ages but I won't...