Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Losing Bad Habits

Over the weekend we swapped stories (with my family being here) about how our parents got us to lose bad habits as children.

Kevin’s parents bribed him to give up sucking his thumb by taping a picture of a bike to the side of his bed and telling him that if he didn’t suck his thumb for x-amount of days, then he would get one. Apparently it worked like a charm.

My parents, when I was 2 ½ years old, decided it was time for me to give up my bottle. My dad made me pick up all my bottles and put them, one by one, in a large trash bag. He then walked with me to the outside trashcan and made me watch as he threw them away. That night when I cried for my bottle, my dad said, “Remember, Amy, we threw them all away today.” I paused for a second, thought about this, and then closed my eyes and went to sleep. Of course, as soon as my dad threw the bottles away, he went back outside and rescued them for my little sister to use!

Parenthood definitely requires a little bit of timely creativity.

1 comment:

Rose said...

Very wise parents you both had! I'm all enthralled to hear of good parenting advice, especiallly as we seem to have a voracious thumb-sucker on our hands. =)

I LOVE the pictures! Meredith is such a cutie...and you make such an adorable family!