Talk about fire engines

My son asks this questions every day.  "Talk about fire engines".  I ask what do you want to know?  He says, "Just talk about them."  I have gone over the ladders and the sirens, the purpose of a dalmatian and the pumps and I am running out of things to say.  Now I have introduced a new fire engine character: Sparky.  Sparky has many adventures which usually relate to what I want Matt to do.  Here is a story that I told when Matt would not go to bed early but would complain that he did not have time to sit in our bed in the morning before school.

One time after a long day of fighting fires, Sparky came back to the fire station with the other engines and wanted to stay up late while the other engines went to bed.  The next morning the fire alarm rang and all the other engines got up and went to the fire.  Sparky was too tired to wake up.  When Sparky finally woke up, the other engines were returning to the fire, Sparky was upset that he could not go to the fire.  That night Sparky went to bed early and was able to go the fire the next day.

Positive Parenting

Went to a great talk by Jim Wiltens about positive parenting.  The idea is that you need to focus on the the things that kids do correctly to let them know that they are making progress.  You do this by catching them in the act of being good kids.  "I saw that you helped your sister put the blocks away."  This is not comfortable at first. My daughter called me on it, she said, "How come you always tell me things that I am doing?"  My answer was "because I want you to know that I recognize when you do things well".