You’ve barely entered the store and the whining starts. “Mo-oom, why can’t I get the new Lego Star Wars video game?” And back at home when you ask Alex to set the table? “But Moooo-oom…I’m tired!”

Sigh. Maybe it’s time for an allowance. After all, what better way to get Alex to do his chores and let him buy his own video games, right?

If only it were that easy. Our goal is to motivate, but connecting an allowance to household duties does the opposite. By focusing on the payoff for the chore rather than the contribution made to the family, we create – and reinforce – a negative lesson. Rather than encouraging our child doing something for its intrinsic value, we instead teach them to ask, “What’s in it for me?”

Daniel Pink, author of The New York Times best seller, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, tells us that paying kids to do chores “…sends kids a clear (and clearly wrongheaded) message: In the absence of a payment, no self-respecting child would willingly set the table, empty the garbage, or make her own bed. …. It converts a moral and familial obligation into just another commercial transaction—and teaches that the only reason to do a less-than-desirable task for your family is in exchange for payment.”

So what’s a parent to do? Rest assured: we do have a way to take the whine out of taking out the garbage. And an allowance is a great way to teach our kids financial responsibility and money sense. The key is to implement the two separately:

Start by discussing “family contributions” and sweep “chore” right out of your vocabulary. While the word “chore” conjures up images of Cinderella scrubbing the castle floors, the idea of a family contribution will instead remind our kids that they play an important role in helping the household run smoothly. Granted, Emma may not jump for joy when she’s asked to help put laundry away, but her new perception of the task gains her a feeling of personal significance and sense of belonging to the family.

Revel in the win-win arrangement that is an allowance; not only will your kids feel grown up to have their own “income,” but it will be a big step in learning real-life skills such as the benefits of good decisions and the consequences of bad ones. The key is that the allowance is not tied to family contributions, or good grades, or winning the big game. Instead, use this opportunity to teach them about saving for things they really want, budgeting for the future, and charitable giving.

Set boundaries that encompass the weekly allowance amount, and what it can be spent on. The amount you give should be age appropriate, and not entirely comfortable. If Alex can buy every video game he sees, you’re not teaching him anything. Instead, choose an amount that can reasonably cover the expenses you expect him to take on –iTunes and app purchases, entertainment, and toys – and that gives him the option to save for the special game he really wants. He’ll also learn the invaluable concept of delayed gratification.

As kids get older, consider giving them a larger amount each week or month for allowance, but increase the items that he’ll be expected to cover. A tween or teen can learn important life lessons by budgeting her monthly allowance to cover lunch money, entertainment, clothes, iTunes downloads, etc. If she blows all of her money in the first week, she’ll experience the natural consequences of poor budgeting and will likely do better next month.

By separating – but still implementing – family contributions and allowance, we are able to teach far more valuable lessons than the two could ever hope to achieve when combined. And who would have thought that intrinsic motivation and financial responsibility could start with a few loads of laundry and $10 a week?

Amy McCready is a highly sought-after parenting coach, speaker, consultant and author of “If I Have To Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program To Get Kids To Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling”. After taking time off from her career to raise her two sons (now teenagers), she founded Positive Parenting Solutions in 2004 to help educate parents on how to effectively communicate and connect with their children. Through her online parenting courses, live webinars and speaking engagements, Amy has gained widespread attention and has been called upon as an expert by numerous media outlets, including NBC’s TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Rachael Ray Show, Fox & Friends and MSNBC.

Do you know the difference between a chore and a family contribution? Your kids do.

Watch the video below and you’ll learn how to be a little more successful in getting your kids to do their chores.

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Please click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn about new training videos as they are posted.

Full Transcript

I’m Amy McCready. Welcome to the Positive Parenting Solution of the Week in which I share a nugget of parenting wisdom to make your week go a bit more smoothly.

This week I want to talk about chores. Do you know the difference between a CHORE and a CONTRIBUTION?

It’s the difference it makes to someone else.

When your kids help out – even if it’s a little thing – be sure to let them know how much their contribution helped you.

You can say “Thank you for unloading the dishwasher, that’s a big job that I don’t have to do.” OR “You really helped our family tonight when you put all the groceries away.”

Let’s face it, kids aren’t going to love unloading the dishwasher or putting away the groceries, but knowing their efforts make a difference for YOU, turns that chore into a contribution and along with that will be fewer power struggles and more cooperating. That’s a win for everyone!

What do you say to let your kids know their contributions made a DIFFERENCE?

Tell us in the comments section under this video on our YouTube channel.

For more strategies to get kids complaining less and cooperating more go to www.positiveparentingsolutions.com

I’m Amy McCready. This has been a Positive Parenting Solution of the Week – join me again next week here at Ask Amy TV.

Amy McCready is a highly sought-after parenting coach, speaker, consultant and author of “If I Have To Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program To Get Kids To Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling”. After taking time off from her career to raise her two sons (now teenagers), she founded Positive Parenting Solutions in 2004 to help educate parents on how to effectively communicate and connect with their children. Through her online parenting courses, live webinars and speaking engagements, Amy has gained widespread attention and has been called upon as an expert by numerous media outlets, including NBC’s TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Rachael Ray Show, Fox & Friends and MSNBC.

Are you one of those parents who suffers from green guilt? You’re not alone. A new survey by Today.com and iVillage found that 94 percent of moms think they could – and should — do more to help the environment. But almost half of moms think “going green” is too expensive, while twenty percent say either they don’t have enough time or that it’s just too inconvenient.

Happily, you can easily have a more earth-friendly lifestyle that’s convenient and will save you a lot of money. Plus the changes are so easy, the whole family can follow suit. How? Shift to affordable and easily-available eco products that you can find in any supermarket or hardware store. Here are five that you can switch to in time for Earth Day, April 22.

1. Reusable sponge. A sponge lasts 17 times as long as throwaway paper towels and will save you $30 or more over the lifetime of the sponge. Buy a few sponges in different sizes – small for wiping off dishes before you load them in the dishwasher, larger for wiping up spills. Extend the life of the sponge by running it through the dishwasher, then zap the clean, damp sponge for 30 seconds in the microwave or set it outside in the bright sun to dry out.
2. Reusable water bottle (notice a trend in “reusables” here?). Ounce for ounce you could be paying as much as 10,000 times more for bottled water than tap. Why? Because in addition to the water , you’re paying for the bottle, the bottle cap, the bottle label, the energy used to make and transport the bottles, and water that’s wasted during the bottling process. For less than $20, you can buy a reusable water bottle and enjoy tap water whenever you need it. You’ll have money left over to buy a filter for your tap if you want, or to buy a bottle that comes with its own changeable filter.
3. Lunch box. People waste hundreds of dollars a year buying carry-out at lunch time. The food may be delicious, but all the wrapping needed to package it up is expensive – and a real waste of resources. For less than $10 or $15, buy a reusable lunch box or bag, and take food from home in reusable containers. You’ll save hundreds of dollars and create a lot less trash, too.
4. Energy-efficient light bulb. Compact fluorescent light bulbs use 66% less energy than a regular incandescent and last ten times as long, saving time as well as money. You may not have liked the original CFLs because the light was a bit harsh. Today, you can get CFLs in many hues, for indoor as well as outdoor application. Just one CFL can save you $5 – $10 a year in energy costs, $100 over the life of the bulb.
5. Reusable shopping bag. Nothing could be cheaper to buy or more convenient to use than a reusable grocery bag. Most supermarkets sell them for as little as ninety-nine cents. Buy five at once, and you’ll have as many as you need for your weekly shopping. Can’t remember to take them with you to the store? Whenever I unpack my groceries, I put my bags together right next to my car keys. The next time I get in my car, I take the bags with me and put them in the trunk. I’m almost never without my shopping bags.

You can find more money-saving green living tips at www.biggreenpurse.com. Don’t miss our helpful Earth Day tips here. Sign up for our free Green Purse Alerts! and receive a free copy of 13 Nagging Environmental Questions Finally Answered.
Happy Earth Day!

Diane MacEachern is the founder of www.biggreenpurse.com and the author of Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World.

Irene van der Zande, Kidpower.org Founder and “Doing Right by Our Kids” Co-Creator

April is Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month – and as adults, we need to face the realities of child abuse in order to be able to protect our kids.

But, the good news is that we do not need to pass our fears onto our children to keep them safe! In over two decades of teaching child protection and empowerment at Kidpower, we have found that talking to kids about how to be safe with touch, play, and teasing can be done in a way that is fun, rather than scary.

In order to protect themselves from sexual abuse, kids don’t need to know all the scary details of what could happen. They just need to learn what the safety rules are, how to set and respect boundaries with people they know, and how to be persistent in getting help from busy adults.

If kids learn how to stop one kind of unwanted or unsafe touch, they will develop the skills to be able to stop another. Also, most child molesters often “test” a young person’s boundaries using non-sexual touch at first, and are clever about choosing kids who won’t tell.

Kids are more likely to remember what they’ve practiced than what they’ve only been told. To give kids practice in a fun, emotionally safe way, parents can use age-appropriate situations using non-sexual examples.

• With young children, you can practice stopping a puppet from tickling them.
• With a child in sports, you can practice how to stop unwanted roughhousing when it gets too wild.
• With a child who has music or swimming lessons, you can practice how to tell someone, “It helped before when you held my hands to help me do this, but now I would rather that you just show me what to do instead of holding onto me.”
• With a teenager, you can practice how to tell someone you like as a friend that you don’t want to hold hands.

To help parents out, my collaborator Dr. Amy Tiemann and I are presenting a free “Talking about Touch and Boundaries” Starter Kit from http://www.DoingRightByOurKids.com. This kit presents Kidpower language with illustrations as an easy tool to explain the core principles and safety rules to kids in ways that are fun, not scary.

We hope you will join Dr. Amy Tiemann and myself, with Amy McCready as a parenting expert co-host, for an on-line chat about child safety at TheMotherhood.com.

Our “Keeping Kids Safe” talk http://www.themotherhood.com/talk/show/id/Keeping-Our-Kids-Safe will take place on April 17th at 1 P.M. Eastern Time. You can ask us your questions about child safety, and how to talk about it with your kids, in this live question and answer discussion. We hope you’ll join us!

When our twins were born, I quickly realized that the more I did with my babies as a set, the more validation I got as a mom. The average person would look on as I tandem breastfed and would marvel at my accomplishment. Merely navigating the aisles of the supermarket with one baby in the cart and the other in a sling was enough to garner looks of approval and a brief adult conversation or two. All this was so needed early on that I actually feared taking out only one baby and no longer being “special”. On top of all of this, there was so much of an accepted mystique about twins and how they should always be together, that they would miss each other and so forth.

Over time I realized that this widely held belief that twins prefer to be together was actually getting in the way of many things. As my children have gotten older, I have really come to understand that although it is a unique and wonderful thing to be a twin, it is perhaps even more wonderful to be known for one’s own individual self. One of my favorite quotes is from the book Siblings Without Rivalry: “To be loved equally is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely – for one’s own special self – is to be loved as much as we need to be loved”.

Over the years I have done a lot to help my children feel that they are known for their own individual selves, not just as part of a set. Although we do a lot as a family, we also spend a great deal of one on one time with each of them, they have play dates without the other, they have separate rooms, they will be in separate classes when they start Kindergarten next year, we encourage separate after school activities and so forth. This does nothing to diminish their bond as siblings or twins; in fact, I believe it strengthens it immensely.

Of all of the things we do to nurture their individuality and encourage their sense of self, what has most recently seemed to make the greatest impact on them was having separate birthday parties for their 5th birthday.

We always had two birthday cakes and sang “Happy Birthday” to them separately, but this year I offered them the opportunity to have a party of their own and they jumped at it. Over the next couple of months the excitement built, they told everyone about their respective parties, what the theme was going to be and who was coming. Most of all, they told everyone that they were having their own party, just for them. I began to realize that it was a different sense of excitement than in previous years, this time it was a chance for each of them to bask in the glow of their special day when everyone is there for them, without having to share that experience with another person.

Most of you who have a sibling know the feeling of having to share toys or clothes or maybe a room. But few siblings of different ages have to share a birthday. It is just obvious to most parents that each child would get his or her own birthday party. Yet the reaction from many people was one of surprise when I said I was doing this for my children.

Although throwing two birthday parties in one weekend was more work (and a greater expense) for us, seeing the joy our children had being able to experience their special day just for themselves was well worth it. On top of this, the experience also allowed us to teach them lessons about being gracious when it was not their day, being aware of their own feelings as well as the feelings of their sibling, exercising patience and most importantly, having the awareness that they were each being honored for who they are, as individuals.

Gina Osher is a former holistic healer turned parenting coach and mother of boy/girl twins. She is also the author of the blog, The Twin Coach in which she offers advice, bares her soul, works though her imperfect parenting moments and continues on her journey to be a more joyful parent. Gina is dedicated to helping others find both a deeper understanding of themselves and a stronger connection to the children they love.

Our question today is from struttinpup in Denver, CO and she asks…

“How can I get my 3 year old to wear pants and long sleeve shirts now that it’s colder. Perhaps it’s due to an older sibling who has Sensory Processing Disorder (everything is “too tight”) perhaps he has it himself. Getting out of the house is a nightmare!”

The morning routine is a nightmare for many parents. Click on the video below to hear some steps you can take.

Click here to comment on this video.

To submit a question, click here.

Please click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn about new training videos as they are posted.

Full transcript:

Welcome to ASK AMY TV where we provide simple solutions to your most frustrating discipline dilemmas. I’m Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions and the author of If I Have to Tell You One More Time…(Tarcher/Penguin, 2011).

Our question today is from struttinpup in Denver, CO and she asks…

How can I get my 3 year old to wear pants and long sleeve shirts now that it’s colder. Perhaps it’s due to an older sibling who has Sensory Processing Disorder (everything is “too tight”) perhaps he has it himself. Getting out of the house is a nightmare!

I think a lot of parents can relate to the morning battle over getting dressed.

There are several ways you can handle this situation and they all involve giving him more POWER. That may sound counter-intuitive because I know you want him to comply – but you’ll get better results by giving him more of a say in the matter.

Remember that we’re all hard-wired to have a sense of control over our own lives – even 3 year olds. When you try to force him to wear what you want him to wear, he’s likely to say with his words or actions – NO – you’re not the boss of me!

Here’s what I recommend…

1. Control the environment rather than trying to control your child. Remove all of the short sleeve shirts and shorts from the closet and drawers until the warm weather hits.

2. Let him decide what he wants to wear from the available options. (Remember, you’ll have already removed the warm weather clothing from the mix.) When you let him decide, you’re giving him some control over his world and that will avoid many of the power struggles you’re experiencing now. If his choices are a fashion disaster – let it go! It’s more important that he gets to decide for himself what to wear.

3. Allow the natural consequences to play out. If he absolutely refuses to wear a coat when it’s cold – then let it go and allow him to experience the natural consequence of feeling cold or not being able to go outside at recess because he doesn’t have a coat. He’ll learn much more from experiencing the natural consequence than he will from another lecture or from forcing him to wear a coat or a sweater.

4. Then the next time, you can say, “Do you want to step outside on the porch so you can feel the weather today so you can decide what coat you want to wear?” That puts him in the drivers seat to make the decision.

5. Last thing…you mentioned possible sensory issues. Many kids are sensitive to tags and seams. If that’s the case, respect that and find comfortable clothing that they’ll enjoy wearing.

I hope these suggestions help your mornings go a bit more smoothly.

Let me know in the comments section what part of the morning routine is most challenging at your house.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you know when a new ASK Amy video is posted.

And of course, continue posting your questions in the box at AskAmy.TV. I may pick your discipline dilemma for my next ASK AMY video.

Struttinpup in Denver – as a thank you for posting your question, I’m going to send you a signed copy of my new book: If I Have to Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program That Gets Your Kids to Listen Without Nagging, Reminding or Yelling (Tarcher/Penguin, 2011)

Thanks for joining me at Ask Amy TV and as always, I wish you parenting peace.

Amy McCready is a highly sought-after parenting coach, speaker, consultant and author of “If I Have To Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program To Get Kids To Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling”. After taking time off from her career to raise her two sons (now teenagers), she founded Positive Parenting Solutions in 2004 to help educate parents on how to effectively communicate and connect with their children. Through her online parenting courses, live webinars and speaking engagements, Amy has gained widespread attention and has been called upon as an expert by numerous media outlets, including NBC’s TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Rachael Ray Show, Fox & Friends and MSNBC.

Do your kids ever play the helpless card with you? You know, they ask you to do something for them that they are more than capable of doing themselves? It’s an attention seeking behavior.

Learn more about “special service” and how to get out of this routine by watching the video below.

Click here to comment on this video.

Please click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn about new training videos as they are posted.

Amy McCready is a highly sought-after parenting coach, speaker, consultant and author of “If I Have To Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program To Get Kids To Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling”. After taking time off from her career to raise her two sons (now teenagers), she founded Positive Parenting Solutions in 2004 to help educate parents on how to effectively communicate and connect with their children. Through her online parenting courses, live webinars and speaking engagements, Amy has gained widespread attention and has been called upon as an expert by numerous media outlets, including NBC’s TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Rachael Ray Show, Fox & Friends and MSNBC.

I have found that generally most parents fall into one of two categories when it comes to their approach to dinnertime.

One category….. you grew up eating dinner together somewhat regularly with your family and you have a conviction to carry it forward with your own family.

The second category…..you did not grow up eating dinner regularly with your family and you struggle to have a vision for its importance.

Regardless, both fall into this category:

It is a STRUGGLE to make dinner happen

Even for those who grew up around the dinner table, things were different 20-plus years ago. For one, there were far more stay-at-home moms. Add to that a much simpler lifestyle, fewer activities, fewer fast-food choices, and dinner was much more feasible. It just was.

Lack of energy, lack of time, lack of planning, or lack of vision. Regardless of the reason, the odds are against parents to sustain the will and conviction to plan and make dinner happen – regularly. I know I do.

Thus, we all fall into this category as well:

We all need encouragement to make dinner time a priority!

Even on the not-so-best-of-nights, when the conversation is flat, or everyone is mute, grumpy, rushed and stressed. Even when all you have to serve is leftovers and the kids are complaining, it’s worth it. Even when one of the kids gets in trouble and is sent to their room (door slam) while the rest of the family finishes eating, it’s worth it.

If I waited for the perfect night or for all the stars to line up just right, dinner would never happen. If I waited for that effervescent feeling to rush over me every night at 5 o’clock to waltz into the kitchen to start cooking, uh, we would starve.

Sometimes in my household we (or I) fall off the wagon and I have to get us back on track and reinstate the family table. I get tired, tired of cooking, cleaning, being on my feet, and I just want to pass out crackers. I have to remind myself that, yes, we need to eat food, but more importantly, it is valuable time for my family that we won’t get otherwise. Having that predictable gathering, eye-to-eye connecting place over a meal is nurturing to my kids individually, but also strengthens my family as a whole. It IS worth the sacrifice I make, the energy I spend, and the determination I muster to make dinner happen anyway.

You may be a parent that needs the incentive to inaugurate dinner as a new and regular occurrence for the first time. Do it! Take the advice from those who did grow up with family dinner – it makes a huge difference. I know it did for me. Shift your view of dinner as an investment in your family instead of a painful inconvenience, or a June Cleaver outdated idea. And don’t make it so hard! An eMeals menu will give you the easy jumpstart you need.

No matter what the situation, every time you make family time happen around the dinner table it will be a bite-size deposit that will go into the reservoir of love and connection needed by each of your children. I assure you with many other resounding voices from our eMeals community, it will be one of the best tools and worthwhile habits you’ll ever enforce.

Don’t let the days turn to years. Do it now. Keep doing it. Don’t lose heart.

Rally your family, regularly, for dinner – at home. You don’t need candles or cloth napkins. Just you, your table, and a simple meal. It’s a date and a family waiting to happen!

Here are some practical things I’ve gleaned along the way that may help us all make dinner happen in our homes:

1) Keep dinner simple. Food does not have to be elaborate to be good. Stick to simple, easy recipes with fewer ingredients. If it’s too complicated, you set yourself up for failure!

2) Think of eating out as an occasion, not a habit, or quick fix.

3) Have a plan. Have a simple, practical dinner menu, and better yet, have it done for you. It does wonders to have it off your mind and on a piece of paper. Not having a plan will quickly translate into money down the drain.

4) Make a realistic goal. Purpose to eat dinner together, around the table, face to face, 4 to 5 times a week. It’s easy to set unrealistic goals (with good intentions), but then we set ourselves up for frustration and guilt.

5) Think about dinner for 2 minutes in the morning. If I can get in my head early in the day what we will fix for dinner, then I have conquered half the battle. Figuring out what to fix is what plagues most parents the most! I take one glance at my menu, decide which meal, then come 5 o’clock, there is no mental stress or stare into the cupboard.

5) Make dinner after breakfast! I finally discovered this trick and it has been the most helpful solution to this chaotic season. Make dinner ahead and put it in the refrigerator. Dinner is there for everyone even on the most chaotic of days. Grab a plate, serve it up, a few minutes in the microwave and dinner appears!

6) The crock-pot can be your new best friend, especially on game days. Game overtime? Not to worry – a warm dinner will be waiting. If you have never used a crock-pot, you can purchase them for around $30, money well spent.

For 10% discount to subscribe to eMeals, use the code PARENTING.

Jane DeLaney is the President of eMeals.com, a national resource providing a simple, family friendly solution to dinnertime. Each week, a new on-line dinner plan includes 7 dinner recipes, complete with an aisle-by-aisle grocery list. Menus are based each week on your grocery sales from these stores: PUBLIX, Wal Mart, Kroger, and Aldi. Other available plans are: Low-Fat, Low-Carb, Gluten Free, Portion Control, Organic & Natural, Vegetarian, and Family Friendly. Visit www.eMeals.com for more information.

Our question today is from Marcy, a mom of 3 from Austin, TX and she asks…

“How can I get my kids to clean their rooms? I feel like I’m constantly fussing at them to pick up their stuff but it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall. I don’t ask them to do a lot around here but I expect them to keep a clean room. Help!”

Click on the video below for the answer.

Click here to comment on this video.

To submit a question, click here.

Please click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn about new training videos as they are posted.

The full transcript:

Welcome to ASK AMY TV where we provide simple solutions to your most frustrating discipline dilemmas. I’m Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions and the author of If I Have to Tell You One More Time…(Tarcher/Penguin, 2011).

Our question today is from Marcy, a mom of 3 from Austin, TX and she asks…

“How can I get my kids to clean their rooms? I feel like I’m constantly fussing at them to pick up their stuff but it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall. I don’t ask them to do a lot around here but I expect them to keep a clean room. Help!”

Marcy – believe me, I hear that question all the time. Fortunately, there are several strategies you can employ.

1. You can just let it go and let them experience the natural consequences of a messy room. They’ll quickly discover that they lose track of things as they frantically search for the game piece that’s hidden under the piles of dirty clothes. Allowing the natural consequences to play out is actually the best teacher – but I’ve found that parents have a really hard time with letting the messy room go.

2. If you fall into that category – there are other strategies you can use. You can use a WHEN-THEN routine. “WHEN your room is clean (which means I can see your entire floor and the horizontal surfaces are clear of clutter) THEN, you can have your TV time, or THEN we’ll leave or practice, or THEN you can join us for dinner.” Creating a When-Then routine in which the room must be cleaned before a more enjoyable part of the routine occurs – creates a natural incentive. If you follow a When-Then routine every single day- there’s no need to fuss or fight about it. As my mother-in-law says, it’s the law. It’s just the way we do things around here. That’s called “letting the routine be the boss” so you don’t have to be.

3. Decide what you will do. You can let your kids know… “Our family rule is that the room has to be clean by 5:00 each day. Either you can clean it or I will. But, anything that I find laying around will go into a box in the garage and be unavailable for the next week. If your son doesn’t have his uniform for practice, he’ll learn an important lesson when he explains to the coach why he’s not prepared. If you find that your kids don’t even miss the toys or clothes that you hauled out to the garage, that lets you know they probably have more than they need and it’s time for a big donation to Goodwill Industries.

What about you? What are your biggest challenges in getting your kids to pick up after themselves? Tell me about it in the comment section under this video.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you know when a new ASK Amy video is posted.

And of course, continue posting your questions in the box at AskAmy.TV. I may pick your discipline dilemma for my next ASK AMY video.

Marcy – as a thank you for posting your question, I’m going to send you a signed copy of my new book: If I Have to Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program That Gets Your Kids to Listen Without Nagging, Reminding or Yelling (Tarcher/Penguin, 2011)

Thanks for joining me at Ask Amy TV and as always, I wish you parenting peace.

Amy McCready is a highly sought-after parenting coach, speaker, consultant and author of “If I Have To Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program To Get Kids To Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling”. After taking time off from her career to raise her two sons (now teenagers), she founded Positive Parenting Solutions in 2004 to help educate parents on how to effectively communicate and connect with their children. Through her online parenting courses, live webinars and speaking engagements, Amy has gained widespread attention and has been called upon as an expert by numerous media outlets, including NBC’s TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Rachael Ray Show, Fox & Friends and MSNBC.

Empathizing versus lecturing can go a long way in diffusing power struggles and it reinforces that you’re on the same team. This week, if your kids start complaining about doing their homework or chores, instead of lecturing, just say this simple phrase.

Watch the video below to learn this simple phrase that will deflect the power struggle.

Click here to comment on this video.

Please click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn about new training videos as they are posted.

Amy McCready is a highly sought-after parenting coach, speaker, consultant and author of “If I Have To Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program To Get Kids To Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling”. After taking time off from her career to raise her two sons (now teenagers), she founded Positive Parenting Solutions in 2004 to help educate parents on how to effectively communicate and connect with their children. Through her online parenting courses, live webinars and speaking engagements, Amy has gained widespread attention and has been called upon as an expert by numerous media outlets, including NBC’s TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Rachael Ray Show, Fox & Friends and MSNBC.