Monday Q&A | Cheerful, Prompt Obedience, Store-brands, and Product Parties

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

Last week in your Q&A you said when your children were young you focused on having them obey you quickly and cheerfully (or something like that).
Could you elaborate on how you do that? I have a two year old who for whom I need tips!!

-Laura

Sure! Mr. FG and I have not executed this perfectly but it has been a large focus of ours because we think it’s really, really important for children to learn to obey their parents. I especially think that prompt obedience is important for a child’s safety (for instance, if a child is running toward a street full of cars, he’ll be in much better shape if he obeys right away than if he obeys later). And obedience is such a great life skill because all through life we have to obey people in authority, even when we don’t really want to do what they ask us to do (I’m thinking of teachers, college professors, bosses, and the government, to name a few.).

(of course, adults need to combine obedience with independent thinking and that sort of thing should be encouraged in our children, especially as they grow older and older. But we’re talking about 2 year olds here, and 2 year olds just need to stop in their tracks when they’re running toward the road!)

There are 3 main ways we teach prompt, cheerful obedience.

1) We give positive reinforcement in the way of encouraging words when our children obey promptly and cheerfully.

2) We apply negative consequences when they don’t obey promptly and cheerfully. Consistency is THE key here. When you’re just starting out with this, it might seem like you’ll do nothing all day except deal with this issue, but if you hang in there, your kids will start to get the message. Whatever consequence you choose, apply it consistently.

3) We remind them ahead of time what we expect of them. For instance, if I’m going to ask Zoe to do something I know she doesn’t like to do, I might say something like, “Zoe, I’m going to ask you to do something and I want you to obey right away and cheerfully, ok?”.

Along those same lines, I often offer sympathy to my kids because I know what it feels like to have to obey when you don’t want to. For instance, I don’t feel like obeying when the government tells me to drive 20 miles an hour, but I need to do that because I love God (Romans 13 directs me to obey the governing authorities except if they tell me to sin, and driving 20 miles an hour is painful, but not sinful.). That kind of hearkens back to what I was saying last week about being humble enough to empathize with our kids. Mr. FG and I struggle to obey just like our kids do…we’re all in this fight together, so as we teach them obey, we hopefully aren’t doing it with an, “I’m better than you and I can’t understand why you don’t just obey!” sort of attitude.

Parenting is such an enormous topic, and there’s so much more I could say (like that firm, consistent discipline works best in a home where there’s also consistent affection and warmth, that parental patience is essential, that consistent discipline and training is much more beneficial to children than yelling, etc). But I’m not a parenting expert, and I don’t expertly apply all the parenting principles I believe in, so I’ll just leave it at that!

I noticed in the most recent picture of your groceries that you don’t buy store-brand items (I saw Corn Chex, root beer, etc.). Does your store not offer their own brand? or are you not satisfied with the quality? I know buying store-brand items saves my family a lot of money, and I was just curious. Although, I do live in the region with HEB stores, and I understand that not all store brands are as good as the HEB ones 🙂

-Kim

This question actually made me giggle when I read it because on the whole, I buy way, way, way more store-brand items than name-brand items. This has been especially true since I started shopping at Aldi, because Aldi carries almost nothing but store-brand items.

I do still buy some name-brand items when the circumstances are right, and you saw two of those instances in that grocery picture.

Sometimes name-brands are cheaper than the store-brands (this was the case with the root beer…it was on sale and was cheaper than the Weis brand). And sometimes, name-brands just taste better (this is the case with Ritz crackers…we’ve tried zillions of off-brand version and none have been good!).

So, although you may see some name-brand items in my grocery photos, I am definitely a huge fan of generic products and I strongly encourage my readers to give them a try. Most generic products offer a money-back guarantee or better, so buying them is very not risky.

How do you handle invites to parties that sell products such as Cabi, Pampered Chef, Jewelry, etc. when you are on a frugal budget?

-Jackie.

This is one of those questions that I’m going to have to throw out to my readers, because I rarely receive invitations like this. I must not tend to be friends with salespeople or something because I think I’ve gotten exactly 3 invitations to product parties in my lifetime and they were all Pampered Chef parties. I went to one in my teens and bought a few products, but I was unable to attend the other two because of scheduling problems.

If I went to one now, I’d probably keep any upcoming gift-giving needs in mind and if I saw a good deal on something, I’d buy it (that way the money would come from my gift-giving budget). I wouldn’t really feel obligated to buy, though, and hopefully the friend throwing the party wouldn’t expect me to buy something I didn’t want or that would blow my budget.

If you’re the sort of person who struggles with self-control at this kind of party, though, I would just send your polite regrets. No party is worth wrecking your finances over!

Readers, have at it! How do you handle product party invitations? And if you’ve got thoughts on the store brand or obedience fronts, I’d love to hear those too.

Today’s 365 post: Sisters (and I have a problem)