There’s an old saying, “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”  All of the old sayings like that are based on truth.

I must tell Squig a dozen or so times a day that he is a “Good Boy.”  And I always say that when he is----“being a good boy.”  He has caught on.  He loves to be told that he is a good boy and repeats the behaviors that get those words.

I wish I had used more praise raising my children.  But I wasn’t raised on praise, I was raised like every other kid in the 1940’s.  Guilt.  I learned early that if I didn’t do what my parents expected me to do I would be in trouble.  It took me a bit of time to learn about honey and vinegar.

We always learn too late to do anything about the mistakes we’ve made.  But I learned.  My first child took the brunt of my education in child raising.  I was the first child as well.  My folks had learned the secret of praise by the time my sister Lisa was born 22 years later.  

My cousin Ann was raised at the same time I was.  Every Friday we go to breakfast and garage sales and before the hour or two is up, one of us has done something to make the other one say, “Well, now you have something to feel guilty about for the rest of the day.”  My friend Jeanette paid me a compliment the other day, and it made me feel guilty because I didn’t feel like I deserved it.  Go figure.  I don’t think I will out grow it.