«Trust and love are our top priorities»
You eat what's on the table - that's a phrase we both remember from our parents. And we definitely didn't like it. Once we had beans and I didn't like them at all. My mum left the kitchen for a moment and I took the plate and poured the beans down the toilet instead of eating them. We don't want to expose our children to moments like that.
Of course they should try new things and not just eat their favourite dish every day. But we don't force them to do anything. Neel, our youngest, really puts us to the test. He doesn't eat any fruit or vegetables, really nothing green at all. Surprisingly, even my mum is relaxed about it. She wouldn't have been so tolerant with me in the past.
We also both inherited values such as punctuality and reliability from our parents. To make our big family with two jobs and all our hobbies work, we simply need good time management. We now have an office schedule that shows who is going out with the dog on which day, for example. In the past, we often had discussions about this, which cost us unnecessary time that we don't have in the morning.
The children also know independently when they have to leave, that we also have to go to work and, above all, that we don't like to be late. But of course, especially with children, there are times when you're not on time. Once, when there was snow on the way to kindergarten in the morning, the children were playing and whiling away the time. And I enjoyed watching them. Even if life premises such as punctuality help us a lot in everyday life, it can also be nice to break them from time to time.
My mum wouldn't have been as tolerant with me in the past as she is now with my children.
When we talk about what is important to us in parenting, things like honesty, trust and love are at the top of the list. We want our children to feel this even in their sometimes hectic everyday lives. We never really want to punish the three of them. But if they insult each other with swear words or get violent, we sometimes take away some of their pocket money or screen time. Unfortunately, we don't always manage to find a solution without punishment.
The same applies to rewards : We used to get school report money too. I always thought it was stupid because my sister had much better grades than me and therefore always got more. That's why we didn't introduce it at home - but the grandparents did. But at least the children all get the same amount now, no matter how old they are or what grades they have.
The only thing that matters is that they have made an effort. Silvan and I try never to specifically reward one child, because the others usually feel disadvantaged. We prefer to emphasise when many things in the family have gone well in a week and then reward us all, for example with a nice outing.
