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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

1. Inform him that he needs all that negative stuff drained out and to be filled with happy thoughts instead. Suggest something he’d be appalled by, like painting pink daisies on his toenails.

2. Imitate the whining he’s doing and morph it into the whine of a race car. Rev the engine through a few gears, then make the sounds of a car screeching to a halt and crashing.

3. Tickle fight!!!

4. Give him pointers on how to make his pouting more effective.

5. Rate his pout on a scale of 1 to 10.

6. Throw your own fit. Make it big…really put your all into it. (note: this is more effective at home than in public).

7. Pin him down and kiss him all over his face until he starts laughing.

8. Initiate a quick “Who can jump the highest?” competition. Any kind of physical competition works, as long as you get him up and moving a bit.

Earnest Parenting: help for parents of boys in bad moods.

Image courtesy of BobvdK via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.