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Thursday, November 6, 2008

Household Rules!

Every house needs rules...if Nanny 911 and Super Nanny have taught us nothing else, it’s that a good set of rules, specifically designed for the family, will turn behavior around. Well, my family doesn’t necessarily have a behavior problem, in fact I have rather well behaved children. We’re past the terrible 2s and the even worse 3s and with 5 came a great new stage of development. The kids became low maintenance, and have developed into real people, with the capacity to have individual thought and their own unique personalities, both wonderful in their own right…but also with 5 came new challenges and because they are now capable of joking, teasing and arguing. None of these have ever been a problem…until recently.
Todd yells…I used to be quick to raise my voice until I realized that it wasn’t getting me anywhere and was only antagonizing the behavior…my DH while well intentioned, thinks that our children should mold to him and if his solution is to yell, they should respond appropriately, by doing as they are told. It doesn’t work, especially with Lane Michael. Lane responds really well to being given options. (I.e. if Lane is yelling about not eating his supper, I will lay out his options “Lane Michael, you can 1. Stop yelling, eat supper and not get into trouble, or 2. Continue yelling, get into trouble and then eat your supper. I would prefer if you stop yelling and eat your supper, it is the best option for you and eating would prevent you from getting into trouble. What are you going to do?”) Ethan responds to being told once and then if that doesn’t work, insisting he look us in the eye and listen to what we are telling him to do. But some how we had to stop the yelling that continued to plague our home. So, this week, Todd and I sat down together, worked up a set of rules that we feel will keep our family on track and then set up consequences to breaking said rules...we have seven family rules, all of which we have recently had a problem with. Last night we sat the boys down and went over the rules and consequences. Then we put them into practice. It was SO nice to be able to say “boys, you are breaking rule number 3. Stop it, if you don’t you will get a time out” There was no guess work, no questioning what would follow if they didn’t obey me…and no need to yell.

1 comments:

Mama_x3 said...

We hang our expectations on the frigde. Each kid has a chart, and they get points for following the rules/consequences for not following. It has worked awesome! God bless Super Nanny!!