I love Mother’s Day, and I love being a mother. One of my greatest “mothering” faults - the thing that nags me when being praised - is that sometimes I yell. My kids really hate it, and I hate it. So, I’ve been trying to work on this. I believe that having the spirit in the home is the best solution to this. Daily Scripture study, and prayer throughout the day helps a lot. But there are days when I could use something else. After some discussions with the kids, we came up with something that has worked quite well.
It’s a chart. (yay for charts) This isn’t for the kids so much as for me. It’s something I can do instead of yelling. I like time-outs but as kids get older, time-outs can be very inconvenient. I am not a fan of spanking. It seemed the only way I could get across to my kids that what they were doing was not okay was to yell. (and yelling “works”. They will immediately do what I say, but again, no one likes the yelling including me) So now, I have an outlet. After I’ve asked my kids nicely to stop playing and get ready for bed 3 or 4 times, now I will calmly tell them to “pull their card” instead of screaming.
The way it works is, the kids start out on green each day, and if they do something they should not do, they move their card to yellow, then orange, then red. They are able to move their card up for good behavior. If they end the day on red, they have a punishment.
It has worked really good for me. We’ve been doing it about a month now. I hope to have many more days of being a soft-spoken mother.
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