I haven't forgotten to resume my series on Sensory Processing Disorder. The next part up will be on discipline. Of course, as soon as I decide to write about something as challenging as discipline, I start being challenged in that very area. No surprise, right? Bare with me, please. It will come soon.
In the mean time, I'll share how life application works in our house.
Child A's writing assignment was to identify something she doesn't like about herself and what she could do to change it, with the detail on how she could make that change. She's a pretty self-confident young lady, so I expected this to be a bit of a challenge. She's also pretty slick about finding the easy way of completing a task. It was no surprise to me when she said she had nothing at all she'd change; she's happy with who she is.
Fast-forward a couple hours to a quick trip into the grocery store to buy 1 thing that would be a universal staple for dinner this week as we have 1 night of gymnastics and 3 softball games (read: quick, easy dinners that everyone will eat.) Not even far enough into the store to make my selection did a fight break out over the grocery cart. Child A and Child C screaming and striking at each other and me in the middle to separate them brought us right back out of the store without said staple for dinner. Lovely. Kinda puts me in a bind, right? One might think so, but this is a creative momma with creative consequences. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
On the way home, we talked about behavior. How might each child have responded differently to each other in this situation? Who is the older child and how old did she act? At almost 12, did she like her behavior and how this situation turned out? Guess who now has something to write about for her assignment?
As an added bonus, the two "fighters" can work together to come up with something we already have in the house, that everyone will eat, for dinner. If they don't, they will go without dinner and the rest of us will eat leftovers (which is also fine with me because there are still consequences being enforced for the two who interfered with dinner plans.) Creative solution.
As an added bonus, they both have to contribute their allowance to the gas used to go back to that store at a later time without them.
How do you discipline creatively and effectively?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Brilliant. Way to go Mom - not that a dispute broke out, but that you handled it with grace.
ReplyDeleteGrrr....13 is tough. M. had better come up with some things to get involved in or this mama aint gonna have a good summer! On the opposite end is L who is over-involved. I saw light at the end of the tunnel for the first time tonight when he hinted he MIGHT choose Scouts over Soccer.