BW Mama Here once again.
After my post last night and a really sore foot today; I realized a few things.
1. I miss writing. (I completed a masters in 2012.)
2. It was really cathartic.
3. I like words.
4. It helps me process.
Brock and I have an amazing marriage and parent in similar ways (however it is far from perfect). Often times we balance one another and challenge each other when we see a parenting move that needs changed or improved. This has happened quite frequently as of late.
In the past few months we have been struggling.
Hezekiah (Hez a Ki ah) our 4yo is driving us nuts and to points of frustration pushing the brink of rage. Rage is not an emotion that should be unleashed on any child and yet they somehow draw it out of normally even keel adults. It is some crazy awful result of parent/child relationship that is triggered by many different things such as lack of communications skills, listening ability, or just simply personality differences.
H is a very smart, articulate, at times manipulative, and energetic amazing boy. He loves serving, spending time with family, doing chores, playing with/caring for his sister and so much more. Oh and TALKING ALL THE TIME!!! He gets that from Brock. We love him deeply. We are very blessed to have him as our son.
And yet he pulls out the rage in both of us at different times. Again, he doesn't deserve the rage that boils out from deep within. It comes from a combination of emotions: pure wits end, anger that the kid isn't does what you want, annoyance that you have had the same interaction for the millionth time, frustration of not knowing how to get through, hitting the brick wall over and over and over again.
Personally, I hate the rage monster within and I am the only one who can control it. I have to chose a different avenue/response. With enough pursuit, I will conquer this monster. Before I can, I am going to be humble before my son, repent, and ask for his forgiveness for all the times I have let the rage control me. And talk to him about how to work together to make things better for our entire family.
The rage monster is commonly triggered during meal time: How do you get a 4 yo to eat a meal (that he likes, that he chose) in a reasonable amount of time 30-60 min max. How do you get them to obey, stop talking, and eat their food.
We have tried so much and nothing seems to work. Currently, we set time limits, take away the food, take away privileges, and we are attempting to NOT use Nap and Bedtime routines as punishment/reward as that is a hard enough time of day why stack the deck against ourselves.
So Brock and I literally took 10 minutes to discuss what to do next. Here is what we have come up with. Since our current methods are not working and seem inconsistent between Brock, myself, and lets be honest the time of day/situation. We have to find a way to do discipline better.
So our action steps:
1. We are going to have a family meeting. With the help of H, we are going to write out the expectations for mealtime, listening and obeying, and any other problem areas that we can think of during the meeting. If the expectations are not met, then the consequence will result. ex: time out, activity taking away etc. If the expectations are met, stickers earned. Earn enough stickers get a "big" treat TBD.
Side benefit - when the child does get in trouble the family rules take the hit not "mean Mama and Papa"
2. We are setting up a new reward system in the form of a sticker chart. While this is a simple idea we have not used it in our home up to this point, however, in a two minute interaction at church H responded really well to this technique for memorizing scripture.
Hopefully, these small changes will show great progress. We would love to hear your thoughts on our changes and if you have any ideas please share.
After all, we really have no clue what we are doing and it is all trial and error. #Parenting
Hope you are warm and well fed.
BWMama Signing off for now.
P.S. - I will attempt to remember to post pictures of our chart/rules once they are complete or ask Brock to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment