How do you feel about Michelle Duggar of TLC’s hit show 19 Kids & Counting? You either love her or you hate her. She is my hero!
It’s not the Duggar’s religious beliefs that have me hooked; it is her soft spoken nature and overall parenting techniques. I recently stumbled upon The Duggar’s House Guidelines. Some of these are very common sense practices but in my opinion, if you watch the show and read this list, it pushes you to make the attempt to follow the guidelines in your own home.
In a recent episode, Michelle said something in her private interview that really stuck with me. It was about sharing something positive your child(ren) have done every day, without fail, rather than scolding them repeatedly for breaking the rules. It could be something as simple as, "Thank you for entertaining your baby brother while I made dinner without my asking!" Nix the negative and reinforce the positive. Sounds simple, right? We are human after all and new routines are hard to accomplish.
People have a very bad habit of giving into the negative energy, me included. It's easier than turning the mind’s switch to "ON" and figuring out how to transform the negative 'now' to a positive.
Michelle Duggar's idea makes so much sense. If she and her husband can do this with nineteen kids (I hear another is on the way?) each and every day, can we not we handle it with our own, smaller families?
I am a parent to three boys. Their ages vary rather drastically; 16 years, 11 years, and 1 1/2 years. Did I already mention they are all male? Yep, lots of yelling and brawling action in our humble abode.
One morning my oldest took off on his bike with his fishing pole for a few hours. Moms of multiple children know how much easier the flow of the day can be when one child is off doing an activity of their liking. My youngest was just waking up so I grabbed his milk and went in to greet him for the morning, middle son joined us.
The baby enjoyed his “Cup of Joe” (decaf) as I went into yoga mode to energize my mind and body for the upcoming day (post caffeinated beverage of my own, thank-you-very-much). My thoughts began to concentrate on ideas of how I could help middle son continue to adjust dealing with no longer being the baby of the family (as I recall when we showed him our pregnancy test, his response was, "I don't want another person in this family!"). One and a half years later, we're still putting oil on the creaking hinges.
Middle son and I came up with a verbal contract to assist his traits of outbursts and anger. Behavior I am guilty of as well. If either of us is stuck in a less than perfect situation, we are going to attempt to feed the personality of who we are in conflict with versus fighting it.
Sometimes, I let the baby do a little more than he should to avoid his screeching method of getting what he wants. Middle son often verbally tackles the baby and he becomes furious that his focus was taken from the activity he was engrossed in. The baby would scream back... Rinse...Repeat. This is not working.
Now, when the baby yells after going after something he shouldn’t have in the first place, middle son will locate an object the baby can have and coax him away from what it was he shouldn’t. If of course after calmly telling him, “Hands off!” doesn’t work, which it hardly does. Minimal anger exposure; thus, feeding the personality versus fighting it. Ultimately we are trying to find a positive, any positive, in a negative state.
Middle son and I have a "safe word"...Dragonfly (I suggested Ladybug but appare
ntly it was too "girlie"). When we are stuck in a rut and can't find the positive in a situation on our own, we use our safe word triggering the other to help out. In the end, we encourage the situation to resolve without anger, anxiety, and/or screaming.
How creative do you get when it comes to dealing with these types of issues with your children?
