The magic of logical consequences

The other day my children decided to play the game "Tangled" in J and O's room. For Christmas M received a Tangled wig so they play this make believe game a lot. Well in the movie Rapunzel paints all over her walls because she can't leave the tower so what else is she to do, right? Can you tell where this story is going? So while they are playing "Tangled" the kids have this brilliant idea to color all over the walls in J's room!

After the walls are beautifully decorated, my husband walks into the room to check on the kiddos and sees all the crayon on the walls and when he asks them who was responsible the older two point to O and said he did it. Of course they blamed the 2 year old! My husband takes them at face value and starts disciplining O while M and J sit by and watch. I have yet to see the room and am thinking it is just a little bit of coloring . . .

While we are eating dinner J then tells us that he has to be honest and says that he also colored on the wall. M then fesses up as well. I am curious now about the coloring so I go back and look and it is blatantly obvious that it was not the 2 yr old! Those stars are just a little too perfect, the word welcome on the door . . . I mean really the 2 yr old can't even draw a circle on purpose! Not only did I see who was responsible I was shocked at how much they colored on the wall, the doors, the dresser, and even the ceiling! I asked my husband if he actually looked at the coloring because then he would have known exactly who did it! We expressed to our children that we were very disappointed in them and that they would no longer be allowed to play in their rooms or have any art supplies anywhere but the kitchen.

M's a people pleaser BIG TIME and all I had to tell her was that I was disappointed and she was devastated where as the boys just thought it was fun. So I knew I needed a discipline for them to really understand that what they did was wrong. Well every Saturday we have a family fun day where we take our kids out for some fun activities and they have really come to look forward to this special time on Saturdays. So I decided that for family fun day the kids would have to scrub the crayons off of the wall, which is next to impossible with just soap and water.

Yesterday was the big day and when the kids woke up they came running in to our room and were anxious to find out what we were going to do for family fun day! I told them I had a big surprise for them and that they would find out after breakfast. While they were eating I started filling up a bowl with some dish soap and water and got out 3 washcloths. M is quick and the minute she saw what I was doing said, "Oh great we have to clean the crayon off the walls!" I was a little proud at that moment that she knew what the consequence was going to be, we do a lot of logical consequences at our house.

After breakfast I gathered the kids into J and O's room and handed them each a washcloth and told them that before we could have fun they had to get the crayon off the walls. In the beginning they thought it would be great fun, but after ten minutes of scrubbing the same spot and not having that crayon budge one bit they started getting frustrated. I left them to the cleaning while I ran to Walmart to pick up some magic erasers, because that is really the best and easiest way to get crayons off the walls. When I came back my husband told me that the kids were extremely frustrated and were repeatedly vowing that they would NEVER color on a wall again. After I gave them the magic erasers and worked with them the crayon was completely gone in fifteen minutes and we were able to have a fun family day.

I loved that I decided to not give them the easy way to clean it first, but instead had them struggle and work hard with no results. This way they learned that while it is fun to color on the walls it is not fun to clean up those walls and therefore are less likely to make that choice again.

Are you a Phineas & Ferb kind of parent?

Lately my kids have fallen in love with Phineas & Ferb. It has both boys and girls in it which makes it an easy pick for both M & J. If you have not watched this cartoon the premise is that Phineas and Ferb are brothers who love to invent things, much to the dismay of their older sister. Their mother is always in the episode, however, she is often shown doing miscellaneous household chores and appears to be completely oblivious to what is going on with her kids. As I was watching this cartoon today I began thinking about whether or not I was a Phineas & Ferb kind of mom, and I think that I have been from time to time but I am striving not to be.

Now you may be thinking, what do I mean am I a Phineas & Ferb kind of parent? What I mean when I say that is are we so caught up in doing the mundane every day tasks of living that we are completely clueless about what is going on in our kids lives? How often do we hear our kids fighting and react without actually knowing the full story? If you remember a few posts back I posted about how angry J is and what I was going to do about that.One of the biggest things I have realized since posting about that is that I really didn't have the full picture. You see J is smack dab in the middle of O and M who think they have the best ideas ever and everyone should just do what they say and J often gets lost in the mix. M and O are such outgoing, fun loving kids whereas J is a loner who likes to be left alone in his own space with his own toys doing his own things. Since I have been watching more and more I have seen that J is not so much angry all the time, but is frustrated because no one will just leave him alone when he asks to be left alone. Likewise I have noticed that O is quite the antagonizer who loves to pick at J until J can't take it anymore. O is probably not too happy with me being much more observant because he gets into a lot more trouble nowadays!

I also feel that sometimes our kids play so well together that it is easy to kind of tune them out and do our own thing. I am as guilty as the next person of turning on a movie for the kids and then getting lost in the wonderful world of the internet where I go from blog to blog and website to website until the movie is completely over and I didn't watch one minute of it with them. Or we get to cleaning one thing and then we just keep on going because the kids are playing so well and then before you know it it's time to put them to bed and how much do you know about what really went on with your kids that day?

How are you when you go out with your kids? Are you the mom that everyone wishes would pay a little more attention to their kids while at the park or at a playdate, or are you the mom that knows where every child is and what they were doing and are missing out on half the conversations because you are keeping an eye on your kids? Or are you somewhere in the middle? 

So if this sounds like you, what is something you can do to change? For every person it is going to be different, but one thing I have done is rearranged my house. I have brought all of the toys out of my kids bedrooms so they are forced to play out in the living and play area of the house and I can always hear what is going on. I have also brought the computer out of the office and have converted the office into a guest room / storage room so that even if I have to get on the computer I am still where my kids are and can know what is going on. I am also striving to only schedule my time for when the kids are in bed so that I do spend more time with them and focus on them more. In fact if you play Words with Friends with me at all you know that there are times when there are 2 days that go by and I haven't played because I am making a conscious effort to not get sucked into my phone and computer but am focusing more on being involved with what my kids are doing in the day.

So I challenge you this week to really pay attention to what kind of parent you are, are you a Phineas & Ferb kind of parent or do you know what your kids are doing throughout the day and actively striving to be involved in your kids lives? If you are a Phineas & Ferb kind of mom, are you o.k. with that? Does that bother you? And if it does bother you what are you going to do to change that?

It wasn't me!

The other day I ran out of my pills and went to call in a refill and when I called the pharmacy said they needed to call my Dr. and verify the refill, which I thought was odd because I had just gone in last month and had my blood done and the Dr.s office supposedly called in for 3 more refills. So I asked the pharmacist about that and they said they didn't have any record of the Dr.s office calling it. I told them and I would call my Dr. and get back to them. When I called the Dr.s office I was very polite and just said that I think there was some kind of mix up and I needed her help to straighten it out. She took great offense to the fact that I would even suggest she did something wrong because she knows for a fact that she called it in and that she has it in her notes so I needed to tell the pharmacist to contact her directly. I called the pharmacy back and told them that she thought she called it in and that they needed to contact her and I gave them the number. A few minutes later the pharmacy called back and said, "We got it straightened it out, it wasn't our fault she called the wrong pharmacy and your prescription will be ready in an hour." After I hung up the phone I was a little annoyed that he made the point of saying, it wasn't us. Not once in my phone conversations did I get upset or blame anyone for the mix up I just said I need the pills and so how can we straighten this out, so why did both the receptionist and the pharmacist feel the need to put the blame on the other person, I didn't care whose fault it was I just wanted it fixed. The more I thought about it I realized that it was probably just a knee jerk reaction because we live in a world where everyone is so busy pointing the finger at everyone and assigning blame that nothing is done to fix it.

Take our economic disaster for instance. Is it the home-owners fault because everyone bought houses they couldn't afford on crappy loans and then walked away from their homes which crashed the market. Or is it the banks fault because they refuse to work with people and let them lock in interest rates even though they are upside down in their house, and the banks funded the crappy loans to people who couldn't afford it. Or is it the politicians fault for allowing the loans to be legal and then on top of that spending a ridiculous amount of money trying to fix the problem but didn't fix the problem instead made it worse? I personally think it is everyone's fault the economy is so crappy, it is the banks, the homeowners, and the politicians because they all made choices that added to the problem. The problem is that the country is so busy pointing the finger and trying to assign blame that nothing is getting done to fix it and we need it fixed!


Then you have the adults who blame everyone else for why their life is so screwed up. It's your mom's fault you are such a terrible mother, it's your dad's fault you have trust issues, it's the banks fault the check bounced, it's your friends fault the relationship fell apart, its your husbands fault you are so miserable, its your bodies fault you are overweight. You have no control over your life whatsoever it is always someone else's fault. Right . . . WRONG! It's your fault, sure those people might contribute to the situation but how you react is what determines your life not them. You are in charge of you and your fate, your happiness, your success, your pain everything is from you and NO ONE ELSE.

The same goes for parenting. How many times a day are you asking your children if they did something, i.e. did you hit your brother? Who spilled the milk? Who lost the remote? Did you put your clothes away? Who threw the ball that broke the vase? I know I do it and I am resolving right now to stop! It doesn't matter who did it, the fact is that it happened and now what are we as a family going to do to fix it? I think when it comes to kids it is almost always two peoples fault for things happening - the parents and the kids.

For example, the other day M, J, and O were bouncing a ball in the house. I was watching them bounce the ball and didn't think anything of it until the ball bounced and hit a decoration I had on a shelf and the decoration broke. Now it is both the kids fault because they threw ball, but it's also my fault because I allowed them to bounce the ball in the house and blaming the kids doesn't fix or clean up the broken decoration. Not only does blaming not help fix a problem, but I also think it causes more fights among the kids. When you are constantly looking for the culprit it puts the kids on the defensive and they will automatically throw their siblings under the bus. Wouldn't you rather teach your kids to be united and know that they can trust each other and get each others back? Plus aren't you tired of being the bad guy?

So here is what I have been doing to stop the blame game, I am no longer asking the question, "who did it?" Instead I am simply asking for help to fix it. For example, the other day one of my kids decided to get ll of the board books off the bookshelf and leave them all over the floor right in front of the bookshelf and the kids doors. I didn't care who made the mess all I wanted was the mess picked up. I knew that all of the kids had been playing in their rooms and hallway for most of the day so I told them that they needed to pick up the books and put them back on the shelf before going to bed, I also expressed that I wanted them all to work together and because I wasn't watching them when they made the mess I helped them clean up as well. Guess what, not once did I hear, but I didn't make the mess! All that happened was my kids saw me willing to help and they all dove right in and helped clean and in all honesty the only help I gave was helping straighten the books on the bookshelf because it's pretty hard to get books on nicely when you are 6, 5, or 2 yrs old!

So my challenge for you is to stop asking who did it, and stop placing blame on everyone else in your life this week and see what a difference it makes!