Mothering Monday

there was an old woman who lived in a shoe...

I'm not going to do all my post titles with alliteration from now on, but it does make it slightly easier somehow. I guess it's just part of the preacher's daughter coming out in me too.

We had a great day in church yesterday. I mean not that it's ever bad, but yesterday for me was just exceptional. Sunday School & Sunday morning were great lessons, we didn't have nursery duty, so that's always a plus. Sunday evening we had our parenting class then the sermon Sunday night was just excellent. I tried to take notes but I think I just ended up writing the entire sermon down!

But what I want to talk about is our parenting class. It's four weeks and being taught by a couple who are missionaries at home on furlough (?) right now. They have four kids and wrote the curriculum themselves. This week's lesson was on discipline. Seriously, how can you condense the topic of discipline into one hour long lesson? But they actually did a really good job of hitting the high points. I know we could have stayed all night and as my friend commented, we needed to do the exact same lesson all over again next week just to let it sink in well! But afterwards I was really inspired to do a better job of training and disciplining our girls.

Then I talked to Nathan. He was so down. He was just overwhelmed. But I really feel that with a few changes on our part we can see big improvement in the girls' behavior.

So today I decided to work on two major areas on my part: being consistent and not yelling but remaining calm as I discipline. And to focus on a couple of specific behaviors with the kids - tantrums and fighting for the littles, and for Kaleigh back-talking and pestering. They were actually pretty good today but I did have some issues. I want to really stick with this and see some positive changes in our household. I think the problem I've had in the past is that I get on these "kicks" of really staying on them for a few days, their behavior does improve, then I slack off again. In no time things are back to wild.

And obviously one problem I have is that with housework I can't be quite as involved as I need to be. I also worked today on having the twins help pick up and clean up. It was a low-key day so I had some extra time which worked out well. If I can keep in my mind that this is all an investment in their future and ours, I think that will help a lot.

I'm also looking forward to really getting into some spiritual training with the kids. I'll keep you posted...