Need some creative discipline ideas for your kids? In today’s podcast with my husband, we talk about how you can discipline effectively with our Creative Consequences tool that we developed at iMOM. Read more.
Do your conversations with your daughter ever seem like a litany of corrections and instructions? Perhaps they sound like this: “Did you brush your teeth?” Please don’t provoke your brother!” “Your softball uniform is on the dryer.” With school, sports, recitals, holidays, and church programs- in our case, for five children- life can easily spin out of control. Survival became our goal because everyone in the family was moving so fast. Communication became utilitarian, and relationships were sometimes strained.
We arrived at school, the kids got out the car, and I drove away, marveling that Megan had put into practice what we had discussed. I so badly wanted to encourage her to continue being patient with her siblings. Then my joy turned pensive. I began to worry that I would forget to praise her after school. I knew I would be distracted getting all the kids where they needed to be, finishing homework, preparing dinner…you know the drill. But I was not going to miss this opportunity to encourage her. I drove home and immediately wrote her a long note of praise and left it on her pillow. Why are indelible words on paper often more powerful than fleeting comments?
When your children have questions about life, where do they turn for answers? Google? Alexa? Friends? Or you? Our kids have more access to information than ever before. They’ve grown up with the Internet, social media, and now Alexa and they have access all day. And they may be more comfortable or trust online advice more than they do talking to you! This realization became a reality for me when an 11-year-old girl emailed us here at iMOM. She was concerned about her parent’s marriage. She searched online and found an iMOM article, “Is This the Root Cause of Your Marriage Problems?” She thought it would help her mother and emailed us about it. She apologized that she was only 11 (but almost 12) and asked us if we would send the information to her mother.
