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Highland Dove Homeschool |
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Child Training
Oh my goodness! Nothing is more important, difficult, intimately personal or controversial as this!
Chatting - these are random thoughtWe're sort of middle-of-the-roaders (I guess it depends on what road you're on, too!) We yell, but not as much as we used to (Thank you, God for your graces - it's all Him that's helped us with that). We think night-time-parenting is HORRIBLE and don't feel we do a particularly loving job at it. We do spank, but are much more likely to use another means of disciple. We have LOTS of rules, but the over-riding principal is MERCY. The kids learn the word MERCY very early on. It's a common topic of dinner conversation (as we're going over our day with Daddy.) Our goal is to raise saints of God who are balanced, well-adjusted, joyful & well-rounded people who reach the potential that God blessed them with. WHEW! (and sometimes I can hardly get out of bed! That's a tall order for a schlep like me. please, God, please, God, please help me...) My favorite author on the topic of child-training is Dr. Raymond N. Guarendi. His books are reassuring, informative & funny!!
Virtue-ViceThis tool is one of the most fruitful in our family. I made my own after seeing 3 charts a friend bought from http://www.doorposts.net/charts.asp that I put into one and personalized for the vocabulary we commonly use in our family. I also found lots of bible verses that appealed to our family and got lots of ideas from this website : http://ww7.com/herefixmykid/#Put This is my chart
Sundays - such a big topic that it has its own PAGE!Sundays can be torture with kids. Just trying to get out of the house with kids dressed, mostly fed, and clean --- before you ever even get to church can be Satan's grand opportunity for the week for us to yell and scream and fume and cry and every bad thing to happen. Satan REALLY doesn't want us to go to church. These are what our Sundays look like. Shoes. Our biggest problem getting out of the house is a kid who can't find shoes. They all have multiple pairs. I don't see why it's so difficult - but it is.
Martial LawWhen things get REALLY out of hand (Dave & I get busy with life and slack up on disciplining the kids) our house gets absolutely out of control. When we can't take it anymore we declare MARTIAL LAW. During Martial Law, they watch no TV. They read no books that aren't part of school. They play with no one - not even each other. They go nowhere. They get up at 7am and go to sleep at 7pm and work in between. They eat with the family, but they get no in-between-meal snacks and no sweets the whole time we're on martial law. That's not to say that I won't bake cookies for me, they just don't get any. I may, as a reward, give a child who has worked hard and with a good attitude 1 cookie before bed. IMPORTANT: Dave and I display almost no anger during Martial Law. We are loving and pleasant, but firm and swift with consequences. During Martial Law they are appreciative of the few rewards they earn (1 cookie, reading for leisure, playing with leggos) and they work on themselves to not easily throw those privileges away by talking back, or whatever. Dave and I are also reasonable folk who are eager to listen to what our children think. They can tell us almost anything (they think Martial Law is unfair, for example) as long as they say it in a normal, reasonable tone of voice and show a certain amount of deference since they're speaking to an adult. This sounds SUPER harsh, and is hard to institute the first time. However, our children's entire childhood is centered around joy. We work very hard to make school exciting and fun so they learn with eagerness and joy. They have playdates almost every week during the week, to say nothing of playing with neighbor kids, having friends over for Science Co-op (when they all spend a great deal of time up in the climbing tree) and seeing their friends Library Club once a week while other kids are in school. Their mom is at their beck and call most of the day to assist in anything they need or desire. I take them to the zoo, library, and we spend entire days at the park with 30 of their friends all summer long. Their dad works hard every day and comes home every evening to wrestle with them or fix their bikes and spends time with them all weekend long so they've had a wonderful weekend (picnics, drives, biking, hiking, going to a movie, making their swingset/kiddie pool/hose into a waterfall, going out to eat, plus all the visiting with friends and family). When they start to take all those wonderful things for granted and begin to feel entitled to having 2 adults do their bidding...it's time for Martial Law to show them what they've really got (that often we don't appreciate until it's gone). It's really a favor to show our kids what life can be like before they go out into the world and see how rough life can be for themselves. We aren't really punishing them - just not doing all the over the top things we normally do - because they aren't appreciating it. We declare Martial Law about twice a year for about two weeks. It takes about a week of Martial Law for the kids to conform to our expectations of behavior after they've been so terrible - then another week to earn back our trust that they are willing to joyfully obey, so we can trust them with normal life, again. I show Martial Law some on my Schedule page.
AllowanceHere are some articles from my blog about this topic in our school Here is the Allowance page on this website about the topic in depth Here is a copy of our chore chart
ToddlersToddlers are a force to be reckoned with -- especially, when you're trying to homeschool their bigger siblings. My solution :
Beyond those items in place --
See my Toddler page for ideas on handling a toddler during school time.
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