Day 23 - Consistency

Parenting is a game.  A journey.  An adventure.  A practice in patience and strength.  A venture into the unknown.  A dichotomy of chaos and consistency.

The last word seems to be the trickiest.  The rest are givens when you bring a new life into the world.  I mean - you don't even know exactly what you'll be doing 10 minutes from now let alone for the next 20 years but here we are - responsible for an entire other being for at least that long.

But consistency can be elusive.

I know that it is key to successful parenting, to winning the battles we fight daily.  I learned this in undergrad through my education classes and again by experience when actually teaching.  And I'm reminded of its importance daily as I deal with Little Man and Little Miss.

There are some things I'm really good at being consistent at:  the daily routine, eating as a family, requiring teeth be brushed, getting good food on the table.

Then there are things that I'm really not good at being consistent at:  discipline, following through on consequences, breathing.

The first list doesn't matter much if the second list doesn't join it.  I am working on it though.  But being consistent is hard and exhausting!  I'm talking brain-numbing, bone-tired exhausting.  Especially for a person who tends to over-complicate things.  I have developed so many consequences or series of events for everything I can think Little Man or Little Miss might do.  No wonder they don't believe me when I tell them to stop or "blah blah" will happen.  The "blah blah" is never the same.  Eventually, I get worn out and give in.  It's so much easier than pushing against the current.

So what do we do?  How do we simplify consequences and discipline so that it is consistent, so it's easier to follow through?

I really don't have a good answer.  My brain is so fried by the end of the day that I'm lucky to remember to brush my own teeth.  So I obviously need to do something different.  Because the kids know.

They can smell inconsistency like a shark smells blood.  They love it.  They wait for it.  They want mom and dad to break down so they can regain their stronghold as King and Queen of the house.  They know it will happen eventually and they have the patience to prove it.

And they are right.

So tonight I decided I needed to take a step back.  I need to reflect a bit on the behavior that I would assess a consequence for and keep those on the front burners.  I came up with the following:

Hitting
Not listening to directions
Sassing back

That's really not a hard list.  So then I just need to develop a consequence for them.  It could be the same for all three or something a little different for all three.  Well....I don't need to develop the consequence; Dear Husband and I should together.

Even better - I should have the kids develop the consequence for these actions!  SCORE!  This was another tool I learned in my teaching days.  Let kids assign their own consequence.  They'll usually be a lot harder on themselves than you would be on them.  And the kids know the rules and what is allowed and not allowed.  I bet they'll be able to come up with some great consequences.  Then we can post it and just refer to it.  Brain-space saved!

I guess this weekend's chore list has grown a bit:  buy all the stuff for our kitchen remodel, come up with a chore chart for each kid (plus actually make it), and discuss and post the consequences for the above actions.

Easy peasy.  Ha!  I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers,
Megs