Feeding the Personality vs. Fighting It
How do you feel about Michelle Duggar of TLC’s hit show 19 Kids & Counting? You either love her or you hate her. She is my hero!
It’s not the Duggar’s religious beliefs that have me hooked; it is her soft spoken nature and overall parenting techniques. I recently stumbled upon The Duggar’s House Guidelines. Some of these are very common sense practices but in my opinion, if you watch the show and read this list, it pushes you to make the attempt to follow the guidelines in your own home.
In a recent episode, Michelle said something in her private interview that really stuck with me. It was about sharing something positive your child(ren) have done every day, without fail, rather than scolding them repeatedly for breaking the rules. It could be something as simple as, "Thank you for entertaining your baby brother while I made dinner without my asking!" Nix the negative and reinforce the positive. Sounds simple, right? We are human after all and new routines are hard to accomplish.
People have a very bad habit of giving into the negative energy, me included. It's easier than turning the mind’s switch to "ON" and figuring out how to transform the negative 'now' to a positive.
Michelle Duggar's idea makes so much sense. If she and her husband can do this with nineteen kids (I hear another is on the way?) each and every day, can we not we handle it with our own, smaller families?
I am a parent to three boys. Their ages vary rather drastically; 16 years, 11 years, and 1 1/2 years. Did I already mention they are all male? Yep, lots of yelling and brawling action in our humble abode.
One morning my oldest took off on his bike with his fishing pole for a few hours. Moms of multiple children know how much easier the flow of the day can be when one child is off doing an activity of their liking. My youngest was just waking up so I grabbed his milk and went in to greet him for the morning, middle son joined us.
The baby enjoyed his “Cup of Joe” (decaf) as I went into yoga mode to energize my mind and body for the upcoming day (post caffeinated beverage of my own, thank-you-very-much). My thoughts began to concentrate on ideas of how I could help middle son continue to adjust dealing with no longer being the baby of the family (as I recall when we showed him our pregnancy test, his response was, "I don't want another person in this family!"). One and a half years later, we're still putting oil on the creaking hinges.
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