This morning I got an email from Clara's preschool teacher letting me know that Clara had hit and kicked one of the other kids, and said that Josh does it to her all of the time. Grrrrr. So, after grounding both of them until they turn 18, we decided that the best way to combat this is to have a Family Home Evening "Nice Lesson".
First we read scriptures, and then Dave had us all take turns standing up while the rest of us tried to make that person laugh. Josh cracked immediately, Clara took a little while, and I maintained a semi-straight face. Then Dave went on to talk about how there are many different emotions, happy, sad, angry, mad, etc., and that one reason we are here on the earth is to learn to control them. It's ok to feel them, but we have to learn to not act on them. We talked about how important it is to not hit or kick your siblings or friends, and discussed alternatives. They both seemed to "get it", but now we have to put it into practice.
I must preface this and say that kids cannot control their emotions when they aren't getting enough sleep, and our kids have not been getting enough lately. We have had them out way past bedtime and I think it was catching up. I insisted that they take naps today (with violent protests that they weren't remotely tired) and both of them fell asleep within about 30 seconds and slept for 3 hours.
We decided that we are going to alternate activity FHE nights with "Nice Lesson" FHE nights for the rest of this year. We'll see how that goes.
2 comments:
Great idea. I just might use it myself. You can never have too many "nice" lessons.
By the way -- your kids are still in school??? Mine got out over six weeks ago!
I like the name "nice lessons". I think everyone should have them! It's so easy to get kids off schedule with it being lighter outside and there are so many fun things to do instead of sleeping. Great reminder. My mom used to teach this great lesson about how Tom the Turkey lost his Temper. It is about how Tom would lose his temper and turn a color, which is how he eventually got all the colors in his feathers. He learned to control his temper, thank goodness! :) We loved that as kids.
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