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My boys had a punch up today. There you go, I said it. Now you know that my kids are not perfect. But remember, we can't always control what our kids say or do. But we sure can control our reactions to it. This particular day I was busy in the study when I heard some bad language. Now bad language is forbidden at our house. So I went to investigate and find out what was going on. Out in the lounge I found my three boys all on top of each other in a fight. Now I have to say, if you have girls you probably can't understand this. But boys like to fight. Or at least, my boys wanted to fight today. One of them was choking another boy so I helped them apart. I tried to figure out how I would deal with this fighting.I sent the boys to their bedrooms and tried to make sense of what had happened. And do you know what? My boys gave me three different versions. Hmmm... It was really bad timing for the boys as they had just organized for a friend to sleep over because it was school holidays. I told the boys that they would have to ring back their friend and cancel the sleepover on account of their violent episode. Then I went out for an hour, leaving them at home. I had to get to the bank before it closed and thought I would give them a chance to earn back their sleepover by some good behavior. I was kind of hoping that while I was out the boys would get together and devise a plan to earn back the sleepover by perhaps doing some extra chores or something a bit special. After all it was the school holidays and I didn't want to be too mean to them... Well I arrived back from the bank and walked into the house. I could see one boy doing some dishes, another boy was cleaning the bathroom vanity. The third boy had cleaned up the lounge room and it was looking very tidy. Wonderful. Now you need to understand that I did have every right to cancel the sleepovers. But I was hoping that the boys would put in some effort to show me that they were sorry for their behavior. And that they did. I was thrilled with their efforts so decided that their sleepovers could go ahead as planned. I am always looking for opportunities to extend grace to my children and I definitely extended grace to them this day when they didn't deserve it. I sat the kids down and we had a chat. Everyone apologized to each other and we discussed how we could have dealt with the issue another way and still had a good outcome. The end result? The kids still got their sleepover. Mum extended grace to them this time. And the kids know that next time, the penalty will be more severe.
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Kim Marie is a single mother to four children, living in Queensland, Australia. She is a best selling author as well as a child behavior management expert and her guide on raising children can be found at her web site: www.mychildcanbehave.com
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