Our little object lesson is now complete--praise the Lord! I'm super glad that my brother and his family came to see us anyway, but the fact that we "had" to cut out two more meals of PB&J makes them coming even better. It was all Hubby and I could do at lunch yesterday to get the sandwich down!
So how did it go? I think we got the point across very well. As soon as lunch was cleaned up we called #1 in our room and talked to her about it. We explained that the lesson wasn't so much for her as it was for her sisters and that even though she doesn't always remember to do her chores that we were very proud of how well she does with remembering. And then we praised her for having a good attitude and that even though we could tell that she was irritated with us on Tuesday when we didn't eat until 8 that she was never rude or disrespectful. We also told her that we proud of the way that she directs her sisters when she needs to and how she has started to gently remind them when they need to get things done as well. She cried, but she started crying before we even said anything. That is just how she is. And that is why we talked to her separately!
After talking to her we sat down with all the girls in the living room and called our family meeting to order. We asked how they felt when we didn't feed them until 8 on Tuesday. #3 said she felt hungry. That is the only emotion she could recall when thinking about that night. After prompting #2 and telling her that she could be honest with us and we wouldn't get upset she told us that she felt like we weren't doing a good job as parents because we didn't feed them when they got hungry. In my mind I was thinking, "Oh yeah!" #1 also piped up and said she felt ignored.
So then we asked how they felt eating PB&J for the last four meals. #3 said she thought it was awesome. Of course she did. We could have gone another week without her thinking anything about it. #2 said again that she didn't think we were doing a good job because we wouldn't go to the store to get food.
And then we brought the lesson home. We talked about how because Mommy didn't do her job of fixing dinner and going grocery shopping that it affected the entire family. We said that even though they don't think that loading or unloading the dishwasher makes a difference to the family, that it does. When one person doesn't get their job done, it affects everyone. We also explained that this lesson wasn't just about chores, that we were training them to be responsible adults. That when they had a job or when they were running their own household that there wouldn't be anyone to remind them to get things done. We also explained that we wanted them to be the type of people that others can rely on. That when they say they will get something done that others know they can be relied upon to do what they said they would. We got tears from #1 and #3, but #2 remained stoic. Basically exactly the reactions we were expecting.
After we tore them down so to speak we built them back up. We told them how impressed we were that there was not one word of complaint with any of the meals we had. We also told them that even though we wanted to teach them this lesson that it didn't mean that we thought that they were bad kids. We told them we were so happy with the young women they were developing in to and how thankful we were that they were our girls. And we are! Our children aren't perfect by any means, but they are really excellent kids. We also told them that we weren't going to talk about punishment if they didn't do their chores. That we trusted them enough to know that because we had talked to them about how important getting their chores done was that they would do them now. I'm hoping that expressing that trust makes them more willing to take responsibility for them.
All in all, I think the lesson went really well. I'm fairly certain that any time we mention peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next year or so that they will remember this particular lesson. As far as actually making a difference in whether they remember their chores or not--well, I'll update on that after a couple of weeks!
No comments:
Post a Comment