I'm not really into self help books.
I feel like most of them start out really interesting and then all end up saying the exact same thing.
And parenting books are the same way.
Whole lotta words, not much practicality.
But I'd heard such awesome reviews of this one that I decided to give it a whirl.
And seriously, within the first 2 paragraphs, the author was calling me out.
I was certain she had secretly been observing all my parenting mishaps.
Don't ask the same request a billion times?
Opps.
Quit teaching them to only obey when you get to 3?
I do that too.
Stop sugar coating disobedience as being tired, cranky, or 4.
Rugh Row.
This book was obviously written by a mom with lots of experience in making mistakes.
She give a ton of practical steps to take in lots of different situations and backs it up with lots of Scripture.
I loved it. Devoured it. Hung on every word.
And then I tried some of it.
And, by golly, her simple advice and straight forward rules worked great with Josie.
Our biggest breakthroughs were with what I've dubbed Calling It Like It Is and Try Again.
Calling It Like It Is was harder then I thought it would be.
I've gotten so comfortable making excuses for my kids misbehavior that it was difficult to stop myself from saying, "she's just sleepy," and instead tell her what she was doing was unexceptable. Calling her out for the sin she was doing.
But it worked.
I am convinced that kids don't want to be bad. They just need to be taught what's right and how to break their selfishness.
And that means we have to be the ones to point it out and use every teachable moment we can find.
Try Again has been HUGE for Josie.
When she disobeys, we talk about it, she gets a spanking, and then I ask if she wants to Try Again.
And we redo the senario until she makes the right choice.
And she is SO proud of herself.
She loves it.
Now, when I don't ask if she wants to Try Again, she reminds me.
It teaches her the right way to react and lets us leave the moment on a high note instead of a sad one.
So long story short, this is a great book with awesome encouragement and I highly recommend it.
The end.
2 comments:
Sounds like a book I should check out. Thanks for the review.
oh snap, you said "spanking" and there wasn't five hundred comments calling you a bad mom!!!! how did you do that???
thought i was the only old school one. my teens don't have cell phones, they still have bed times (i mean, what could they possibly be doing up until 4 a.m. on the computer anyway?)
they say i'm strict. i say i care. it would be much easier to say yes to everything, believe me. no is the hard way but i think it's the right way and as a preschool teacher i see kids every day who could use a little "no" in their lives!
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