Hard to believe, but they really are listening...

My 13 year old son comes up from his room to the kitchen and spontaneously announces to me that he just blocked access to the internet on his iPod. After discussing the importance of happy, healthy family relationships with a teacher in church that morning (by the way he was staring off into space throughout most of the discussion), he came home and asked his younger brother to enter a random password into is iPod browser settings.  Apparently, he had viewed some questionable things online and he wanted to block his ability to see that stuff again... Love his self-awareness and his choice! And, I am reminded that my reading of body language is really not an accurate telling of what's going in a person's ears and what's being processed in the mind and soul...

Glenn Dutton's parenting stories...

Glenn is a long time friend and an insightful guru on peaceful parenting and turning conflict into opportunity... Check out his site and blog: http://glenndutton.com/blog-2

Ammon won't take 3 minutes to write 10 words!

The ultimate battle of wills over the simplest of tasks! Ammon was tired and it was late--we just wanted him to write 10 words for his spelling list. This request was minor given he was already 18 assignments behind after 5 weeks in school. We saw a repeat of last year starting and panicked!

The requests moved to negative consequences, which escalated to the level of practically being shut-in for the rest of his life. He would not budge, I think, just because he had decided he didn't want to no matter the consequence... visited with my Dad, the school psychologist, friends. All it took to resolve was his teacher's willingness to forgive all the past assignments and start fresh. Ammon has been like a charm, most of the time, since that insightful action. He was behind so far and felt that he could never, would never, catch up. All it took was chunking the work down, giving some hope and light at the end of the tunnel... Simple and elegant solution!

"I am sorry Daddy." Forgiveness - a child's gift

Scolding Ammon for some serious misdeed--I had truly lost my temper. He told me over and over that he hated me and was screaming and yelling at me. I worked my way over to him and held him on my lap and he just melted into me--the man he "hated"--and wanted to be held and comforted.

Alysia...a master at forgiveness and apologies.

"Force follows Force blindly!"

Dealing with CONFLICT! 1st Response in the heat of the moment...

The "Mother Eagle" parenting style

We're roaming around our home with our eagle-eyes scanning the children's activities and we see a hand raised--our eyes now laser focused--and hand blurs toward the siblings face.. Our response...?

Keeping perspective on children's behaviors. Focus on the now vs. projecting misbahavior into the future and responding with the intensity of the potentially future misdeed...