they seemed to be lost in with all the congestion! geesh
We have been struggling with our sweet Sarah.
The girl can back talk like NO OTHER! Does anyone else have this problem? Maybe it's just us!
And lets not forget about THIS!
It says "Mom is a Butt!" and in the hymns no less-nice.
I have always felt the child that acts out the most needs the most one on one time. When we pray at night, we always pray for our children and Sarah usually gets the "please prompt us in ways to help Sarah and to help change her behavior with love and kindess" hoping that we will be guided how to help her.
Sarah has a problem with "always having the LAST WORD!"
example:
ME: "Sarah can you please pick up the dining room?"
SARAH: "But I didnt make the mess!"
ME: "I know but you are incharge of that room."
SARAH: "That's not fair."
ME: "I know sorry babe-just hurry real fast."
SARAH: "But I didnt mess it up!"
ME: "I know just hurry and get it picked up-the other girls have their rooms they are cleaning up."
SARAH: "But that's not fair!"
ME: "Enough already honey-spend less time talking to me about it and pick it up real fast!"
SARAH: "But I didnt mess it up!"
you get the picture-and mind you she is saying each sentence AS I AM TALKING to her.
FRUSTRATING!
Needless to say she has spend the past THREE mondays in a ROW grounded for talking back. When we ground our children, it is "not to their rooms for 4 hours" but they get to clean-ya know all the stuff I dont want to do like laundry, baseboards, changing bed sheets etc. Our kiddos have to WORK when they are grounded.
Jon has felt prompted to take Sarah on a one on one walk to frozen yogurt. Apparently, she talked the ENTIRE TIME and told him all sorts of things every parent hopes their kids will do! It was awesome he said.
We have talked to her about HOLDING OFF to say anything until we ask her "Sarah do you have anything you want to say?" THEN she can give her opinion but not give her opinion DURING every sentence we speak to her. She has been SO MUCH better at it. I will hold up my fingers to my lips like "DONT SAY ANYTHING HOLD OFF!" and it works. I am happy that she is trying her best to change this behavior.
Last night Jon was incharge of Family Home Screaming. Why does it take us (sometimes) 30 minutes to go thru ONLY 5 minutes of the ACTUAL lesson?! I guess that's why I lovingly call it Family Home Screaming...sigh. Oh well-it didnt matter because at the end (our lesson was "Why it is important for us to have a strong testimony") & Jon was sharing his thoughts about why it's important and how life for them will be so different from our lives growing up and if they arent FIRM in their testimonies NOW-life will be even more difficult.
We looked over and Sarah had tears in her eyes. Imagine as parents how that made us feel-TOTALLY AWESOME!
We went to bed that night and our pray was giving Thanks to HF for helping guide is in direction with Sarah and being grateful that she was able to feel the Spirit right in our home. Isnt that what the Gospel teaches us-to teach our OWN children (not leaving it up to Primary) so that they know what it feels like to feel the Spirit. A sweet memory to be treasured in our hearts no doubt.
Last thursday we took the family to Disneyland.
Jons Grandma bought us all year passes-we had to go on Thursday to take our photos for the passes. It was PERFECT weather and we managed to hit all the rides in FOUR HOURS! We took the girls to Olive Garden for dinner after & hung out at my parents while the nasty 91 freeway traffic died down. It was a great day for our family.
Over the weekend Jon & I together attended a work event. It was great to be there with everyone & they had us speak to those in attendance.
Together Jon & I are going to be doing some amazing things with this company and feel it an honor with much responsibility to utilize this for our health and to help support our family. We are so grateful for those that have helped us along the way!
How do you help change the behavior of your children? Do you pray? Do you ground? What has worked best for you?
8 comments:
How old is Sarah? When Emily turned 13 that is when the little sassiness(sp) started. It does get better. GOOD luck and YES i pray for each of my children. :)
You know how we struggle! We are getting the kids to work on restriction, but it's hard to get Seth to do it..takes twice as long to get him to work than it would to actually do the job. And tying to teach them things about the gospel/Spirit is hard, and you hope they hear and understand. Sounds like you guys are doing a GREAT job!
And 1 out of 4 that talks back? I'd take that!
It sounds just like my #2 son, Ryan. Our prayers as parents sound just like ours too. I figure Ryan is Heavenly Father's son too so he must know what I can do to help him. I've learned lately that I can't let Ryan entice me to join the arguing/yelling. I have to just tell him "I'm not even going to talk to you when you're acting like that" and walk away. He HATES that cuz I think he enjoys the attention or something. I've also learned that he's my talker at bedtime (you know,right when I want to go downstairs and chill). The more nights that I just lay next to him and let him go on and on about whatever he's interested in at the time and chat he seems to do better all aroun. Anyway,I can totally relate to what you're going through. It's nice for me to read that our family isn't the only one with such challenges.
Thanks for sharing! What an inspiration.
I know that as my children get older it's harder and harder to just tell them what to do. I have to reason with them, and sometimes let them make their own decisions even if I don't always like them.
I was nagging Taylor about something the other day and he was ignoring me not taking it seriously. Finally I wrote down what needed to be done handed it to him, told him his time line and said "Consider yourself reminded. I'm not saying another thing about it. Once the deadline is here I won't hear any complaining about how you didn't have time to do it" It took about 20 minutes and then he stepped it up and started working on it and I never said another word. For him once I handed the responsibility completely over to him he takes it seriously.
It's always a challenge though because what works for one, doesn't work for another one.
Oh as for family home evening...we've dusted up the "chart" and are now having the kids taking turns teaching the lesson. Now if someone starts acting up we can remind them "hey is that how you want us to act when it's your turn to teach next week?" We've had some pretty good lessons so far...and for some reason they seem to much shorter than the ones I usually do...Hmmm :)
Ya know, I remember days when I was rotten to my parents. I'm sure she'll grow out of it. I loved the one-on-one date idea. John and I take a weekly date night with one of our kids (each child gets one date alone once a month). I think that has helped a WHOLE ton...so you already knew that. I say you have all the tools, and you'll get through it! You have the desire, the gospel, and love. You're amazing parents besides. No worries...just patience! :)
Hey that is such a great family picture! Was that your Christmas photo?
It is nice to see you commenting. Hope things are going well.
heh- so glad I clicked on your blog link- your Sarah and my Emmalee sound a lot a like! Oh my, I know just what you are talking about her needing the last word... we need to follow your example in so many ways... cleaning when grounded is great... and praying for ways to help her in LOVE AND KINDNESS... I need she needs more attention then my other 2 but sometimes it is so hard for me to give it to her... when she talks so mean and is so rude it drives me crazy...
thanks for sharing this... you are amazing Christina.. really.. I mean that!
I miss reading your comments on facebook.. I deleted my account.....just one of those things I felt like I should do, didn't really want to but felt like I needed to. ANYWAY, Ineed to put your blog on my reader so I can keep up on you. hope all is good. how is jon? nurishe?
Hey! It is so nice to see you commenting on blogs again!
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