Today, I walked away from the latest battle and prayed. I put the two offending parties in time out apart from each other and prayed every minute of that 5 minutes to know how to handle this onslaught of conflict. Lord, help me be patient! Lord, give me few wise words that they will hear. Lord, help me know how to train these precious kids (who are driving me crazy!!!) Lord, thank you for your patience with ME as I mess up.
No more Charlie Brown teacher voice. "Wah wah wah wah wah wah." Remember that? I think that is all they hear when I talk to them regardless of the words coming out of my mouth. (Which by the way is tricky since I lost my voice today! blah!)
And then it came to me! I ignored the latest brawl and gave them a task. They were given two chores to work on together as a team. For every time there was conflict during the completion of their task, they would be assigned one additional chore. We all shook hands and they got busy.
Oh, I know I need to get to the root of the issue. I know that somehow I need to reach their heart and help them see what causes their reactions towards one another or me. There is a lot of training to be done.
"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it." James 4:1-2My latest realization though is this: Those teachable heart moments may need to happen during a time when they are not so wound up, angry, or upset. I'm certainly not very teachable when I'm upset. And so, today they worked and worked and worked. There were all sorts of combinations of kids working together as teams. They did get assigned a few extra jobs when they didn't work together as a team well, but in the end Aaron said, "That was fun!"
And so, while this new attempt may only be effective for a short time (if at all!) it has certainly helped in cleaning the house. Bonus!
Bravo! And yay to a cleaner house
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