Consistency

OMG.  Discipline is hard.  Anyone who has kids knows this, and anyone with three or more kids knows it is EXTRA HARD.  With all of mine, and all of them so young, I sometimes feel it is impossible, and have therefore been not-so-great at consistently disciplining my kids for their bad behavior.  It's not something I'm proud of, but I have barely held it together the past year or so.  I am humbling myself and telling the truth.  Hopefully it'll help inspire someone to fight the good fight a little harder!

This week in therapy for Hattie, the therapist kind of reamed me for not doing a better job of following through with consequences for poor behavior (ie. fighting, yelling, talking back, etc.)  I absolutely agree (agreed!) with her, but I feel so powerless sometimes when standing up to my brood.  Powerless to enforce discipline when I have a screaming hungry baby, or a whiny toddler, or WHAT-EV-ER else I may be facing.  She strongly encouraged me to "figure it out!"  I have taken her advice to heart.

Her suggestion was for a family meeting where we list rules and consequences.  If the kids are involved in making the rules (and the consequences) they then know exactly what they are facing.  We had NO TIME, no opportunity, to have a family meeting, so I just started listing "my" rules as they came up:
Rules:
1.  Eat at the table.
2. No talking back.
3.  No foul language.

I hadn't even listed consequences yet.  Eventually (within about an hour or so) Jason began filling out the form even further - with the help of his siblings - including consequences.

Consequences:
1. You get whatever you're eating taken away.
etc.
etc.
You get the idea...

And he added additional rules:
4.  No screaming or yelling.
with their subsequent consequences:
4. Go to bed/nap for 30 minutes.

The list has continued to grow, and since they created it themselves, I have felt obligated to comply with strict enforcement.  Subsequent consequences have developed with everything ending at GO TO BED (early/without dinner/whatever.)  It isn't a perfect system.

I will tell you, all heck broke loose when I got home from my interview tonight about 5:30. (Yes, I got a very part time job at Costco, I will blog later, if I have time.) The kids were INSANE, and I needed to get them fed and (eventually) to bed.  As I began to institute consequences for their (mis)behavior, the disobedience only accelerated.  WOW!  I was amazed at the volume level, the need for attention, the disrespect.  I did, however, begin to deal with them one by one.  Breanna was the first, and she finally was sent to bed for good, without dinner, even without a bath, at around 6.  I stayed calm and enforced consequences as they came up.  Derek got sent to his bed for yelling (I will admit he stayed nowhere near 30 minutes, but he definitely got the message.)  Both boys ended up in bed by about 7:30.

The house is now peaceful.  Only two kids up (youngest and oldest!) and Hattie is surprisingly close to being finished with her homework.  It is working.  My daughter's therapist told me yesterday that it is all about CONSISTENCY.  I knew that.  I believed her.  I just wasn't sure I could do it.  Now I know I can.  :-)