A Mother In Training- Part 4

This weeks class was, as always, a good one. I didn’t feel a lot of the spirit striking down at me to “listen up and do as you are told”, but I did get a few insights on how to change my verbiage.
Praise and Encouragement
I am a Child of God. I am Known. I am Good.
When it comes to disciplining my kids they need to know that even though their behavior may be bad, they are good. It makes a huge difference with what tone, words, and expression I use. They may not hear my words with the tone being wrong.
Most of us were raised with criticism and guilt, so giving and hearing positive praise is hard. (ex. You are so beautiful) We automatically think of all the bad things we hate about ourselves. But if you rephrase it saying “I love the color red on you. It makes your eyes sparkly,” Then that is when we light up. The difference between the two is that the first says that all your other kids aren’t as pretty because she is the prettiest. Where the second tells her she looks great and it leaves the other kids open for the same type of compliments. My two older girls are really into telling each other or myself “you are so beautiful” all the time. But I have noticed that it does effect the other kid because it wasn’t said to her.
Praise is good, but it is also like a hole in a bucket. It will never be enough to keep you full. They will constantly be needing the praise to feel their worth, but if they have the constant encouragement They will always feel good about themselves.
4 things to make kids stronger
1. Change how I encourage. Don’t make it generic.
2. kids hear I love differently. Speak to them in their love language. She talked about a book called love languages. I want to get that and figure out what my kids are. They are 5 areas-touch, service, time, gifts, and words of affection.
3. Have a listen time with your kids. Teach kids to own and solve their own problems. You need to listen and ask the right questions to get them to figure out what the best way to handle the situation is. Too many times I have told my kids what they need to do to fix their issue, but never fails that they come back crying because it didn’t work. Now if they got their brains clicking on their own solution then maybe it will stick better.
4. Have kids set goals and achieve them. Encourage them to develop hobbies like draw, reading, dance, cooking, etc. This area might be tricky because if 2 kids want to do the dame thing then it might lead to a competition. I will have to think more on how to solve that. She also suggested having PPI’s with your kids. I think this is a great idea. I also think Robert will love this too. For him to have the Person Priesthood interview with all his kids will help them bond together and be willing to let us into their lives when they get to be teenagers.
So my homework this week is to give positives. I do pretty good with this, so for me I am going to give more personal time with my kids and start to develop their own problem solving methods.