During this break from school, with all the kids being around and without as much direction as they are accustomed to, I felt that they needed some encouragement to get along with each other, as direction-less children often lead to conflict. We packed up and headed to Panera Bread for breakfast that first Saturday morning, and they suffered through Daddy lecturing on and on and on and on and on about being Generous, about being Selfless, but mostly about being Respectful Of Each Other. I told them that any time we hear angry yelling, hitting, or arguing, that was an indication of 2 people handling conflict incorrectly. The correct was is to state: "It feels you are being disrespectful toward me because..." To which the answer is ALWAYS: "I'm sorry that you feel that I was being disrespectful; I will stop doing...", even if they feel that they weren't being disrespectful.
The reason for that is because the point I'm trying to get across to these kids is that it is really about how our actions make the other people in our lives feel, not our intentions. I know, this seems a little elemental, but in our house there seems to be a lot of conflict. We look at friends and family who have similar sized and aged kids as we, and are rather amazed at the lack of conflict in their home. I don't understand this; is it me? Or is it just my DNA structure that I have passed down to my kids, the DNA that doesn't mind conflict? Anyway, this is my experiment, it seems to be going well the first 5-6 days. The nice thing of it is, the lack of structured days allows those who don't catch the vision to sit in their chairs quietly for a period of time, or in extreme cases, in their room for extended lengths of time. We are usually busy enough that neither one of these two options are very viable...
Mostly, I posted this to look back and see; to be able to remind myself of doing this, and to gauge the effectiveness. At some point in time, my kids will read it and roll their eyes and say "Oh yeah, I remember THAT Christmas break!"
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