“Family Gets the Best”

          Yesterday morning started out rough. My son did not want to get ready for school. At times he spoke disrespectfully to me as I was telling him what he needed to do to get ready. We have a rule in our house that “Family gets the best or no one gets the rest.”  I decided that the way our morning was going it was time to implement that rule which meant that when he got home from school that afternoon he would not be allowed to play with his neighborhood friends. Family was not getting the best, so no one was getting the rest.

            Let me be honest and say that it would have been very easy to take that rule and use it as some sort of back-end parenting to attempt to whip him into behaving the way I wanted him to. I would be lying if I said that was never a temptation. Even though as Grace-Based Parents we have stepped out of the whole Punishments/Rewards paradigm, I cannot say that there is still not something within me that wants to use consequences at times as a way to “give him what he deserves” or as a way to assert some sort of controlling behavior modification to get him to do what I want. However, that is just my surface, human, knee-jerk reaction to his behavior. If I stop and search deeper in my heart I know that is NOT how I want to be raising my children. So as he spent his day in school (quickly forgetting already what happened that morning, as kids do) I spent much of my morning thinking and praying about how to take our miserable morning and turn it into something for good.

            The first thing I decided was that some changes needed to be made to our morning routine. Since I am the parent I also realized that those changes really needed to start with ME. So I started by making a commitment to myself, as well as my children, that I would make some adjustments to the way I started out MY morning. I also told my husband that although our son would be staying home after school and not playing with his friends, I didn’t want it to be a punishment but I
really wanted ALL of us to make an effort to focus on family. So that is what we did. My husband and I chose to set aside our own personal “to do” lists and give extra special focus and attention to our children. We let them run around the backyard and get some big energy out. We made sure they were properly feed at a decent hour for dinner. We made sure homework was done way before the final moments of the day so that we could also have some time playing a family game together. While the girls had their bath I sat side by side with my son and he helped me plan our new morning routine chart. I told him about the changes I was going to make and then I let him help make decisions about the changes he needed to make. We then got ready for bed and snuggled down on the couch together for some Dr. Seuss books since it was Dr. Seuss' birthday. When the time came for me to tuck my son in bed it suddenly dawned on me that not once that whole afternoon/evening had I heard him and his sister fighting (something that is usually a common occurrence in our house) Wow, amazing!

This then led me to reflect even more on the wonderful evening we had had together. What would have happened if I had given in to the temptation to use his consequence as a punishment? What would the evening have looked like if we would have made him stew over the fact that he could not go play with his friends while the rest of us went about our own personal business for the evening. How very different our evening would have been if we would have decided to  add
that little bit of “extra” that we as humans seem to think will somehow makes us feel like better parents but in reality does nothing in the long run to really teach our children, or make us truly feel any better.

 Was my son happy about the fact that he could not play with his friends after school? Of course not. He had a few big feelings over the fact we were sticking to our word and not changing our minds. Did he ask us several times if he could still “please, please, please” go play with them? Yes. Was it easy for him? No. But I did NOT have to add something extra, I did not have to make sure he was suffering in order for him to learn. In fact I did the opposite. I made sure our family had one of the BEST evenings we had had together in a long time. I made sure we loved on each other and enjoyed one another. I made sure that Family really honestly “Got the Best.”  And what did we get in return? A valuable evening filled with fun, laughter, forgiveness, grace, relationship, FAMILY. This is something a punishment would never have given any of us. This was more than valuable, it was priceless.

Yesterday morning started out rough, but today, today we started a new day.