Growing Kids God's Way: Two Challenges

John and I are taking the Growing Kids God's Way class at church, and it is absolutely life-changing. Even for me, and I've already taken it. If you ever have a chance to attend this series, you have GOT to do it. Right now, we're working on the first two "homework" assignments given in chapters one and two:

1. Give the moral or practical reason why when disciplining your children. This means that you can't just say "No!", you have to explain the moral or practical reason why the behavior needs to stop. For example, instead of just saying, "Don't talk back to me," you have to add something like, "because God tells us to honor and respect our father and mother, and talking back is disrespectful." Sometimes, the reason is practical, rather than moral. So, rather than saying, "Stay out of the street!", you have to add, "because a car could hit you and you could get hurt." The purpose of giving the reason is to instill the moral and practical principles into the child's heart so that he can make good decisions in the future. Without the reason why, kids are unable to apply today's "No" to tomorrow's situation.

2. Spend 15 minutes of "couch time" with your spouse every day. This means that you sit down together while the kids are still up and you do nothing but talk to each other (about whatever you want to talk about). It's cheating to do "couch time" while cooking, cleaning, or watching TV. And you have to do it during a time when your children are aware that you're doing it. The purpose is to strengthen your marriage, and also to demonstrate to your children that you love each other and place a top priority on your marriage relationship. Mom and Dad should come first; kids second.

Another strategy we're working on is teaching in times of non-conflict. Rather than saving all of your parental wisdom for times of conflict (discipline), teach your children the principles of good behavior when they're actually being good. I like this one because every time I reinforce one of my kids' good behavior ("Good job, Simon! It's good to say please because it shows respect for other people") they just beam with pride, and it generates more good behavior from them and from any siblings who happen to be watching. I call it the good behavior trickle-down effect.