Practice what you preach

01/12/2017

                                      Practice what you Preach

                Practice what you Preach is something my husband and I agreed was something we wanted to adopt into our parenting style. Its not for everyone, but it really works for our family.

How it looks in our house: We have “rules” in our house that every family member must follow. They are the fairly standard basic rules. Appropriate language, hands to self, if you don’t finish your dinner you don’t get dessert, try a bite of the meal before you refuse to eat it. And the rules all have their own consequences if they are broken.
When teaching our daughter these rules I thought it was very important for her to see that it’s a family rule.  The consequences are the same for each offending family member.
What does this mean? Well it means that I have been sent to my room to calm my body, I’ve been placed on the step to think about what I did wrong.
Why do we do it? It has really shown my husband and I see that our daughter understands the punishment and it shows that we aren’t just the rule enforcers. It holds the whole family accountable for their actions.
My daughter has caught both of us saying words that we have deemed as “not nice words.” When she catches us she will say “you said a bad word, go sit on the step.” After a few minutes she comes over and asks why we are sitting on the step. Then asks us for an apology, hugs and kisses and back to what we were doing.
The outcome: we are a cohesive family unit that has very few punishments being handed out.