Have you ever heard of Love and Logic? It's this fantastic discipline method that uses empathy instead of yelling and spanking. It allows kids to learn from their mistakes and make good choices so they can grow up to be functional human being who aren't reliant on someone else, such as their parents, to do everything for them. Sounds good, huh? It's great, but it's hard. I am not very good at it, because my patience is lacking and I tend to yell a little more than I should. I also tend to talk too much. One of the keys to Love and Logic is to say very little to get your point across when you are disciplining your kids. That is very hard for me to do.
On more than one occasion, I've been in the middle of talking to the kids about something they have done wrong, and they have totally tuned me out. Here I am, getting all worked up about how they need to be more respectful or not hit each other, and they are paying attention to something completely different. Often I say, "look at me", and they will look for a millisecond and then look away. Then I say, "look at my eyes", and again they will look for a second and then look away as soon as I start talking again. It is maddening. The worse, however, is when you are right in the middle of making your point, and out of the blue the kid says something like, "look, a bird!". Kill me now.
Last week, we were driving in the car and the kids, as usual, were fighting. I couldn't take much more. Andy was going on and on about how he didn't want to listen to music, he wanted to watch a movie. He didn't want to watch Sarah's movie, he wanted his turn to pick. Sarah, of course, didn't want to watch a movie, she wanted to listen to music. They have this argument almost any time we are in the car for more than 30 seconds, and they can never, ever agree on what to watch or listen to. We have rules about taking turns, but those get tricky because Sarah is in the car with me a lot more than Andy and it's silly that she has to continue watching something he has picked when he's not even in the car. In fact, today she was worried that he was going to be upset because she finished watching a DVD that he had picked and he didn't get to see the end.
As I said, I was about to lose it. I was tired of telling them to compromise and work something out, and my mind drifted to what I could do to distract them and make them stop. We happened to be passing a field of cows at that moment (yes, I live in Texas and there are several fields with cows and horses in them on our daily drive - believe it or not we do not live in the middle of nowhere, it is very suburban), so I said, "look kids, cows!". They both stopped arguing, looked out the window, and the rest of the drive was argument-free.
I couldn't believe it. It worked. I used their own trick against them. And why wouldn't it work? Every time Andy or Sarah does that to me I just stop disciplining them and turn in disbelief that they weren't listening to a word I was saying. The talking stops and they are left alone. Not the best technique in dealing with your kids, but it will do in a pinch or at least until I get better at Love and Logic.
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