Proud Momma

January has been a crazy month with 7 birthday parties to attend, school, playgroup, and the rain. I feel like I've been a big blogging slacker. I thought I'd blog about a few things that have made me really proud lately. This blog being in response to a very dark and low moment in my life as a mother back in December.

Kaylyn had an "incident" right before Christmas in which she ran away from our neighborhood Christmas party. She snuck home "without mom knowing". It was the most horrible 15 minutes of my life. We had the whole party, including Santa, looking for her. Luckily, Brent was home and he came and got me, after she had arrived home, and all was well. She was punished and the message came across loud and clear.

I learned something from all this. Consistency in discipline is key. As a teacher, I knew this as the key in my classroom discipline, but it's so different with my own children. Now that she realizes I'm serious and will follow through on the consequences, things have gotten easier.

It has opened the door to many a thoughtful conversations about choosing the right things to do and the appropriate responses to set backs. What makes me so proud is that she is listening to these conversations and implementing them! Here are a couple examples:

1) Temper tantrums are no fun! Kaylyn and I had a discussion about recognizing when we are going to have one and taking 4 deep breaths first. 4 because she's 4. So the other morning I had laid out her clothes for school and she didn't like them (there's a surprise). I heard her in her room yell, "Mom!!!" I started to make my way upstairs, expecting an argument, and I heard her in her room taking deep breaths and counting after each one. She was then able to calmly tell me that she did not want to wear the sweater or the jeans that I had out in a calm manageable voice and we were able to go about our morning without incident. Yeah!!!

2) Peer pressure starts way too early these days. Kaylyn has had some trouble making the right choices, and her excuse is always that "So and So was doing it," or "so and so told me to." So we have discussed that we all are able to choose our own actions. We cannot let others decide for us the actions that we are going to take. If our friends choose to do something and it makes us feel bad or we know it isn't right, then we should choose not to do that thing. So Kaylyn went to one of her many parties and a bunch of the kids started climbing up and around the big huge flat screen plama TV in the family room and hiding behind it. Kaylyn told me, "Mom, when the other kids were doing that I stopped because I didn't want to break that TV and I knew it was wrong." Woohoo!!!

Now how do I get these lessons to stick into the teen years?