Just a few thoughts about our activities and behavior lately. Seriously, sometimes this blog probably sounds completely random, but I really enjoy getting all of these thoughts out of my head every few days, so thanks for reading if you are keeping up with me! Enjoy your glimpse into the inner workings of my mind. Enter at your own risk!
So, the phsycologist that we were going to go see fizzled out. She had a funeral the day of our appointment, and rescheduling childcare became a nightmare. Matt's efforts with Meredith seem to be making a big difference, so we are putting it off for a while unless things get really bad again. Matt and I have decided that we need to start being nicer, because we are pretty hard on her sometimes, and we are amazed at how mature she is when we see her with other kids her age...I forget sometimes that kids aren't supposed to always listen and follow directions, and that many children are allowed to get away with MUCH more than we let our kids get away with. We both really want kids who are well liked by everyone, and we don't want our kids to be the one in the class that people don't want to invite over because they are such hellions!
So, in our efforts to continue to improve life at the Donovan house, we attended a speaker at Meredith's school on Positive Behavior Intervention Systems (PBIS), which is what they do at her school to encourage the children to behave. It was wonderful, and I feel like we got lots of good information. For example, for every negative thing that a person (children and adults alike) hears, it takes 8 positive things to make them feel positive again. We are going to start implementing the reward system for positive behavior at home too, with our own version of the Aces that her school hands out. (Pieces of paper identifying what they were doing that was being respectful, responsible and ready to learn. They can "buy" special things, like getting to have their shoes off for one whole day in the classroom, or renting the principals chair for the day.) We are excited about getting the details worked out this weekend and starting next week, Mer will earn Aces here at home too. I will report how it works later!
The other thing I have been doing is going back to being a more "off the wall" mom. Every week or every other week I am planning to start having something new set up when the kids wake up. Not every day, so that it is still exciting to them when I do it, but this week I started this with playing pirates. We set up a long folding table and draped a sheet over it, pretending it was our ship. I had Meredith draw a map (at her insistence, really. I had a plan, but she wanted to draw it, so I let her take the lead!) and we did a series of treasure hunts, pretended to be shipwrecked and talked to our imaginary parrots. Nathan thought it was hilarious, and Meredith was on her best behavior the rest of the day! I have tons of other ideas, like a safari, zookeeper, beach day, circus day, Firefighter day etc., and I think that I can run with the themes and do art projects, immaginary play, dress up, and hopefully a story with each one. (yep, that education degree is paying off!) I think it will be fun for all of us, because I love to plan, the kids love surprises, Meredith does much better from a behavior standpoint if I keep her very busy, and Nathan is really into imaginary play right now. Everyone wins!
So, that is what we are up to in the land of Donovan. If you have any ideas about themes we could do, please let me know! And of course, I will post pictures as I start the themes each time. It's nice to be tapping into my creative parenting side again, sometimes I lose it in the daily routine.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
that's a great idea (all of it, but especially rewarding her at home). we're too hard on kenny sometimes too and we feel bad b/c he's a pretty great kid.
ReplyDelete