Routines and Consequences

Answering Joanne's questions, the biggest thing that seems to stand out for me is our lack of routines and predictability. There's just too much chaos around here.

There were two other ideas that have sparked off some thoughts I want to work through that will help with that:

1) One woman wrote that she takes away a certain amount of screen time from her son if he doesn't get his chores done within an hour of waking up. This may be the approach for us to take.

I have a schedule: but it's shot whenever we don't start "on time" which is every day, right now!

I could certainly try that with respect to myself....and start establishing some peace and order to our lives. I sort of already have that in place: for example, my first visit to the downstairs bath is when I "swish and swipe." One load of laundry needs to be in the washer before bed.
Transfer to dryer and start another right after breakfast.
Fold during our lunch break, and so on.

But the other thing that keeps us in chaos is the lack of consequences. There are also no accountability for the kids to do their chores (nor for me, actually). The consequences I face, of course, are doing laundry late at night when someone says he's out of socks, and letting dishes pile until there's no room to prepare food.

She quoted Boundaries with Kid by Townsend and Cloud. I have the book. I've read the book. Somehow, I did not undertand the part I highlighted below:

Parents run into a big problem when they do not distinguish between psychological and negative relational consequences versus reality consequences. Life works on reality consequences. Psychological and negative relational consequences, such as getting angry, sending guilt messages, nagging, and withdrawing love, usually do not motivate people to change. If they do, the change is short-lived, directed only at getting the person to lighten up on the psychological pressure. True change usually comes only when someone's behavior causes him to encounter reality consequences like pain or losses of time, money, possessions, things he enjoys, and people he values.

I tried this a little bit last night. When my daughter interrupted me on the computer for the third time (she was supposed to be going to bed) I told her "I can't talk to you right now. You are supposed to be upstairs" and then as she continued to speak, I looked anywhere but at her. It was hard on both of us, but she went upstairs.



I have to think about this in greater detail, however.

What are the kids' chores?

When are they supposed to be done?

What will be the consequences for not doing them?

How do I enforce those consequences?



I may have to speed re-read Cloud and Townsend!