Contrary to what you might think my life is not picture perfect. Really you say?? The fun thing about the blogging is that it’s really easy to paint a pretty picture. But nooo… I burn the baked goods, projects fail, and our kids bicker. With three older kids you have to know we occasionally have our fair share of bickering. This afternoon was one of those times. After what was suppose to be a fun trip to the park I had had enough. Thirty minutes in and I don’t think one of them could say they were honestly having a good time. We decided to try something new. We had to change the focus from the negative to the positive. On our walk out of the park we informed the kids that they were to think up three nice things to say about their other two siblings (things they liked about them) and that upon returning to the car be prepared to share those things. They were instantly quiet…they didn’t quite know what to say.
I am sharing our little exercise with you because it worked very well. It was a great way to turn the negative energy into positive energy. Nobody spoke much on the way back to the car because they were all thinking about what to say to each other. And if they did speak it was something along the lines of “I have two things about A or I have one thing about M and I need two more”. It was kinda cute. When we got to the car everyone took turns sharing their three nice things. It didn’t take long for the giggles to start. The first thing A shared was.. “K, I like your flip flops”. That wasn’t quite what I was going for but it got everyone laughing. From there we heard things like “you are good at math, you are kind, you are cool, you have good taste in colors”… It was a fun exercise, and it did what we set out to do…defuse the negative energy. We will be absolutely be implementing this exercise again as needed.
What do you do when the bickering gets out of hand? Please feel free to share your ideas in comments. I’d love to hear them.