Creative Parenting

Isn't that what we all strive for? I know it is what I try to incorporate as much as possible. I think most of us (parents) want to instill good values and logical consequences into our daily interactions with our kids, but without all of the boring, "....because I said so..." lectures. Lehr and I have recently been stepping up our game where consistency is concerned. I feel we've been pretty consistent with Eli regarding what is and what is not allowed in our family, but how long we let things go before intervention happens has not been as predictable in recent weeks. As of late, he might get two or three directions to terminate a certain behavior before we send him to a time out. We know he should be dealt with properly the first time around, but we become sympathetic to his fatigue, we are preoccupied with Maddux, we are wrapped up in our own project, we try to give him another chance to 'do the right thing'... The list goes on and on. I can proudly say that in the last week we have both dealt with issues much more swiftly and there has definitely been a difference in Eli. He still gets out of sorts, but when we send him to time outs, there is much less hemming and hawing happening. He seems to have picked up that we mean business...imagine that!

Joshua, over at Game Theorist, posted a great interpretation of creative parenting the other day. I can only hope Eli forgets his jacket at school one day so I can implement the same consequence.