Earlier I introduced Gregg Harris’ “attachment” principle for doing the many things that are important in our kids’ Christian upbringing. (Read Attaching Important Things To Your Schedule here.)

Today I want to introduce another paradigm that has kept us going in all of the myriad Christian training endeavors: If something is important to you, you will do it more often than you do not.

Simple, really. But it has kept us going when we felt defeated, overwhelmed, or unsuccessful in our parenting. No matter what was happening, we tried to follow that principle. When one of us got discouraged, the other would remind the first that we were, indeed, doing what we were supposed to be doing.

I haven’t done afternoon story time for two days in a row with Kara’s colic. Ray’s answer? All that matters is that you do it more often than you don’t. And I knew that it was true. I am not perfect. Managing a houseful of preschoolers certainly made perfection on a daily basis out of the question!

However, I knew in my heart of hearts what I wanted our home to be. I knew what I wanted my day to look like (and what it needed to look like in order to accomplish all that we wanted to accomplish).

We knew what we wanted in our children’s Christian upbringing. And we knew that as long as we persevered and did those important things “more often than not,” we could make it.

Make that your goal for new disciplines in your family—that if you plan to do devotions every school morning during breakfast, and you make it three of the five—you have done it “more often than not.”

If you want to read aloud to your tweens before bed during the week, and you read three out of the five weeknight bedtimes, you have done it—“more often than not.” And you are well on your way to success in carrying out the things that are important to you in your Christian parenting.

Raising children for the Lord is not a sprint. It is a marathon, or if you are married, a life-long relay. Running fast and hard at the beginning is not what will get you to the finish line. Slow and steady is what will get you there. And reading, praying, singing, talking, choring, playing, teaching, training, etc. “more often than not” will help you cross that finish line someday knowing that have done what you were supposed to do—without regrets for all of the “priorities” that never truly were priorities but just unfulfilled wishes.

How could the “more often than not” principle help you in your parenting? Would it bring freedom? Could it bring more consistency than you get with trying for perfection?

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If you have read my article about the Fun Factor in Homeschooling, you know that a lot of our homeschooling was hard work. Perseverance. Stick-tu-i-tive-ness. The daily grind. The day-to-day in’s and out’s. Teaching our kids contentment, work ethic, and study skills.

But we also had fun. A lot of fun. Not every subject. Not every hour. But in balance, we had fun in our school.

I pray that your family can find that fine balance between fun and just plain hard work. Homeschooling is a long, sometimes lonely, and always challenging endeavor.

As I have mentioned before, if we try to make it all fun and games all the time, our children will miss valuable lessons. However, if we omit fun from our homeschool entirely, we risk making everything else look better to our children than home.

Here are a few ways we made homeschooling fun:

1. We always started our day with Bible reading/character reading together–and ended that reading with a fun chapter book that we worked through together. (This was after each person’s morning routine and chore list, usually, and was sometimes during the kids’ breakfast eating.) Everybody looked forward to our continued chapter book readings. I read quite literally hundreds of chapter books aloud to the kids this way, and these are some of our most fond memories of all of homeschooling.

2. While we tried to get curriculum that fit each child’s strengths, interests, learning styles, etc., and I (Donna) did the bulk of the choosing, for extra things, we took the kids with us to smaller conventions (or let them look in a catalog to choose), and they picked out their fun “extras”–including chapter books they wanted to read that year, educational coloring books, audios to listen to, etc. (Yes, we spent a lot on our kids’ school. We live in a very old, tiny, non-fancy house with used furniture and old vehicles with lots of miles. We financially (and time and energy-wise) prioritized our kids’ education and family times over everything else.)

3. While we did many weekday field trips, we didn’t limit our field trips to school days. It wasn’t uncommon at all for us to take a Saturday to go to museums and zoos with Dad or to plan a long weekend vacation museum-hopping in Chicago. The kids knew that their education was important to both Dad and Mom–and wasn’t just something that Mom did, thought about, planned, and carried out.

4. In addition to our morning chapter book, I usually had chapter books going with various kids. I would have one that I read aloud to each of the three olders–plus another that we did as a family with Dad. Everybody worked hard so we could do our reading.

5. I should say after the #4 reading one that we did not have access to television stations or even computers with our olders. We had a big old television hooked up to a vcr–and we limited everybody’s watching to five hours per week (usually together). I need to include that here because when you don’t have television or computers, reading aloud together becomes a fun activity. While I don’t think we should run away from our society (not have a computer, act like technology doesn’t exist, etc.), we recommend highly limiting and controlling it so that the little things in life become sweeter. (See The Fun Factor in Homeschooling.)

6. Read the book/watch the movie. We didn’t do this formally, but we did it quite often. With so many book/movie combos out today, I would make this a homeschool tradition!

7. Add fun subjects. Our kids always got to do extra things they enjoyed like art, music, pottery, sewing, science kits, etc. We tried to expose them to different fun things to see what they were good at and where their interests took them.

8. Make PE a family affair. We tried to do a lot of our kids’ PE at home together. We had other families over to play. But we also just played as a family. We loved making up new games with various sizes and styles of balls!

9. Get cool school supplies. We didn’t do back-to-school clothes shopping, but we did let them pick out their binders, pens, crayons, etc. They weren’t limited to a list from a school with boring “16 Crayola crayons–no more, no fewer”—any style or color or pattern of school supply works at home! 😉

10. As our kids got older, we let them plan their subjects for the next year–and sometimes even choose the books.

11. Also, as our kids got older, we let them plan their school schedule/order with us for the year. As long as it worked and they completed their lists, they could continue to make choices about these things.

12. School with another family. We often did field trips, activities, unit studies, days away, etc. with another family or two of kids. We got together to do gingerbread houses and crafts, etc., every Christmas.

13. Do anything different than what kids around you are doing! Our kids loved the fact that they didn’t have to get on a bus early or they didn’t have to stay inside at a desk if it was nice out. Or we could go to the park for lunch and some PE on any given day. Point out the fact that homeschooling affords us so many activities and opportunities that those in school can’t do or enjoy.

14. Take fun field trips! If you have heard us speak or follow our blog, you know that our older kids are extremely proud of the fact that they (along with Mom and Dad) slept at the top of the jungle gym at Science Central, in the snake room at the zoo, and on the soldiers’ “cots” at the fort. Go for the unusual, and they will remember them and love homeschooling because of them.

15. Do story time from birth. There is nothing like shared picture books with little kids. And there is definitely nothing like the memories of reading picture books every afternoon with momma for ten years. I’m telling you–this is what memories are made of.

I could go on forever and ever about how much we love homeschooling; how we tried to make it fun (but not so fun that normal wasn’t enjoyed!); how we put our time, money, strength, and energy into raising our children in this homeschooling lifestyle–and how much they, as adults, are grateful to us for it.

The post Ways We Made Homeschooling Fun appeared first on Character Ink.

 (Click here to listen to this podcast!)

FOUR D’s OF BEHAVIOR: Heart-motivated behaviors that should not be grouped with childish behaviors but should be tended to in a consistent and heart-affecting manner.

D-1: Disrespect
D-2: Disobedience
D-3: Deceit
D-4: Destruction

D-1: Disrespect—words, actions, tone, and/or expressions that do not show respect or submission to parents.

D-2: Disobedience—actions that are not fully obedient. Obedience means “Doing what you are told, when you are told, in the way you are told—with a good attitude.”

D-3: Deceit—lying, stealing, “fibbing,” speaking half truths, and covering for words and actions with “I was joking” or other concealment words.

D-4: Destruction—purposely breaking things or harming others.

Treat Behaviors Accordingly

(1) Foolishness/Heart Issues—4 D’s

a. Serious Treatment
b. Punishment
c. Heart Teaching and Training

(2) Childishness/Character Issues

a. Training
b. Rewards
c. Consequences*

*Consequences may be used with 4 D’s if parents have waited until child is tween or teen to begin this approach to parenting. If this is the case, the most severe, serious consequences should be reserved for foolishness/4 D’s.

CHECK IT OUT!!! For printable 8.5 x 11” posters that you can use with your children concerning these topics, click HERE to subscribe to our weekly e-newsletters. You will receive a link to great printables that you can use to teach your children these concepts (and/or to remind yourself of them!).

Podcasts: 

• No Response Rule (Backtalking)
• Terms & Concepts from Raising Kids With Character Parenting Seminar
• Five Homeschool Problems and Solutions
• How Do I Know When to Give Chances and When to Take Action: When to Give Our Kids a Mulligan
• How Do I Get My Children to See Work at Home in a Positive Light?
• Turning ‘Unusually’ High-Need Preschoolers Into the Darling Angels They Were Meant to Be
• Solving Common Preschool Behavior Problems

Blog Posts:

• Three Steps to an Apology
• Two Tips For Teaching Empathy and Humility to Our Children
• Teaching Our Children How NOT to Apologize
• 4 D’s of Behavior
• Five Ways to Be More Patient With Your Kids Tomorrow
• Obedience Math

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Want to listen to this podcast?  Click here!

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Click here to see our previous podcasts!

For 8.5 x 11” posters that you can use with your children concerning these topics, click HERE to subscribe to our weekly e-newsletters. You will receive a link to great printables that you can use to teach your children these concepts (and/or to remind yourself of them!).  Already subscribed?  You’ll find link in this week’s newsletter for these posters 🙂

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Recently when my sister, her husband, and her two young teen daughters were here visiting in Indiana from North Carolina, we took as many from our family who could come and my sister’s family to our local YMCA to play a game called “walleyball” (rhymes with volleyball). This game is similar to volleyball in its rules–with the addition of walls as it is played in a racquetball court.

Since the court is smaller than a regular court, the game is actually a little easier for those who are not as strong–but not as easy for stronger people who hit the back wall (one of the out of bounds zones) quite often. The combination of the walls, the rules, the size of the court, and the various strengths of the players that night has made me think over and over again in the days since we played about the idea of the “mulligan.”

As indicated in the opening of this post, a mulligan is “an extra stroke allowed after a poor shot”–that is NOT counted on the scorecard or against the one who has been issued the “second chance.”

This term is one that we have thrown around our family of seven children (now ages seventeen through thirty-two) for years since my husband is a master at adapting games to fit the crowd who is playing. He loves to bring two or three families together and modify a kickball game or our oldest son’s homemade handball invention in order to allow littles to play with biggies; parents to play with children; and lesser skilled participants to play with “athletes.” Thus, a “mulligan” is a familiar word–and one that has been spoken many, many times in our home over our thirty-two years of parenting as we have enjoyed playing with our children.

It wasn’t uncommon during our walleyball night to hear someone shout “mulligan” whenever a person attempted to serve but didn’t make it over the net. Then we would evaluate and determine “yes” the person gets a mulligan or “no” he does not. What has led me to think of these mulligans quite often since that evening is the criterion on which we based giving mulligans during our play.

I mean, how does someone tell a sweet, small, twelve-year-old balletic niece that she cannot have a do-over after she tried so hard to get the ball over the net?  Or how do you turn down a poor middle-aged sister (*smile*) who is still recovering from frozen shoulder surgery: “too bad–you should have hit it harder”?

So when did we give mulligans that night–and what does this have to do with parenting?

Allow me to give you our walleyball mulligan run-down:

1. My younger niece is not a “ball” type of athlete. She is a dancer, cheerleader, and gymnast. She is also fairly tiny. She was a good sport about the whole night–but walleyball probably wouldn’t be her first choice of games. Because she is small, she had trouble getting her serves over at times, so everybody agreed to give our sweet Brittany some mulligans when her serve fell short of the net.

2. My sister had just had surgery for frozen shoulder approximately ten weeks before our Y night. She was able to play okay, but definitely didn’t have the range of motion that a serve often requires. Thus, we moved her closer to the net and gave her mulligans.

3. Our youngest daughter (24) has never been a volleyball player. She always thought she was terrible at it, and she often sat on the sidelines and watched others play through the years (in spite of her being very fit, a runner, and serious ab-workout girl!). She wouldn’t ask for a mulligan when she missed, but because she has just been learning volleyball over the past few years, we sometimes offered her a mulligan as well.

Who didn’t get a mulligan?

1. I adore volleyball. I played a little in high school, and while I’m not great at it, my years of experience in playing it at picnics, etc., meant that I was not a mulligan candidate.

2. See that athlete in the picture above–serious tennies and headband? That is our son’s wife who was the captain of her high school volleyball team and took MVP at nationals. She played a year of volleyball in college–no mulligan for that expert!

3. See that young man below? He is our seventeen year old–our youngest child. And he can be hyper, funny, loud, helpful, compassionate, and crazy all at the same time. On this particular night, he (as many seventeen year old boys do) tried to serve overhanded as hard as he could in an effort to score on every serve. Thus, he often hit the ball too hard and hit the back wall or the ceiling–both out of bounds spots. No mulligan for someone who knows how to do it but is hot dogging! 😉

4. None of the men or teen boys got mulligans. They are strong, athletic, and competitive. No motivation or encouragement was needed!

So what does this have to do with parenting? More than you might think.

In the “game” of parenting, we have the opportunity every day to give more chances or to show “tough love”–to extend grace or to train through consequences. We face these situations often unprepared.

We lament over them–“I just feel like if I don’t bring his shoes to gym class and he gets an F for the day, he will blame me” or “I know we have told her dozens of times not to leave her phone lying around at the gym, but now that it is stolen, I feel sorry for her because she misses talking to her friends. And we homeschool, so her phone is a way she socializes,” etc. etc. etc.

And I am not making light of any of these scenarios. We, after all, have raised six “teens”–and have one teen that we are in the thick of raising (a last child, nonetheless!).

Grace. Training. Mercy. Responsibility. I mean, honestly, who wants to choose among those?

warming up…

But let’s break down our walleyball game a little further to see if we can get some benchmarks for giving our kids mulligans:

1. Brittany is younger. She is not as strong as the big guys. She is not as used to ball handling like her sister who plays basketball at school. Extending mulligans to Brittany, who was trying to serve the ball over the net with all her might and had a good attitude in the process, is a good decision.

And so is giving a mulligan to a child who is struggling and genuinely wants to change/alter his behavior/make things different. And you know what? Most of the time we parents know when this child deserves a mulligan. The key is going to be to not give mulligans forever to a struggling child–but to gradually reduce the mulligans as the child becomes stronger and more adept.

2. My sister was injured for pity’s sake! She was being a sport just joining in the family fun.

When a child is downhearted or overwhelmed, he often needs grace. I don’t mean in trouble because of continual bad decisions or poor character but rather truly discouraged. When mercy is extended to a child in this situation, it can make a huge difference in how he pulls himself up by his bootstraps and gets moving in the right direction.

How long does a person with a shoulder injury need to recuperate before she should just serve already? Just as my sister’s doctor told her that it varies from person to person (with hers being more extensive once they got in there and found bone spurs as well), so it is with our children.

This is where heart parenting really comes in to play. Should the mulligans come to an end and this “injured one” come back now? Are we prolonging the healing process by not letting her live with consequences?

Someone who is hurting needs a mulligan–but not forever.

3. Volleyball playing is somewhat of a new experience for Kara. Granted, she is twenty-four, but she has only been getting on the court and playing over the past couple of years. You could say that she is in volleyball training.

A child who is “in training” in a certain area needs more mulligans than the child who has already been doing that skill or task for a while. We talk about this in our parenting seminar (Raising Kids With Character)–the idea of “childishness.” Childishness (forgetfulness, irresponsibility, etc.) in a child who is still learning his morning routine or his after school chores is best handled incrementally–with mulligans in place as needed–but not so many mulligans that the immaturity and irresponsibility remain.

We gave Kara a mulligan or two–but her volleyball training is about over (evidenced by how much better she played tonight than the previous time we played), and her walleyball mulligans are about to come to an end as well.

What about those who didn’t get mulligans?

1. Strong people who have done something over and over again do not need the motivation that comes with a mulligan (usually). It was easy to tell our twenty-two year old, athletic son to roll the ball under the net if he hit the ceiling on his serve. No training was taking place; no motivation or encouragement was needed.

2. Those who were hitting the ball so hard that it hit the ceiling or the back wall did not need mulligans. They needed to learn cause and effect. Walleyball is different than volleyball–the court is shorter and the back wall and ceiling are off limits. If you continue to smack the ball with that force, you will serve it out, and the other team will get the ball.

It wasn’t that hard in our walleyball game to determine who got a mulligan and who didn’t.

And while that isn’t always the case in parenting, we can use some key benchmarks for extending grace, including age of the child, past experience, whether other consequences have already been in place but didn’t help, the attitude of the child at the time, the frequency with which something occurs, the strength of the child, and more.

Because sometimes each one of us needs a mulligan in this game called life. But we also need to learn and grow. Because each of us needs a little grace sometimes. But because the Bible tells us that we can easily take advantage of that grace. Because we don’t want to exasperate our children. But we don’t want to be the kind of parent who doesn’t help our child become responsible or kind or thoughtful. Yes, sometimes we need to give our children mulligans.

The post When Do I Give My Child a “Mulligan”? appeared first on Character Ink.

Listen to the podcast here!

Grace-Based Parenting

1. Good thing!
2. Allows kids four freedoms

a. Freedom to be different
b. Freedom to be vulnerable
c. Freedom to be open
d. Freedom to make mistakes

3. Giving kids grace doesn’t mean there are not
consequences or that we do not correct our kids
4. Means that our relationship is never at risk due to their behavior
5. Means our love never changes based on the freedoms we give them (above)

Problem Isn’t With Grace-Based Parenting; Problem With People’s Interpretation of It

1. Misunderstanding it—thinking it means anything goes or hands off parenting
2. Misusing it—just like we mishandle God’s grace towards us, we mishandle the grace we give our kids

Bottom Line in Grace-Based Parenting (and Raising Kids With Character!): Treat our children the same way that God treats us

Definition Mulligan: an informal golf terms that means giving an extra stroke after a poor shot that is not counted against the golfer

Walleyball-–played in racquetball court; smaller court than volleyball; walls to hit it off of and walls/ceiling to be “out”

Mulligans in Our Walleyball Game

1. Younger Niece; small; had trouble with serves
2. Sister: frozen shoulder surgery
3. Daughter: inexperienced player

No Mulligans

1. Me: High school (albeit not great!) volleyball player
2. Daughter-in-law: high school and college volleyball player
3. Son: seventeen year old hot dogging it
4. Teen/college guys and husbands

What to Do With Kids’ Behaviors

1. Grace?
2. Training?
3. Mercy?
4. Responsibility?

Mulligans in Life

1. Niece—smaller; give to child who is struggling or weak
2. Sister—injured; give to child who is injured but not forever
3. Daughter—inexperienced; give to a chld who is in training

No Mulligans in Life?

1. Strong people
2. Those who are in need of “reality training” (hot dogging it)
3. Those who are already well trained in area

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Listen to the podcast here!

The post Podcast Notes: “How Do I Know When to Give Chances and When to Take Action: When to Give Our Kids a Mulligan” appeared first on Character Ink.

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Click here to see our previous podcasts!

The post Podcast: How Do I Know When to Give Chances and When to Take Action: When To Give Our Kids A Mulligan appeared first on Character Ink.

In this Wondering Wednesday audio podcast, Donna Reish of Character Ink Publishing and Raising Kids With Character Parenting Seminar, explains many of the terms and concepts foundational to the Reish’s Raising Kids With Character Parenting Seminar. In this episode Donna explains foolishness versus childishness, bringing in boundaries, expectation explanations, parenting in the black-and-white versus parenting in the gray, and much more.

Click here to download the printable handout.

Subscribe to our Wondering Wednesday podcasts in iTunes.

The post Wondering Wednesday Podcast: Terms and Concepts From RKWC Parenting Seminar appeared first on Character Ink.

Kara (4.5) and Jonathan (almost 3) doing their sibling Bible verse for a special at church: “How happy it is when brothers dwell together in unity!”

The next tip after trying to set your toddler’s taste for kindness is the following: Decide ahead of time what your “behavior absolutes” are going to be. 


1. These are the behaviors or negative character that you absolutely will not allow in your home. What you allow now will become the “acceptable behaviors” to your child. These seemingly innocent actions include “fibbing,” hitting, being mean to others, running the other way when called, etc.


2.  For us, these “behavior absolutes” included the following:

a. Talking back (no toddler saying “no” without being punished)
b. Lying or deceit
c. Temper tantrums
d. Striking (hitting, pulling hair, throwing things at someone, etc.). 
e. Being mean

Obviously, we wanted our kids to learn to obey and submit to us and to learn the many character qualities that are crucial to living a Christian life, but these five things were things we never wavered on—and things that we made huge deals out of when they were not adhered to by the toddler/preschooler.

Kara (now 23) and Jonathan (now 21) have been best friends since they were very young.–honest! 😉

One question we frequently get when discussing the idea of behavior absolutes is “How do we make a certain behavior an absolute?”

Before I delve into a couple specific tips for this, I do want to say that keeping sibling fighting to a minimum, helping brothers and sisters love each other, and instituting and enforcing a no striking policy is more a way of life than it is a list of do’s and don’t’s. 

Obviously, we believe that there are some key things that accounted for our children’s very limited fighting and not harming each other, but more than that list of things we did is the idea of being “that family.” Not weird or trying to outdo others with our “uniqueness”–but rather our children knew that though others might fight all the time, we were”that family”–the family that doesn’t allow that. Though other children may raise their hands to harm their sibling, we are “that family”–and we do not permit hurting each other.

A way of life–one that begins with “setting tastes” for kindness and good character and one that has certain expectations always in place. Not expectations that “do this or you’re toast” but expectations that Mom and Dad taught us this way, and this is how we live. 

But on to that list–a few things that we think can help a family develop certain behavior absolutes (including loving and being kind to siblings):


1. Behavior absolutes begin with a mindset. 

This mindset is one with faith in what you are doing. Faith that making behavior absolutes that our children will learn to follow is what is truly best. Faith that these things that we are saying are not allowed in our home are things that God would have us do. Faith that God will bless our family’s consistency, efforts, and desire to please Him. Faith that consistency and godliness in our home really will work.

It is also a mindset that says, “What I am trying to do here is so important that I am going to put the time and energy into it that it takes to accomplish it. I am not going to let things slide that I know will cause us not to meet our goals for our children’s behaviors. I am not going to look the other way when I know something is not right. I am not going to downplay something that we have deemed as important from the beginning.”

That is a tall order. But it is one that can truly be carried out. When we go into this parenting endeavor with an idea of what we truly want our homes to look like–and the determination to follow through on it–it is very possible.




2. Your reaction to behavior absolutes being broken is crucial. 

My husband has an annoying saying (it used to be; now that our kids are mostly grown, I agree with him!): “We are getting the behavior that we want. if we wanted something different, we would do something different.”

While that isn’t one hundred percent accurate, the concept is true. If we want our children to be kind to each other and not strike each other, then those behaviors have to be treated as terrible behaviors. We can’t just say, “Be nice” and hope that their behavior changes. 

We liken behavior absolutes to sitting in a car seat. We can say over and over, “I just can’t get him to quit hitting his sister.” 

However, we somehow (eventually) get our child to quit screaming in the car seat and sit in there until he is five or six! How is that? It is because sitting in the car seat is a behavior absolute.  We would ever consider letting a child have his own way and sit up front between Mom and Dad. It is the law. It is the way it is–and it can’t be changed.

So it is with behavior absolutes. We have to feel so strongly about those behaviors that we will not budge on them. When one of our kids is mean to another one, we will not just say “Be nice” and send him to his room. We will instead respond as though he just did something very, very bad. Because if meanness is one of our behavior absolutes, it is a very, very bad thing.

I have to inject a note here about spanking–because many “modern moms” are either against it or believe that it doesn’t work. Or buy into the philosophy that spanking a child will make him mean or will make him strike others. 

I know that a family of seven children is not a full-blown case study. However, I don’t see how the whole “spanking causes children to be violent” could possibly be true when all of our seven children were spanked (not carelessly; not in anger; not for frivolities or childishness) for the Four D’s –and yet they are seven of the most peaceable adults you will ever meet. As children, they didn’t often fight with each other–and seldom (if ever) struck another child (or bit, pulled hair, pushed, hit, etc.) after age two or so. (I’m sure they probably did as toddlers–but we treated it very seriously and nipped it in the bud.)

So yes, we spanked our children if they were mean or if they hurt others (as well as for other defiant behaviors). But we didn’t have to do it often. Peace with each other and not harming others was a way of life, so it didn’t take a lot of discipline for it. 

Thus, the way we respond to our behavior absolutes will have a huge bearing on how “absolute” these behaviors become. Don’t take them lightly. Don’t put kids in their rooms with video games or televisions because they were unkind. Don’t tell children who hit that they shouldn’t do that–and they should be nice. Respond with the level of unacceptability that you would for something really bad–if you think it is really bad.




3. Don’t make too big of deal out of things that aren’t important.

If we truly want to develop behavior absolutes in our homes, then things that are not that big of deals can’t be made into big deals.

We see this all the time. A parent responds to a child leaving his socks on the living room floor in the same way that she responds to his backtalking or being unkind to his sister. While we recommend that the things you feel are behavior absolutes be given a high priority and level of response, we also believe that in general parents need to “lighten up” when it comes to childish behaviors (being too loud, making a mess, forgetting to pick up his socks, etc.) and focus on behaviors that are truly important (and from the heart)–such as direct disobedience, meanness, disrespect to parents and other authorities, etc. 

When everything our kids do is the same level of “wrongness,” they will not learn the difference between sins and mistakes. When everything our kids do is punished in the same way, they will feel that they can never please us–that no matter what they do, we will find fault in them.

I won’t spend a great deal of time on this as we have several posts about this under the character training label and we teach about it extensively in our parenting seminar, but just examine your parenting and see if you are placing too much emphasis on the wrongness of a behavior that is just a kid being a kid and not enough on something that is coming from a child’s heart.

I will move on to older kids–including punishments that are appropriate for fighting, helping kids learn how their behaviors affect others, and teaching our kids to love and respect each other–very soon. Thanks for joining us!

And here is the sweet sibling pair when they were teens–Jonathan (17) and Kara (19). The cute thing about this pic is that it was taken when they were traveling on a summer drama team together–and they both kept it as their profile pictures on Facebook for several months. Sweet!

The post Q is for QUIT FIGHTING–Start Out Right With Siblings/Littles With Behavior Absolutes appeared first on Character Ink.

There is actually no place this is truer than in parenting…. (from Destination Healthy Me)

The post A Change a Week–Times Fifty Weeks a Year Times Thirty Years…Equals a Lot of Change! appeared first on Character Ink.