Brendan has discovered his siblings CD player.  He is remarkably adept in using it too! He knows how to make it start and stop by himself.  He also knows how to dance to the music. (He did not get this from his father lol! ; ))

We have been discussing positive discipline at our house a great deal lately. In the Montessori method the utlimate goal is to develop self control in the child. This is a goal, however, not a starting point. As Sunrise Montessori explains that an undisciplined and unskilled child is not free but a slave to his lower emotions. Montessori would identify that lack of discipline as related to excessive frustration rather than assigning a character flaw to the behavior. Building the child’s confidence through skill work and creating clear rules and an orderly environment filled with mutual respect often eliminates the problems. She did not advocate the abandonment of correction as is sometimes thought. In fact she says, "We must check in the child whatever offends or annoys others, whatever tends toward rough or illbred acts."  See (Montessori Discipline chapter V)

It is pointed out in this article Discipline: Developing Self Control  that some children do not find this process smooth and painless. Children are individuals and some come wired with more neurological challenges making the transition to self control a rockier road to travel. The advice generally given remains constant however – model the ideal behavior yourself, explain the purpose for the requested behavior and require it to be repeated, remove the audience for undesirable behavior, remain calm. The main question in the teacher or parent’s mind should be "What does this child need to know?"

Some tips I am trying to incorporate into my own parenting are:

First, not taking undesirable behavior personally. Easier said than done. It is all too easy to get annoyed and as though the behavior is targeted at you precisely to make your day harder.

Second, getting down on eye level with the child when correcting. Scoldings hurled from across a room are usually met with an equal amount of attention and a fleeing child. If it is worth correcting it is worth correcting well. Taking the time to look a child in the eye seems to send the message that this is very important and worth their consideration. It hopefully also says that the child is important to me.

Third, the Covey principle – be proactive vs reactive. It seems that the most bothersome behaviors occur when the kids have not been properly instructed in the correct way to do a thing. The Grace and Courtesy lessons are key here.  Practicing opening and shutting doors and drawers, folding clothes (a work in progress here ; )), making a request, expressing unhappiness, roleplaying possible scenarios before heading to the store or church all lead to much smoother interaction for us. We can take the time to teach it or take the time to correct it.

Along this same line I have found that offering choices (between options that are equally acceptable to me) wherever possible really has made life more pleasant here. Would you like carrots or celery? Would you like a red shirt or blue shirt today?  Would you like to do some reading or math?  I have good odds of getting one of two very desirable reactions and they feel empowered. Win win. : )

Finally, to express requests in the affirmative vs the negative.  A for instance – "Please walk" vs "Don’t run".  Apparently children do not process the negative well so they tend to miss the ‘don’t’ part and hear the ‘run’ part.  That explained a lot. ; D  If the child continues to ignore the positive request then the appropriate next step would be the eye level discussion of why walking was important and having the child explain what the consequences of running might be.

I like the comparison this article Respect makes between being an authoritative parent and an authoritarian parent. You can command respect by your consistency and respectful demeanor but do not need to lord your position over the child. An effective tool for earning this respect in my opinion is a very small word – sorry. Since self discipline is ‘a goal and not a starting point’ even adults are still progressing, though hopefully further along the path, towards that destination. Occasionally fatigue and frustration get the best of us and we slip. We say something less than kind or respond abruptly. Children have an enormous capacity for forgiveness however and we too often forget to appeal to it. Or, worse (and I speak with experience here : / ) it is too easy to say "I am sorry, BUT" and then go on and on about why the child really did cause the problem anyway.  That is no apology in the end.

One other thought about the Respect article is that parents often feel frustrated that children behave better for strangers than they do at home. They most often interpret this as a need to send their children to spend the day someplace else.  The oft repeated refrain is "I can’t get them to do anything."  There are usually two things at work here. One is that we generally treat strangers better than we do people closest to us. That is not acceptable for parent or child and if that is the case then we need to re-examine our interaction. The other consideration is that we do feel more able to express our true feelings with those closest to us. I have often wondered if it was truly desirable to have a child hold in all those feelings the way they tend to with strangers only to have the dam burst later. If we can accept the child’s negative emotion without taking it personally and help him to express it properly, it would seem to be benefit him more than if there was no acceptable outlet.

Anyway, enough rambling.  If you have any other positive parenting links do share!  Thanks!

Asher and Allen went on the first hunt of the year this weekend.  It was the first hunt of a lifetime for Asher. Asher seems to have a lot of things come easily to him the first time he tries. True to form he got the largest doe virtually effortlessly! He managed to get his dad to do most of the cleaning pretty effortlessly as well. ; ) The elk hunt is next month. It looks like the trip falls the same week as our piano recitals so Asher is bowing out of the hunt. The call of the show is a bit stronger than the call of the wild!

We spent yesterday hauling home a new (to us) chest freezer and getting everything loaded in. We need to yet unload the old freezer and defrost it this week. Not looking fwd to that job! Having a store of organic food for winter is very gratifying however. If you have any good tips for venison send them on!

The pics show some of the most beautiful land on the Western Slope fwiw. You can see life hasn’t changed much in a century.  They had to stop for a rancher moving his cattle. : )

Walking is getting to be more challenging for me at this stage of pregnancy. We have always had Wednesdays as our errand or ‘town’ day. Three of the children have piano lessons in the afternoon. We usually try to hit a thrift shop and the grocery store and anyplace else I need to go.  Short runs I can do while they are at lessons. Groceries come afterwards. Problem is, I can no longer run errands during piano and still make it all the way through Walmart and do the half hr drive home. We came up with a very workable solution. Asher and Alannah head into the grocery store ahead of me and the little ones.  We catch our breath in the van and meet them inside when they are about finished so I can check the carts and pay. This is such a blessing! Because they have shopped with me for so long now they know which brands we buy, what size bags/cans things should come in for our family, and where things are.

Alannah kicked it up a notch this past month.  We had read and loved Fanny at Chez Panisse this summer.(link below) It was a wonderful book that held the attention of even my antsy little boys who asked for just one more chapter. It is the real story of the daughter of a restaurant owner (author) and her adventures with the cooks, the florist, the farmer’s market vendors and so on. It is full of simple watercolor paintings that begged to be copied by small people. It is also full of easy recipes.  Half the book in fact! That started the ball rolling. Alannah wanted to try several.

I told her to get me a list. She did better – she made a menu (for the week) based on this book and others we had reserved, wrote out a list, and then shopped for the ingredients (with Asher pushing her cart ; )) Then she prepared the meals for that whole week. The cream puffs at left are a sample of her newly honed baking skills. God bless her!

Her younger siblings have followed her lead and are eagerly taking weeks to be chef or chef’s helper. Aidan has had this past week. Granted no cream puffs for him. It’s been hot dogs, quesadillas, and tacos, all of which are more his speed. He still needs a lot of help but can do much more food prep than one would expect from an almost seven year old.

On a seemingly unrelated note I was thinking about the copywork we are doing. I have been cutting and pasting quotes from people we are studying and the gospel stories from Sundays into Word documents. I change the fonts to whatever type hand each child is working on and then change the color to the lightest gray possible and print. They trace over the correctly formed letters.  They are wild over this for some reason. At first it felt like ‘cheating’ because they were tracing vs forming the letters. But it does fall into line with Charlotte Mason’s idea of implanting the habit of perfect work and is also similar to Montessori’s tracing of the sandpaper letters.

It occurred to me that the shopping and the cooking were very similar. In home ec curriculum for middle grades and higher you see detailed instructions in cooking and meal prep. They tend to presume no previous instruction. They bring to mind my own efforts to learn to cook – LOTS of effort, lots of guessing, and mixed success. My children, by contrast, seem to be preparing dishes with very little help or effort and much success. It would seem that having the children shadow me for many, many years has prepared them much better than a rigorous cooking curriculum ever could have. They have learned not only to prepare food but to plan meals and purchase ingredients. They have seen it modelled over and over. I am hopeful that the copywork will serve the same purpose.

Guess it all falls under the proverb:

Below are a few links to resources we have used for both:

Clear Print font

print with lines font

dashed Cursive font

Honest Pretzels cookbook for kids – step by step!

Fanny at Chez Panisse

Unlike the brothers and sisters who came before him Brendan loves washing his hair. This would be the ‘rinse cycle’. ; )