I'm thinking of doing something different

I would love to hear about it , too. I was planning on doing something like that in our few weeks off in the summer.

Sometimes it’s not necessarily doing something totally different, but slowing way down and concentrating on the character issues that are involved in getting the goal accomplished. What this has looked like for us is this:

• There still needs to be a schedule that is followed. My children are eager to pronounce any change as ‘vacation.’
• Prayer time in the morning is important as we come together and pray about those things that we are working on.
• Morning routines are completed, regardless of the time it takes. (There have been times when we had to stop and eat lunch and go back and finish what typically should be done before breakfast!)
• School work is cut drastically, but still takes place (meaning we may do 1/2 or less of the normal load).
• We work on a family project that is very physical in nature (putting in a garden, building a fence, painting a room, etc.)
• Afternoon chores/routines are worked on until dinner needs to happen.
• Always there is time for scripture reading, stories, and rest time (for me!!).
• Rewards “When this is done, we’ll do this….”
• I have found that my frustrations are not shared by the children. Therefore, when I get overloaded with the mess or the behavior, they are quite content to let me take care of what is bugging me the most while they go hide in their rooms. That is unproductive, to say the least, so I have found it imperative to keep us working together.

Blessings,

Cindy

I agree with Cindy. I have tried to totally take off of school to work on character issues and it seems like what happens is more chaos vs progress on what is needed. Cutting back on school, while keeping a routine is very helpful.

Ditto what amwg2694 said. 

Just curious cuz I feel the same exact way with my kiddos about starting all over… how old are your children?

Habit training is an area I get very frustrated with myself! Some habits have been easier for me to train for than others. I’ve not figured out all the reasons why it is sometimes so difficult, (I had to stop training for “orderliness” and my house is a mess, but i was so frustrated – we had to do something else! I’m picking up on my own for the time being) but off the top of my head, I think it has a lot to do with me getting distracted and losing focus. (Nodding head and agreeing with Aimee here!)  Our family has busy periods of time throughout the year relating to my husbands work schedule and stress tends to run higher and I’m trying to help him and I just don’t pay as much attention to the kids as I usually do. Predicatably, I can trace re-occurance of bad habits or a backslide into disobience to my own divided focus. There are several threads here about training for obedience, and several different resources for parents are mentioned. I’m sure you’ll get others who will describe them better than I could right now (stayed up too late last night reading!).

I think you are the best judge as to wether or not shifting focus with your school materials will add additional motivation for your children. And I hope you get suggestions for some good books and things. The idea of scaling back on schoolwork is likely to help YOU the teacher/mother to have more time to focus your efforts to train them. And that in itself is worth lightening the load for, even if you don’t shift your material over to the topic of obdience. For all my frustrations with habit training is goes better for me when I eliminate as many extra distractions as I can to really zero in on the one thing we are working on.

You asked for some practical adivce, all I can do is repeat what a wise mother once told me, that unless I was willing to literally drop everything I was doing to correct a child who disobeyed right then and there I should expect to have the behavior I was seeing. Now obviously, there are some things you cannot do that for at that exact moment of disobedience – there must be a short delay – but the very next thing you do is correct (by whatever method your family uses) that child. Here’s how I’ve done it various times: Cooking dinner, turned off stove – corrected child. When driving, I’ve kept going and the first place I could pull over safely, I did, we did not drive any further until they quit fighting. I’ve found I have to be willing to hang up the phone and call back later, leave a store, have dinner late, pull over to the side of the road, turn off the computer, do my housework later on, etc. etc. The one area that this did not work with was nursing a baby or changing diapers. Then there was a longer delay in the disobedient child recieving correction. How fast this works goes hand in hand with how willing I am to have life distrupted to handle misbehavior. The other thing I’ve found that works really well, to ask ONCE for something to be done and issue ONE and ONLY ONE warning for misbehavior. I am still working on this, but it is so much easier! If I make an effort to follow through after the first time, without telling them 3 and 4 times to stop “If you keep doing that, then this is going to happen…” If I stop giving them the 3 or 4 or 5 extra chances, they have only one option, obey the first time or not. This way I am not training them to obey after mom has told me three times and is getting irritated. Following through straight away with correction and staying consistent and just as important as giving instructions or warnings one time.

I hope something there helps you! Pray. Pray specificly for each of your chidren and yourself. Whatever time you invest in training them in the habit of obeidene and however you go about it with the materials you use for school, it will be worth it, it will take some time – so don’t give up! It may take longer than you want to see results but stay consistent yourself and you’ll find even when they don’t listen it’s much easier and faster to get them back on track. (And for the record, while obedience is habit you can train for, imho, is also a heart issue that every single person alive with deals with every single day. I ask myself, how obedient am I to God? And should I be surprised when I see them struggling to obey since I do myself at times? What I’m trying to say is that, a mother can train a child to obey and that yes, it will make his life and his mother’s life easier, but he will still face choices daily to obey or not and as a mother I’m trying to train him to make obedince the easier of the two choices! (it’s a habit)! But not to be surprised if a child make the wrong choice, no one does the right thing all the time – that is why we need a Savior – but you can help your children develop a strong will or the strength to override their desires to make the right choice – see “The Way of the Will”, it’s now a free ebook here! Very helpful – thanks Sonya!!)

please forgive my spelling errors!