Inspiration

As I was struggling to contain Alex and Jane in a small primary room during sacrament meeting yesterday -- after having left behind the 3 struggling older children in the chapel with Scott -- the thought kept coming back to me again and again that what we have is not a reverence problem here, so much as a parenting problem.  We seriously cannot get through a sacrament meeting without one or all children having some kind of MAJOR meltdown, and that's a problem.  Obviously, Alex and Jane are fairly young, but they're also kind of feral.  And while Things 1-3 are definitely old enough to know how to behave in church, week after week we run into the same problems of poor volume control, inability to keep hands to self, lack of material to keep quiet and occupied, and total disregard for the fact that there are people all around us who are completely and totally distracted by their noise and commotion.  We are a 5-ring circus.  

So, like I said -- the struggle on Sunday was epic enough to cause some serious monitoring and adjusting.  In short, we are in need of a massive overhaul.  Starting with me and Scott.  It's time to step up the parenting gig here and be the parents.  After a certain point, it's no longer a viable excuse that "they just can't handle themselves when they're tired."  Or "hungry."  Or whatever else the case may be.  While it may be a true and accurate reflection of their capabilities {or lack thereof},  it's just not okay.  

After church, Scott and I talked things over and decided that we need to take a more proactive approach to teaching and enforcing reverence and we also need to be more consistent and hardcore about following through with consequences.  We met 2-on-1 with each of the kids individually to let them know our expectations for church going forward, and to let them know that the consequences for the day's festivities would be early bedtime for Sunday and Monday night as well as no electronics for all of Monday.  And that starting that night we would be "practicing" reverence every night until they could handle sacrament meeting without any problems.  Mwahahahaha.  Hahaha.  There was the expected weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but when it came time for bedtime and our first "practice,"  everyone -- but son number one -- did a fantastic job. 

"Practicing" during Family Home Evening tonight.  We're starting with 5 minutes and will eventually work our way up to as long as it takes to help them learn to be quiet and reverent in church.

This whole "practice" idea was a stroke of inspiration that came to me as we were driving home from church yesterday.  It occurred to me that it's probably not the natural inclination of ANY child to just sit and be still for an hour+ at a time.  Especially when they're super spirited to boot.  Practice makes perfect, though, and even outside of a church setting, it is a GOOD thing to learn how to be calm and quiet when the occasion calls for it.  They're clearly ALL capable of being quiet enough for that amount of time -- quiet reading time every day is still going strong -- but when they're all together, squashed tightly and closely on a church pew, and having to leave each other alone and focus on being reverent, we're fighting a much harder battle.  So, in order to make things as accurate as possible in our practice session, we're making the kids crowd all on one couch while I set a timer and play a conference talk for them to listen to.  And you know what?  Four out of five children are handling it really well!  Hahahaha.  We're still at 5 minutes, but I'm hoping by the end of the week to have worked it up to at least 15 or 20 and then on Sunday, HOPEFULLY, they will be able to handle sacrament meeting a little bit better.   It would certainly be hard to be handling it any worse.

So, now that THAT'S all out of the way, I know you're dying to hear how our electronics free day went!  Hahaha.

• Ethan worked on the mixer.  The gear finally came in the mail, so he was ecstatic about that.  As predicted, it was pretty easy peasy lemon sneasy to put everything back together again.  And it works!

• Games were played.  Jane picked out a "Guess Who" game at Target this weekend and has been trying to get people to play it with her ever since.  The only problem is that she doesn't really get how to play it.  Grace practiced "babysitting" this morning with the 3 little kids, and she actually created a lot of fun little games for them to play.  She created a hopscotch out of tape in the basement, she played a game with them that involved blowing cotton balls across a line, she humored Jane for a few rounds of  "Guess Who," and she cut out "paper dolls" with Sophie from some old magazines they found lying around the house.  One of these days, she's going to be a fantastic little baby-sitter!

• A few trips to Target were had.  The last of which was for "Target food."  Hahahaha.  Sophie was so upset that Grace got lunch at Target earlier today,  that she begged and begged me to please take her, too, and by the end of the day -- after she had finished her chores and I realized I didn't have everything I needed to make the dinner that was on our menu -- I finally caved and told everyone to load up because dinner was going to be courtesy of Target tonight.

• Creativity ran rampant.  I've said it before, but Grace is easily the most distractible of my children.  Last night when she was protesting her early bedtime, I set up camp on her bed with a Land's End school uniform catalog and an old Pottery Barn and started cutting things out and convinced her to join me because it would be so fun.  Hahaha.  With my encouragement, she began naming all the kids she cut out and giving them back stories and personalities as well.  It was fantastic.  And clearly entertaining for her, too.  I had to laugh when I saw her newest artwork on the wall when I came up to read to her tonight.  Sophie helped her cut more things out today, and I think even Ethan was helping her with the arrangement on her wall during quiet reading time today.

• Super heroes are still living large.  And I am now being aided and abetted in my enablings by my visiting teacher.  Hahaha.  My friend brought by this cake pan set she got at a yard sale on Saturday because she thought Alex might like a superman cake for his birthday.  Uhhhhh -- YEAH he would!  Hahaha.  Nothing is funnier than seeing your superhero obsessed 2-year-old stroke a tin cake pan reverently while murmuring something about big muscles under his breath.  Nothing.  Hahahaha.

And that is basically a wrap.  All's well that ends well, and the day went well enough that I think I'm going to break it to the kids tomorrow that I'll be instituting 1 or 2 electronics free days a week for the rest of the summer.  And possibly our life.  :)