the language has changed

Some things have changed at our house over the last year. Ok, well a LOT has changed. Moving to a new house/state would was certainly a big change.

But we also have changed the language at our house.

Here's my conversation with Ethan this last weekend:

Ethan:  Dada's made a bad choice today.
Me: Really? what did he do?
Ethan: He was cutting with his very sharp saw and he didn't wear his gloves. He cut his finger so bad. There was lots of blood.
Me: yeah I saw his cut, it was bleeding a lot.
Ethan: He needs to wear his gloves. That was a bad choice. Next time he will remember.


I sat in the car thinking to myself. "Wow.This kid is a genius. How on earth did he put all that together?" I asked Brent if he talked to him about his injury and he said No.

And while Ethan is a pretty head smart kid, I realized he put that together because of the changes in our home over the last year. I hear my kids say a lot of things like the above example. They are learning that they are responsible for their messes. They have to clean them up or make things right with the person. They have choices to make. We aren't controlling them, they have ownership. We changed our entire language and process with our kids.

I don't want to give you the picture like Brent & I are always calm, cool and collected. Eh. That is NOT true. We mess up. a lot. Sometimes we have to ask our kids for forgiveness. Our kids aren't perfect, they are learning. We aren't perfect, we are learning. But the course our family was taking has changed. The way we handle and discipline our kids has changed. And I can't tell you how much better long term fruit we see in our kids.

You can read more about these changes here (this is a note I wrote up on facebook a while ago, I just copied it for my blog):
http://unorthodoxhousewife.blogspot.com/p/my-process-of-disciplining-my-kids.html