Ministry of Motherhood exercise

This week a few questions to think about and share with your Good Morning Girls group and on our blog:

1. What resources are you using to help guide you as you train your children?

2. What are some techniques you use to train your children? What areas do you focus on?

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The first two books here are behavioral training oriented...We used them more with 18month-4 year olds. The others are character training/heart training oriented that we have been using for our 3 year-9 year olds.

Love & Logic Magic for Early Childhood by Ray & Ray

To Train up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl

Raising Your Spirited Child by Kurchinka

Shepherding A Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp

The Brother Offended Checklist by Doorposts (Chart for checking heart in sibling conflicts)

Wise Words fro Moms by Ginger Plowman (shepherd's press)

Hands On Character Building by Rick & Marilyn Boyer

A Child's Book of Character Building by Ron & Rebekah Coriell (family read aloud)

God's Wisdom for Little Girls by Elizabeth George (family read aloud)

***(most recent)Wisdom & the Millers by Mildren A. Martin (family read aloud)

Techniques for training......hmmm.... with toddlers we tried to follow the Pearls program of simulation and repetition with two finger smacks. Later we used a chart of consequences with timeouts for minor issues (yelling and grabbing) and spanks for disobedience/sassing. Regular praise and affirmation. Giving lots of little choices to empower children (Love & Logic method) and time limits for choice making. Love & Logic's "fun or room" method.

Other techniques we use are role playing, telling stories, defining behavior in a lesson format and with childhood examples, Scripture memorization, sharing stories of our failures/successes, repetition using specific tools like "Sharing I feels" and the "Brother Offended Checklist". Character education through read alouds such as God's wisdom for Little Girls and Wisdom and the Millers. Others methods would be giving children baby steps toward goals such as learning life skills i.e. starting small and increasing responsibility as able.

Whew.