Obedience Training

Can I just be honest with you?  I HATE the word obedience in reference to teaching little people.  I don't know why.  It's not because of what it means.  Honestly, it's just because it makes me think of....

puppies.  There, I said it.  I don't like to use the word obedience because it makes me thinking of training puppies on the farm.  *sigh*  That being said, I understand that it's my number one job to teach my children to OBEY me.  For when they can obey my voice they can learn to obey the voice of the Lord.  This weekend I realize it was more than time to crack down on the obedience training at the Beeler house.  (arf, arf!)

Coincidentally (or NOT) after I prayed about the best way to go about teaching my right brained 3 year old and ornery 19 month old to obey my requests instantly I came to the chapter in my Duggar's book about raising little people.  Let me tell you now that I'm a fan of the Duggar's.  They have 19 children and everyone of them is respectful and minds well.  Ornery?  Sometimes.  But kind, loving, thoughtful, and obedient (arf, arf!)?  Definitely.  So I think it's safe to say that they are a good, solid, Christian family to glean parenting advice from.

Their idea of well rounded obedience includes four points:  instant, cheerful, thorough, and unconditional.  This meaning that the child obeys instantly with a happy heart and does a complete and thorough job even if the task isn't "their" job.  I like it...I like it a lot.  

And how do I get there from here?

Because here's where the Beeler's are:

"Natalee, please come get your coat on." 

{Natalee, runs away to the other room.}

Mother loses patience, while trying to remember that defiance and an obstinate nature are part of Natalee's language delays and eventually makes a threat (which I would like to believe is a choice but she really already made her choice) to get Natalee to comply..."Natalee get your coat on or you're going to the corner."

*sigh*

I know that's bad.  Here's another bad example:

"Xavier, please go put these socks in the hamper."

X:  "NOOO way!"

*sigh*

That's bad.

Okay, no more sighing...time to buck up!  I feel like we've made valiant efforts at teaching the children to mind us...but what I'm realizing is that, especially for Natalee, it doesn't come "naturally" and she's going to need something concrete for her to understand.

But it IS important...because if I can't teach the children to obey me, how will I ever teach them to obey the Lord?  {ahem...something I could probably work on myself!}

So, we are utilizing 2 of the obedience tactics also found in the Duggar book.  The "Yes, Ma'am/Sir" chart (we're using a calendar) and the "obedience game."  We started both of these tonight.

The "Yes Ma'am" calendar is just what it sounds like...I printed a calendar for each child and each time they reply to a task immediately with no fits and a "Yes ma'am" {or "sure mama", etc} they get a mark on the corresponding day of the calendar.  In the Duggar house they turn in their marks weekly and earn a penny per mark...I knew that to draw on Natalee's language learning tendencies and Xavier's age appropriate understanding their reward would have to be more immediate, so for awhile we'll be turning in marks nightly and eventually spacing it out.  The obedience game was a great way to get my point across as to how important the marks are...you gather the family in a central location (for us the living room run) and give the children a short, attainable task.  Ask them to respond cheerily with "okay daddy" or "yes ma'am mama" (etc) and off they go to do their task.  Each cheery response and obedient action earns a mark.  So we played the game tonight and, besides the training that it instilled in the children, it was fun and silly and easy.  "Natalee, turn in a circle," and she would giggle and turn in a circle after replying "yes ma'am!"  Natalee has quickly caught on that her cheery responses and positive attitude earn her marks and she likes to see them tally up on her calendar!  She was quite pleased with her pay-out of 15 pennies after the game!  Xavier needs to work on his cheery responses!  I don't expect him to get the full blown "yes ma'ams" out but he did say a couple times "tay mama!" and off he'd go to do his little task.  He had a couple of meltdowns and chose to go play house during the game so his payout of 6 pennies wasn't as high as sister's and he was a little upset about it.  I'm not sure how much of it he understands but I'm thinking he'll be able to catch on to the correspondence between marks on his paper and pennies...and then what earns him a mark on his paper.

We chose for the children to have to turn their papers into daddy for payout because we want them to understand that ultimately daddy is the head of our home and they have to answer to him.  It would be much worse for Natalee to have to explain a day of poor marks to her daddy and see his disappointment than if she had to turn it in to me.  

  

Counting marks!

 

The therapists can be proud that I worked and OT activity into payout time by having the children put their coins directly into their piggy banks!  

Overall, I'm excited about the possibility of this bringing happier, more compliant children into the Beeler home.  It's not that I want to completely bend the children into becoming what they aren't but I think if I don't teach them to obey now then I'll lose their hearts for me and for the Lord later.

I'm anxious to hear if any of my blog followers out there have any other techniques that they use for teaching their children to mind cheerfully but instantly.