Last week we gave our kids a challenge to do one nice thing for each person in our family, something that required them to sacrifice to accomplish it. The kids worked hard all week finding things to do for us and each other and it really increased the love and spirit in our home. We told them that if they all accomplished this task, then we would take them out to dinner. So last night for Family Home Evening we took the kids out to The Bluebird, a cute restaraunt that has been in business for over a hundred years and had a great time! It has an old fashioned soda fountain counter and also sells homemade chocolates. My mom and dad joined us and the kids loved getting to eat out because it is something we rarely take them to do. We also instituted the "hat of silence" last week and it worked so well we are going to keep it! Whenever someone(even us parents!) uses an ornery tone of voice, they have to wear a baseball cap for 5 minutes and not talk to remind them to speak kindly. Part of the success was we let the kids be the judges of each other, and they realized that sometimes even if they think they are not being ornery, they sound that way to their siblings. So everybody tried to be more conscientous of the way they were speaking to their family members, even me and that also helped to increase the love in our home!
Those are all great ideas! I love the hat idea, we use the five things they have to say nice about that person right there on the spot and that has worked for us. I love that you guys made taking them out to dinner as a reward, my kids would love that! Mike is so good about going along with dressing up, Sloane wouldn't go along with that, he would be in his shorts and t-shirt:) but that's why I love him! I love the blue bird can't wait for our date night in the summer that's were I am going to request!
ReplyDeleteWhat great ideas!!
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