123 magic for ME

Remember this Sunday when the kids drove me crazy?

Well, I bought 123 magic and I've been ploughing through the book.

My kids aren't very naughty and are actually mostly just curious (so I discovered from the comments on this post) BUT I can't stand the business of saying the same things a million times and the time-out after time-out after time-out.

It makes me feel like I'm a screaming banshee and that all I ever say is "no".

I don't want to be a mother like that so we started implementing 123 magic.

And I must tell you that the biggest difference has not so much been the kids' behaviour, but mine.

He said something in the book (you all know I'm terrible at reviews - I hardly take notes and winter doesn't help either - once I'm in bed almost nothing will get me out), which very loosely paraphrased is:

Most parents are actually throwing a tantrum if they've totally lost control of their own emotions when they discipline.

This was me on more occasions than I'd like to admit.

And as the followers of the system will know, two things that are integral are "no talking" and "no emotion".

Difficult for an E-type who wants to jibber jabber, explain things to kids, interact, etc.

But he also refers to a scripture from the Bible that says, "do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged." (Col 3:21)

His stance is that the more you annoy your kids by all the constant explaining, the more you aggravate them.

I get it.

Already I get annoyed by people talking too much (I actually have a girl in the office who feels the need to explain things over and over, in slightly different language and I've said on a couple of occasions, "oh yes, you mentioned that yesterday" :)) so I can well imagine our children getting irritated too.

There's a lot less talking, explaining and raised voices around here but within days I could see the difference.

I sometimes only have to say "that's 1" and they stop.

Sometimes we go all the way (like this morning, double time-outs for FLINGING all the clothes out of their drawers ALL over their bedroom) but then there'll usually only be one incident max per day.

But the best thing about this book is I'm calm and under control.

And they really are a delight to live with, much more than they were a month or so ago... :)

Prov 29:17
Discipline your children; you'll be glad you did - they'll turn out delightful to live with."

Of course, I'm well aware of how these things go - the minute the kids get up tomorrow they probably won't listen to me and you'll be thinking, "waitaminute, that's the after version?!"

How's the discipline going at your place?

What do you use?

P.S. Thank you, Rebecca, for writing this post which reminded me that I have to do an update on 123 magic.

Don't you hate it when you read a blog, participate, and never know what happened? I hate it! I hate it even more when I don't remember to update. Please remind me if there are updates I've forgotten about :)

P.P.S. New post here