'Get Along Jar"

Nothing helps a kid have ownership over something like contributing to the making of it.  Discipline is no different!  I sat my kids down and we scattered popsicle sticks all over the dining room table.  I asked them to come up with some good consequences for different scenarios.  For example, I asked them, "If two of you are fighting over a toy, what do you think would be an appropriate consequence?" They said things like, "pick up all the toys" and "Mommy takes the toys away."  Then we thought for a few minutes about how mommy taking all the toys away would help us learn to love each other.  I felt like so many of our problems stemmed from the fact that we weren't treating each other the way that we'd want to be treated. The truth of the matter was that it didn't help at all to actually foster good sibling relationships for me to always have to step in and be the big bad taker awayer of all things fun.  It just eliminated that problem with that particular toy and that particular time.  We needed to dig deeper.

So we tried to spin all of our punishments to actually create bonding. So instead of the punishment being "pick up all the toys" the consequence became "pick up the other person's toys".  Yes, they were still picking up toys.  But they were serving each other in the process and for some crazy reason, this helped my kids to foster a better relationship.  I think that we can learn so much about other people when we take the time to serve them and this is something that I really want to drive home with my kids.

So we wrote all the consequences they came up with on popsicle sticks.  

Then we got some Jesus.  If you aren't about Jesus- then you can just skip this part.  One time, my friend spoke at a conference about how one of the most tangible ways that we can teach our children the grace of Jesus is to show our children grace when they deserve punishment.  We are all people who deserve punishment and Jesus took that from us (grace).  We wrote the word GRACE on a couple (and only a couple because we can't milk Jesus, folks) of popsicle stick and put them in there as a reminder that when we deserved a consequence that Jesus took that from us.  (On the off chance that my kids pick grace out of the jar, I do make them explain to me what it means so that they don't just see Jesus as a free pass.)

We put all of the popsicle sticks in our "Get Along Jar".