Was that a real question?

     "So you don't bust your kids, and they don't have, like, rules and stuff?" Ummm, no I don't, and actually, yes, they do. This happens more often than I'd like to admit. Different wording, same question. For some people the fact that we don't spank and the words attachment parenting create an image that I only wear burkinstocks, don't shave my armpits, and my husband has a waist length braid. The facts are, I don't own any birks (anymore), though I am occasionally lazy about shaving my legs, I am almost always tank top acceptable. And the braid thing, here's the shocker, my husband is a U.S. Marine, so he rocks a high & tight. And no, we don't spank, but yes, our kids have rules. The biggest question that follows is why, why don't you spank? I love this question. It doesn't offend me, I actually like being able to explain it! Here's how it shakes out.

     For starters, we don't spank because our kids are humans too. If I hit my husband every time he forgot to take out the garbage or got sassy with me, well, I'd be in prison. If that's not how we handle each other that's not how we handle the kids. Another thing is that I just never understood the logistics. I read once that to spank "properly", you should not hit out of anger, but when you're calm. Well, I don't hit them when I'm mad, because I think that hitting out of anger in any form is abuse. And I could never go and calmly hit a child, so that pretty much removes any form of hitting from our discipline repertoire. 

So what DO we do? Well, I am a huge fan of proactive parenting. We were having a hard time with my very spirited middle man, Evan, in the mornings. Yikes. He wakes up like his father. There were mornings we were both near tears when we left for school. I got tired of it fast, he did too, something wasn't working right. And I realized it, the boy doesn't need a nag, he needs incentive! Why do regular people get up and go to work? Because they get paid! And no, I don't pay the boy! But I do provide incentive, 1 sticker for getting up and dressed without complaint/pleading/whining. 10 stickers = a prize from the bucket. All prizes are little items from the dollar section, football cards, etc. It doesn't matter what the prizes are, it's the fact that he can SEE his progress, the stickers are tangible tokens of him doing the right thing. If you think about it, it is actually preparing them for adulthood. Adults work to get paid, we go to school to get a degree, there is a payoff, so why then, do we call it bribery when we apply the same rules to our kids?  Does our method always work? NOPE. Like anything else, it's not foolproof. Sometimes we have to take away screen time. Sometimes the older boys need to be separated and aren't allowed to play together because they can't get along. They aren't perfect, and neither are we!!!  But there is no place for physical punishments here. I want my children to respect me, not because they have been bullied into doing so. We don't want to raise bullies, I want to raise kids who reciprocate respect.

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