Family Values in Action

When faced with discipline and teaching our kids, family values play a major role.  We’ve recently been putting them to use for our son and it has been a reminder of how beneficial they are and how we should keep them in the forefront.

In past posts, I’ve discussed the importance of having a set of family values and displaying them prominently throughout your house.  Our set of family values have come in useful the past couple of weeks.

No Two Kids Are Alike

My son is completely different than my daughter.  He’s the youngest and he loves attention and being right.  While I’m happy he’s got a strong will, it doesn’t always translate well at school or at home.  His need to be right prevents him from listening and can be disruptive in a group setting.

A little bit of disrespect goes a long way and when it was time to reign him in, we went to our family values.  Our second value is to respect others.  This was the value where he was struggling.  He’s impulsive, argumentative and disruptive at times.  He’s also loving, caring and sweet at times.  We’re trying to get the best out of both.

So after getting a note home from his 1st grade teacher about his actions in class and towards others, he was placed on restriction.  He was going to have to put together some good days/weeks at school and show he could be his best self.  To help him, we have reviewed our family values before bed and before school.  The focus on #2 “Respect Others”.

He has taken it seriously and when he comes home, he likes to let us know what he did to show respect to others.  He understands what he was doing was wrong and did not follow our family values.

We let him down by not re-enforcing our values on a regular basis.  His note home was not just about him, but about what we were forgetting to teach at home.  If we had done a better job teaching and re-enforcing our family values, he may have never had his note sent home.  It was a good reminder for us to keep working and keep teaching at home.  It was a good reminder to why we put our family values in place.