Wrangling Rabid Ostriches

Well thats what it feels like anyway. I have lots of ideas rolling around my 26 brains. I want to post about how I feed my big, picky household and the perks of deconstructed foods for feeding a crowd. I want to post about corruption of the emotional sphere. I want to post about substance abuse and addiction. I want to post about kids lessons and activities. I want to post about my experience with PTSD. I want to post about my favorite Steem Creatures and why they’re my favorites.

^{credit me}

My 26 brains can’t seem to stich any of those things together at the moment, because the space in them is currently occupied by the rabid ostriches (my kids). So I'll post about my kids! Ski, Bil and I have agreed that some changes need to be made with our current structure, we’ve been very lax over the summer months and their behavior is reflective of that. There’s been a major upsurge of defiance and rule breaking recently. A couple of the things happening are…

Meal Times.

^source

They get breakfast at 9:00 am, lunch at 12:00 pm, snack at 3:00 pm, dinner at 6:00pm and a small bedtime snack at 7:00-7:30 pm.

We’ve had big issues with them trying to live off of cheese sticks and mini muffins and not eating meals. Not okay. So, I provide them with something at each of these times, they have to try it. If they genuinely don’t like it I’ll get something else, but if they won’t at least try it they don’t eat. I’m not starving the kids, they have a choice, take one bite and see or wait until the next meal time. If you finish and want more at meal time let me know because you’re not getting anything until the next meal time. If you don’t finish it is put aside and when you ask for a snack or whine you’re hungry between, guess what you get? Yep, whatever wasn’t finished from the last meal. I’ve actually had very few complaints about this system so far!

Afternoon Routine/Responsibility

^source

We have a routine for the afternoons. Lunch at 12:00 pm, after lunch time is clean up time, after clean up time is quiet time, after quiet time is 3:00 pm snack time. This routine works really, really well when I remind them to do it. So stricter policy on afternoon routine. It’s also doubling as responsibility reinforcement, because after they clean up their messes from the day so far, the playroom, and their rooms, they also each have their own age appropriate household contribution chore. Yes there is a very good chance that they’re going to trash the house again after quiet time, but while the weather is nice I can kick them out into the back yard between snack time and dinner time, or assign them crafts or tasks to try and keep them busy.

I have a few more ideas for responsibility that can be implemented later after we get all this down, including having “special days” I have five kids under the age of 10. Each of them gets a “special day” where they can be my special helper… to help me with meal planning, food prep, cooking, or help with chores they aren’t old enough to do themselves or don’t know how to do yet, so they can learn how. We want them to know how to cook with more than a microwave and know how to wash their clothes when they go off to college someday. I’m also trying to come up with a way to practically teach them about financial responsibility. I used to make Rose use her own money for things like if she wanted doughnuts when I went through the coffee drive through, or if she wanted a toy at the dollar store but we have so many kids here that a full allowance for each kid isn’t really feasible. Even if it was just $5 a week for the kids under 10 that’s $100 a month. Then of course the three teenagers will want an allowance, and I don’t think $5 a week is going to quite cut it for them. $200-$300 a month is just ridiculous.

A work off program doesn’t seem like a bad idea…oh you want and xbox gold membership? Extra chores until it’s paid off (because really let’s face it, it’d wind up being bought anyway). That still doesn’t really teach them how to handle finances though so I really have to think about this one for a while. Lemonade/Apple Cider stands? Work for neighbors and family members? Present a challenge to make money and see what they come up with? I’m sure I’ll update y’all on this at some point.

Bed Time

^source

This is our Goliath. All of the kids currently suck at bedtime. Four whines and cries that he needs a person to cuddle with, Rose acts like she’ll die if I’m not in the room, Five is steadily up and down the stairs every five minutes for water and to potty twenty five times and then just lays in his bed yelling “Mooooommmyyy”, Seven is okay mostly but she yells for us every couple of minutes for a while to inform us the Four is still whining, and Nine needs to be reminded six times that its time to turn off electronics, UNLESS you just go shut it off yourself.

It’s a long and arduous struggle nightly. Solution? Make sure they know what to expect every night and STICK TO IT. We’ve set all of the kids TVs to automatically turn off at 8:30pm so they can’t watch past then except for Nine… We agreed to start bedtime at 7pm… So bedtime snack, baths/teeth brushing, backpack checking, setting out tomorrow's clothes, ext should be finished at 7:30 pm, giving us half an hour to run rounds between them, and hopefully they’re asleep at 8:30. To account for Nines slightly later bedtime hes just the last in the rounds so he finishes up at 8:30 and lights out at 9:00, hopefully asleep by 9:30. We’ll see how this one goes, only four was up past 9:30 last night so we’re off to an okay start there. We can get them to bed on time, the major goal here is to get them to bed on time without wanting to rip our hair out and scream. I’m considering printing out a checklist with color coded boxes for each of them and putting it into a frame with a plastic cover so they can check it off nightly with dry erase markers.

Bedtime can be a bit of an issue for me as well because Rose wets the bed. Despite my sister and my Ex’s insistence that I set an alarm to train her to wake up in the middle of the night so she can potty, I simply won’t do that. I don’t see the benefit of interrupting her sleep cycle when she’s in school for something she just doesn’t have any control over. Add to that that sometimes she goes before 1:30 am, even if I limit liquids and make her potty before bed and it doesn’t seem like a valid idea for me. The soaking her bed does wake her up, and I am quite sick of washing all of her bedding and multiple sets of pajamas every night SO I’ll be ordering a set of washable, reusable training undies on Amazon for about $20 which will hopefully help nighttime struggles as well.

Randoms

^source

I would also like to up my emotional awareness game a bit. Right now I quite often make the kids talk things out until they come to a solution, I’ve given them all of the tools but you know kids… In the heat of the moment I have to intervene, a lot. There are a lot of times however that I’m just too busy/grumpy/tired to really go through it so I wind up just seperating kids or removing objects of conflict and letting that be that. I need to work harder on talking them through every time, and add in some regular talks and activities about emotional awareness and respect for others.

The NO word. I find this one a bit tricky. I’m frequently tempted and admittedly do sometimes harshly respond with “You don’t tell me no!” I don’t like this. Why? When my daughter is 16 being peer pressured I want her to be confident in her “NO!”. I want all of them to be confident in saying no to things that make them uncomfortable, upset, of just not feel quite right. I want them to be allowed to say no to any adult, anyone BUT I also don’t want them snipping that snarky, teeth grinding inducing “NO!” when I tell them to go sit it down or it’s time for lights out. So how do I find that medium? Kid HR meetings? I have been telling them lately that if they have a problem with something coming from me saying no isn’t going to help them, if they have a problem with something coming from me, they need to talk it out. Tell me why, give me reasons, talk it out.

^source

If their logic is better than mine I have no problem granting exceptions. IF. I think that this is going to be a really important implementation, because it will engage their little brains. Instead of simply accepting and doing as their told, they’ll be encouraged to think, to problem solve, to be creative and innovative… it will also help them to learn my logic process. It’ll teach them why I do the things I do, and I personally find kids are more likely to follow rules if they understand why those rules are in place. Hopefully it’ll also foster a stronger mental connection between actions and consequences. I really want to lay the foundation for them to be able to create and execute presentations if they want something big, or if they want something changed. Even if they don’t always get their way, they need to feel like they have a voice and learn how to use it.

I also want to maybe during breakfast actually sit down with them and talk. I want to ask them to get their input on how we can have our best day. Butt wipe break hold on… Okay and back. During the process of writing this and doing fifty other things I remembered that I have a clear front plastic sleeve in my binder from and out dated calendar insert, which is perfect for the checklists. I grabbed a cute blank editable here, filled in our needs, and while the days of the week aren’t coustomizable I can white them out and write names where they are from yougest to oldest. The teenagers might not like having a ‘do this checklist’ but it might be possible for me to get them to use it by presenting it as a way to record household contributions they’ve made to make sure nothing slips through the cracks for their work off contributions. If not that’s fine, I’ll just have a couple of extra bubbles the younger ones can use to record work offs to earn things, because responsibilities don’t get them anything.

Alright I’m going to go ahead and end this here for fear of excessive rambling. Until next time darlings…

^source