Thinking Thursdays: Discipline in the family

With Junior J hitting the terrible twos, tantrums have been more frequent.  His ability to "bargain" has been getting better too: "Last time, mama?", "Please mama, 5 minutes?", followed by an innocent doe-eyed look.  While we've been trying to be as firm as we could with the little boy, it has been rather tricky balancing discipline and being affectionate at the same time.  So when our church held a talk on discipline last Saturday, both hubby and myself gladly turned up for it!

I thought I'd quickly share some of the points we took home from the talk, especially as a reminder for ourselves.  Also knowing how messy we are, we would probably lose the notes taken at the talk pretty soon!

So here goes:

1. The number one thing I remembered was "to let your yes be yes and your no be no".  And to be firm about what you say, as children do take the cue from us and know if we mean business.  5 minutes is 5 minutes, and we should avoid empty threats like "we're going to sell you to the karang guni", or "we going off now, bye" (followed by pretending to walk away, which we are guilty of doing sometimes at the shopping centre when Junior J refuses to leave because he wants to play with the mentos vending machine!)

2.  To be able to differentiate between wilful disobedience and childish irresponsibility.  Sometimes as children they might need help/games/prodding to finish tasks. :)

3. To be consistent for every child in the family and to avoid showing favouritism.  

4. And good disciplines to adopt in the family (for more concrete examples, do read this blog)

- Being affectionate: Through compliments, courteous words (I'm sorry, its all right, thank you) and signs of affection.

- Creating memories: Celebrating anniversaries and birthdays, telling stories

- Dependence on God: Through praying as a family and for your children and praying for others (and updating your children about any answered prayers).

- Devotion: Pointing our children to God by reading God's Word and Bible stories, and making church attendance a non-negiotiable.

- Dining together: Making it a point that one person never eats alone if others are in the house, assigning each family member a task in meal preparation/table setting/cleaning, reading verses and praying before every meal and sometimes inviting guests over for meals.

I found the talks by two of our pastors really helpful, and they shared alot of stories and examples.  I guess being a parent isn't easy, but, with God's grace and wisdom (and lots of prayer), we will do what we can! :)

Junior J, praying hard during one of our bible study sessions.
(He does peek sometimes!)

Simple Sundays...

I'm beginning to enjoy Sundays that are spent simply. Where there is no hustle and bustle of an event filled calendar, but just time spent meaningfully, with people close to your heart.

Yesterday's message was on Matthew 7:1-12 and it was a "big poke in the ribs" reminder not to be judgmental of others:

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" -Matthew 7:3

How easy it always is to make quick (and usually negative) judgements of others! I'm constantly guilty of this, and after yesterday's sermon, am really going to try not to be judgemental. Especially since we have to be role-models for our children, who would pick up all these habits and thoughts (both good and bad) from us...

We had a quiet lunch after church with baby J's Godpa, who's also our bible study group leader, and went to Neil Road in search for yummy noodles. The area is full of British colonial old shophouses that have been conserved, and we wandered around the area for abit as the eatery (Qun Zhong Eating House) was still closed (but already, there was quite a crowd waiting!). We tried their noodles which were pretty yummy, as well as the Chinese pizza...

The xiao long bao (for this, we concluded that Crystal Jade did theirs better)...

Their guo tie (which was pretty good!)

And finally ended off with the glutinous rice balls in osmanthus, which was really fragrant. All in all, its a pretty nice place for an afternoon lunch with friends (but its not exactly very cheap), and there is a tea house nearby that you could adjourn to for more chit-chatting, but we had to run as the Godpa had to attend a wedding and hubby had to go back to church for some camp training... Oh well, there's always next time!