Our new {consequence chart}

Oops. I lied in my last post! I forgot I had this one in the works so I thought I would go ahead and finish it up and put it out there.

One of my biggest pet peeves is being around someone constantly threatening their children (stop hitting your sister right now or you are getting a time out.... and then you hear that 25 more times and the little stinker doesn't ever get the slightest punishment!) Well, I might have noticed that I was becoming one of those moms.... oops.

I also firmly believe that for young children the most important thing you can do is be consistent. So, I am not a huge fan of super creative consequences for young kiddos. I think they need to be to the point and easy to anticipate. Nothing is more frustrating or confusing for a little kiddo than not knowing what to expect from their mamma... "Sometimes when I throw a toy I get a time-out, sometimes mom just yells, sometimes the toy gets taken away... I wonder what will happen this time!?" I also like to keep discipline short. A small child is not really going to grasp their favorite toy being taken away all day when they threw a tantrum at 5am.

I had seen the idea for a consequence chart at the homeschool conference and then at Confessions of a Homeschooler. I loved the idea of being able to be super consistent and use the scripture to help your child understand why what they did was not okay.

So, I created my own little system for the Ramsey Family!

There are a few behaviors in our home that lead to a loss of privileges (less serious things like whining as opposed to direct defiance). We decided it would be easiest to list out what we consider to be privileges in our home (TV, Wii, dessert, etc.). In order for the kids to understand and have a visual we made these little smiley faces. If you lose your right to privileges your smiley card gets turned over (for a half day) which helps keep mom and dad on the same page.

We have been using this for almost a week now and I feel like we are already seeing a huge turn around. Our kiddos get ONE warning and then we go straight to the consequence chart. Obviously Jack has a smiley face just to keep up appearances. But, so far this seems to be working well with Max and Sophie.