Discipline Board and Caring board

After one of our wonderful times at MOPS, our topic was discipline.  I have found a hybrid system works the best for me.  As you read the parenting books keep that in mind, it ALL may not fit into your family.

What I took from our discussion and have implemented is my four top grievances.  I also got the two older kids together and talked with them about what they thought were the biggest problems.  These are the four we came up with:
#1: Disrespectfulness
#2: Disobedience
#3: Hot hands (using any body part in anger)
#4: Selfishness

Now that we came up our list we assigned punishments.  This will be different for each family, but you rank your problems and the thing that tops the list with get the hardest punishment.  Make it clear and ask the kids what would be the worst thing and go down the line.  For Jillian one of the worst things is losing her luvies at bedtime, but for Jenevieve, it is going to bed early. So you need to figure out what would be a more driving factor for each kid.  So those are their punishments for our #2 problem.

Once I had the grievances and the punishment I made a board on a blank dry erase chore chart.  I listed the grievance and the punishment below, for each kid.

I put checkmarks up as the punishment is delivered. If they did #2-#4 again that day, the got the punishment for #1. I find my kids are very visual.  For Jillian I used to put faces on her chart when she was little and she couldn't wait until the end of the week to erase it.

I decided that instead of having just a punitive board I wanted to reward them for good behavior.  That positive reinforcement that therapists love to used.  So I made an "I caught you caring" board.

I wrote on a dry erase board with permanent marker (so were the punitive labels) and made a grid with 35 squares.  Each time I catch the kids doing something that I really want to reinforce I tell them I am putting up a puck and why I am.  I never take them away..they earned them!





As for the permanent marker on the board, don't worry you can remove it!

My husband taught me this trick.  All you have to do is rub a dry erase marker over the permanent marker.

  Wipe if off right away.
The alcohol (or something) removes the marker.  If you have areas that don't come off right away, do it again.

I have found that it works for the dry erase marker that was left on too long and doesn't completely come off.





And there you have it.  Take it all, take some, but make it work for you.  Every family, every child, ever phase is different.  Just be consistent.