One of our recent Family Home Evenings....

We've been having some issues with the kiddos talking very unkindly to one another lately. Lots of fighting and too many "I hate you's" are thrown around, so I decided to have one of our Family Home Evenings focus on how we should speak in our home.

I showed a couple pictures of the Savior and talked about his life. There are a few pictures of him as a boy and so I showed them and asked if they thought Jesus screamed and yelled when he didn't get his own way. I asked about what they thought he did when someone made him mad or got in his way. We discussed that for a bit. Then we talked about how it makes us feel when someone says, "I hate you!" or "Get away from me!" , etc., etc.



So, then I pulled out these little jars with our pictures on them. Each jar represents that person. I talked about how we are in charge of filling each other's "jars" with kind words. Kind words were starbursts, mean words are rocks. So, if Graham screams at Lucy, then Lucy gets a rock in her jar. We're going to evaluate the starburst-to-rock ratio each week and chat about that. Maybe there will be a prize or fun outing if the ratio is to my liking.

That evening it was pretty funny. I kept hearing Lucy say things like, "You're the best brother ever, Graham!" Graham would say the same thing back and then they'd both look at me expectedly. That has died down a little each day, but it's been nice to hear them talk a little better to one another. The only times it has backfired is when I have lost my cool (very rare occasion, of course) and Lucy steps in with, "Now you have to give me a rock!" You can imagine the reaction she received. Not among my finer parenting moments.



After the lesson we made these little guys. This treat sort of evolved. I was originally trying to think of a way to make mouths, being how we were focusing on paying attention to what words come out of them. Lucy wasn't impressed with my initial attempts, so these little monsters came to be. She still wasn't too impressed. She ended up just doing her own thing.



I got the jist of this lesson from a website I found a long time ago. It's nataliesfhespot.blogspot.com. It's a good resource for lessons for families with young kids. She has a lot of simple lessons that I'm able to add to or take from and make my own. It's my "go-to" place on Monday afternoon when I don't know what we're going to do.