The Positive Discipline Parenting Tool I focused on this week was Compliments! I had a few experiences with compliments this week, all were positive! The tag line on the Compliments tool card says "Compliments and appreciations bring us closer together." I found this to be SO true.
At our first family meeting last week we ended with the mention of starting our next meeting with compliments. Throughout the week I tried to take opportunities the arose naturally to give compliments to my family members. I also helped my daughter with forming compliments from ideas she came up with.
Later in the week I came across a blog post from a blog that I follow called Simple Marriage about Compliments! Sean Marshall, author of the post, gives a few reasons as to why we should make compliments apart of our married life. He basically claims that complimenting your spouse benefits you both. Not only does your spouse feel appreciated and valued, but it also helps you not to take him/her for granted. By bringing to the light the things that you appreciate and value in your spouse you are reminded regularly why yo chose him/her.
I think this goes for your relationship with your children as well. It is easy to get caught up in our daily routines with children and miss the beauty/value that they bring into your life every day. Compliments make you take time to appreciate your children and you both benefit from that!
We finished the week with week 2 of our Family Meeting Training Plan. The focus this week was, you guessed it, Compliments. Isn't it amazing how the stars all align occasionally to send you a clear message. Compliments were our tool card this week, in the marriage blog I read and the new skill we were practicing in our family meeting. We went around and shared our compliments. As I suspected, it felt just as good to receive the compliments as it did to give them. We even went around a second time and did silly compliments, because we decided even silly compliments were fun to give and receive. This is a tool that I really hope becomes a regular part of our everyday life!
Our next tool to work on is: Routines.
Thank you for sharing. It is so easy to forget to voice the gratitude we have for our partners, children and friends. Thank you for the reminder.
ReplyDeleteI truly appreciate the hard work you put into these posts and being such a good role model for so many, including myself.