When we decided to move away from punishment, especially from spanking, it was really hard to break those habits. We drew inspiration from an approach we learned from Dr. Ross Greene of livesinthebalance.org. I will link a video with his explanation in the comments below.
He talks about picking your battles, but not in a heat of the moment "do I want to die on this hill?" kind of way. In a prede...termined way. You choose what things are most important to you and work only on them, letting everything else go. Once you have worked through those most important issues you can reevaluate if there are then new issues you'd like to address.
We chose to focus on communication and working through conflict peacefully. We let everything else go. Bed time, bath time, eating veggies, brushing teeth, all of it. We put all our energy into learning how to resolve conflict peacefully, and as this was already hard enough for us, it made sense not to add more conflict by battling all the things listed above.
Its been a long, difficult road. There are days that feel especially hard, but looking back I can see that we have made enormous progress. I see less and less anger and argument in the house. I hear more and more negotiation and understanding. I wish we'd started this process earlier, but it is what it is. It is definitely not easy, but it is definitely worth it.See More
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