Sunday, December 25, 2011

The Practically Perfect Plan


Remember a while back when I longingly mentioned how I would love to have my children be like the happy toilet-swishing kid pictured on the front of Marilee Boyack's book, The Parenting Breakthrough?

Well guess what, guess what?!!! It has come to pass! Maile actually begged me to clean out the toilet the other day. Wow. Hats off to me. Well, and the authors of the wonderful books I get my inspiration and ideas from. I have no problem giving credit where credit is due!

I loved what Marilee says about how frustrated she would get that the most important job we do in life--being a parent--didn't have an instruction manual or a plan on how and what to teach our kids! To remedy that somewhat, she and her husband came up with a list of all the skills they thought were important for her kids to know before they left home, and divided it year by year.

Click here to see Marilee Boyack's Plan

Based on her recommendations, I came up with a system for my kids that is kind of halfway between the Personal Progress Program our church's Young Women participate in, and Marilee's skills list. It has been working great thus far. The kids get to pick what goals they would like to work on, who they would like to train them in that particular skill, and then once it is passed off, they get to pick a treat from our big treat basket.

 
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Yeah for instruction manuals!

2 comments:

A.J. Dub. (Amy) said...

Where can I get those? Awesome!

Jenny said...

Ditto that, I want one!