Family Meeting

Last week we set a limit on Alan's playing of his DSi. He is allowed an hour a day, and the possibility of earning more time exists but isn't concrete.

Tonight we had a family meeting. For the next week we are going to try making it a 30 minute limit with an extra 30 minutes possible for good behavior - no fits, no fussing when asked to do something. That extra 30 will probably be given in 5 minute increments. So for tomorrow Alan gets 45 minutes.

All of the kids are supposed to be allowed an hour of Nintendo. But they all want the DSi and so far only Alan has gotten it everyday. Holly has gotten zero time on the DSi. And today she really got angry at me (I don't remember why - I just remember her screaming at me ugly) and I told her if she spoke to me even sort of like that again I was going to ground her for a week. From what I didn't know.

Tonight at the family meeting I asked her about it. I asked her if she knew what that meant - to be grounded. And she said she knew she was about to lose privileges. I asked her what privileges she could imagine losing. She answered - DSi time, TV time, computer time. I asked her when in the last week she had any of those things. She had no answer.

What can I take away when they don't have 'privileges'?

Sometime in the last couple of weeks I told Holly she had to go to bed 15 minutes before the other two that night. And I told her that to make it a real punishment for her, the rest of us were going to have a party in that 15 minutes that she was in bed.

I thought I was pretty smart that night.

Today I wondered - if she had more privileges, would she be happier in general and less likely to lash out with a temper? And I don't mean if she had more TV or computer time, but if she had something to look forward to on a regular basis - something that she likes to do. If she could look forward to it, would she be happier?

So in the family meeting tonight we addressed the issue of the Lack of Joy in the house.

The fact that I wanted to introduce fun things in order to have something to take away was not lost on them - at least on Julia - but I did try to make her see that I also just want us to have more fun. Which I do.

So the ideas they had were - to have a pizza night (Fridays). To have a family game night or afternoon. To have a couple nights a week where we watch a movie or America's Funniest Home Videos (anyone have another suggestion for a family friendly TV show we could watch together?). To make cookies more often. To help cook dinner.

We also tried to pick a different activity that they might be guaranteed time to do during the day - like Alan with the DSi. Holly picked playing the piano. Julia couldn't decide and then she also picked piano. I told them that it didn't have to be something bad for them that we try to limit to 30 minutes, but something that they want to do that they can be promised 30 minutes of the day to do. So it might end up that Jillian is napping and wakes up to a gentle piano playing. We'll have to see how it all works out.

Holly was the secretary for the meeting tonight and I expect our next meeting will be next Friday night. Hopefully there will be wonderful progress to report on all fronts.