This is my second blog post for the day. I'm on a roll!
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At the beginning of the year I bought several used books on Amazon
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At the beginning of the year I bought several used books on Amazon
all about improving marriages and family.
One of the books I bought the book was
This is actually the fourth book this year I've read by Linda Eyre.
I would recommend ALL of her books.
Maybe I'll blog about the other books later.
Anyway, in this book the first step to building a strong family is creating a family legal system.
AKA establishing family laws or rules.
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"Legal systems not only protect our rights, our property, and our persons, they give us a stable, secure environment in which we can function and flourish. Ironically our limits give us freedoms, whereas anarchy is the absence of both limits and freedom."
"The goal is first to establish clear, simple family laws that children understand (and know the reasons for), laws that make family members safer, calmer, and happier and that teach children the principles of obedience to law more than obedience to people."
"Next we connect those laws to the concept of consequences- consistent rewards and penalties- while allowing for "repentance," through which amends can be made and a penalty or punishment avoided."
"Finally we teach our children that some of life's big decisions are easy because they simply involve obedience to the laws and can be make quickly, even in advance. And we show them how other decisions involve multiple options instead of laws and thus require a different, more analytical kind of decision making."
"Over time the implementation of a family legal system helps create order and peace in a home, thoughtful obedience in children, and some basic skills in the areas of time management, priorities, and choice making."
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In the book, the Eyres share their five family laws.
We have decided to adopt those family laws.
We introduced them to the girls a few weeks ago at Family Home Evening
and we have been reviewing them every week since.
I also put the laws up on the wall for everyone to see.
Because I'm sure you can read those.
Here are our laws and their definitions and for some reason when I copied and pasted these the format got all weird on my blog. And I'm too lazy to fix it. So sorry it looks so awful.
Peace
Don’t
fight with your bodies or words.
Don’t
lose your temper or yell.
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Asking
Don’t
go somewhere or do something outside
the normal routine without asking and getting permission.
the normal routine without asking and getting permission.
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Order
Take
care of your things, put them away and
don’t leave messes for others to clean up.
don’t leave messes for others to clean up.
Do
things in the right order.
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Respect
Be
polite, especially to your parents.
Respect
other people’s rights, views and property and respect the environment.
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Obedience
Mind
your parents.
You
may ask why and they will try to
tell you but then you do it.
tell you but then you do it.
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Let me explain, "Do things in the right order."
It means brush your teeth before you go to bed.
Clean up what you're playing with before you get something else out.
Do your chores before you get to watch any shows.
You get the idea. Do first things, first.
Such a good idea. I think we better get crackin' in our own family, too. I also really want to sit down and do what Pres. Eyring recommended we do as parents in Oct. general conference - to think of our kid's spiritual talents or gifts and represent it someway so they can see it and look at it and remember their strengths. I think the babe it might be hard to do, but I can see stuff in Jack already. Just need to remember to do all these fun ideas. :)
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