Ladybugs and Lamps

So believe it or not, my kids aren't always the adorable little angels that always say please and thank you, never hit or scream. In fact whining, sudden deafness, and pandemonium are a daily occurrence. My sanity has long since flown out the window, and I don't know that it will ever find it's way home again.

I am desperately trying to at least coax my sanity it back into view. I have tried a few different behavior monitoring ideas, some complicated, some simple. I am a proud mom who can count to three in a way that my children feel the earth quake. Three is a monotonous number.

After trial and error I have, I think, struck gold. Again I owe pinterest to my marvelous idea, I saw a cute chart with three ladybugs. One was happy, one was a bit glum and the third was quite sad. The original poster used it in her classroom and there were a ton of clothes pins on either side to mark the child's behavior. I've tried the clothespin thing, but Ginny is not too good at the whole coordination of pinch and slide, So I used my creative genius and came up with a much friendlier version.

The concept is simple, you drive me nuts in any way shape or form you move down. If you reach the sad ladybug you go to time out. I still count occasionally, and I sometimes forget about the ladybugs, but on the whole it works! They want to be on the adorable smiley ladybug. It helps that I use further incentive in the form of a puffball jar. If at the end of the day they are on green, they get a puffball, if they are extremely helpful during the day (like cleaning up toys) they can earn a puffball. They make it to time out and they lose one. If they fill the jar they get to do something fun. It makes their behavior more tangible(?) for them I think. It provides them with an easy to understand system that rewards and punishes their behavior accordingly.

Now for the Lamp.

Do your kids drive you nuts by waking up at odd hours of the morning? Mine do. Do your kids feel a sense of ownership regarding your bed? Mine do.

I get it, they're kids. I'm the parent. This kind of thing happens. I just need it to happen less. So one early morning, I was done, I got online and was ready to fork out almost $50 dollars for some ridiculous clock that was going to teach my kid when they should wake up. I was feeling pretty desperate. I read review after review after review of my final choice. you know how it goes, some people rave and others refer to it as the biggest waste of money they have ever encountered.

So as I talked to Rich about it half hoping he would say "really? why would you waste the money". The light bulb clicked on. The whole concept of the clock is that you set it to say 7am and then at 7am a green light turns. This light indicates to the child "yay I can go wake mommy and daddy now!" if the light is not on they must stay in bed. So as I talked it through  I thought "wait a second, all I need is for a light to turn on at the appropriate time. All I need to do is get a lamp plug it into an timer".

I consider this my thrifty genius. So instead of spending $50 on something that might work I went and spent $8 on a second hand lamp and some cute fabric with suns and rainbows to recover the shade. The kids watched me put it all together and then I explained what it was. we call it the "Good Morning Lamp". I set the timer to 7am and as I put the kids to bed told them that they could not get out of bed unless the lamp was on.

Guess what?

It worked.

Ginny (our biggest culprit) woke up needing to go potty. instead of first coming to our room in a crying fit, she sat on her bed and calmly called out "mommy, I need to go potty". then afterwards she says "I want to sleep in yours bed".

I simply asked her if her lamp was on she answered "no" and then I asked "then where do you need to go?" to which she replies "my bed", my response,  "ok, lets go". It was practically a miracle.

On a previous, lampless night there would have been wailing and gnashing of teeth.

It's a wonderful thing to wake up in the morning and only have two people in bed.