Creating a family charter!

I have been quite challenged recently with some teaching we have been doing,
and this has

particularly made me think about my family
and the way we interact with each other. I love my kids, I love my family but
sometimes it is bloomin’ hard work! When I am tired I get grumpy easily and I
get snappy with them. I have 3 children and so sometimes it’s a bit like crowd control,
when they are all wanting my attention at once. I have a teenager (and that
speaks for itself!) and I am also affected by my own upbringing and the fact that
my mum  worked full time, which I
resented and so subsequently I am worried about how much time I spend working.

Anyone who has kids knows that one of the
worst times is what I used to in pre-faith days term ‘the witching hour’, I can’t come up with a
better, more Christian term, but it refers to between 6-8pm, end of dinner,
getting into bed time. It’s always a nightmare, they are tired, I am tired,
there is still stuff to be done for the next day, often one of us has to get
out to a meeting or rehearsal, the kids don’t want to go to bed and we are all
tense. We have tried various ways round this and nothing has worked so far! And the thing is once we get into bed and snuggle up for stories it is so lovely, it’s just getting there that is hard!

My youngest two are only 2 years apart,
so subsequently they sometimes really love each other (which is so lovely to see) and
other times they cannot be in the same room as each other without bickering, stealing
each others toys or throwing things. Then there’s the old ‘telling tales..’  the incessant ‘muuuuuum… E hit me..’ ‘daaaaaad,
P came in my room’ and so on. There’s just something about that whinny tone
that instantly sends me round the bend! So, as I say, I love my family…

Joking
apart, I really do and it hurts me to see them treating each other (and us)
without love, or without respect. I don’t like punishments because they don’t work
and often get issued in anger. Something I read recently said that often
punishment is about withholding love, and that is the last thing I want for any
of them. I want them to know and to feel that our house and our family is a place
of love, Gods love and our love. So something had to change!!

So we decided to do a ‘family charter’ for
want of a better word. Not rules, or laws or something laid down by us, we
wanted something we could all agree on, ways to make our home and our family a
more loving place to be. So we explained to them all what we had in mind and
why we wanted to do it and how it was about involving all of us in the process. We laid out a sheet of paper and invited
them to write on it. The only rule was everything had to be positive. So we
couldn’t write ‘no shouting’ for example, but it had to turn into a positive like ‘talk
to other with respect’ instead of no shouting…