Parenting Tip #12 I Love You Chart

I had just gotten home from taking my husband to the airport. He would be working out of town for 3 weeks and with three small boys at home with just me, well, I didn’t know how I was going to hold up. It looked like a long three weeks of fighting and crying (the boys fighting, me crying).
A friend stopped by and I told her my situation. She immediately said, “You should make an I Love You chart and hang it on the refrigerator.” I replied, “A what?”
“An I Love You chart,” she said. “Every time anyone in the family says I love you to another family member, they put a star on the chart.” I thought, “yeah, that’s really going to help.”

After she left, I decided to try her suggestion. I mean, it couldn’t hurt. So I hung a piece of blank white paper onto the refrigerator and told my little boys,
“okay now, whenever you or your brothers or mommy says,
I Love You, we can put a star on the chart. Let’s see if we
can cover the whole paper before Daddy gets home in 3 weeks.”

Guess what? It was a miracle! There was little fighting.
There was hardly any crying. What there was, though,
was a lot of family members saying “I love you”. And that
chart was covered in stars before Daddy got home!