Parenting Tip #47 Stop/Rewind!

My daughter was tired of the endless fighting that was going on in her house with her three kids. Summer had just started and looked like it was going to last a l-o-n-g time.
So she implemented the STOP/REWIND game. Here’s her words: “We just kept fighting and picking on each other, myself included. I was tired of disciplining every time, so we decided we could give each other a second chance by saying 'Stop! Rewind...' then we could go back and handle the situation right or say something nicer etc. The game was that anytime something was escalating, anyone in the family could call 'stop, rewind', even if they weren't in the fight. Then the person who called it plus anyone who was in the argument and cooperated by going back and trying again got a point. At the end of the day they got a chocolate chip for each point [they had accumulated that] day.

I remember being in the other room and hearing the girls start fighting, then Graham said, stop-rewind and the girls went back and corrected. All without me! That happened where Addy said it once too. They even justly called it on me a couple of times. The best part about it was there wasn't added fighting about 'who called it first' or 'who got the point' or whatever because everyone who participated would get a point.

This [game] worked great for a couple days until we were out of the habit of fighting and were distracted by other things.

post script. I am trying it on the kids [again]right now,[two months later] and they're looking at me like, 'whatever mom, that was so a month ago.' Ha. The little boogers...... Little do they know I have 8 discipline/ back talk/ naughty children books checked out from the library right now!"