The not so secret Parenting plan (or divide and prosper)

If your kids are anything like mine, they can go for days or minutes with out fighting and play like long lost friends rediscovering why they were friends in the first place.

But when they don't it can be brutal (I have two boys) and difficult to determine what or whom caused it.

Its a little like Cabin Fever, just getting on each others nerves.

The last thing I want to do try and work out who to punish so I end up just punishing them both for being involved but that leads to an unhappy house.

As parents this can be exasperating, right ? After all its not like they handed us a "How to be a Parent " manual straight after the kids were born (I doubt I would have read it anyway) with all the answers to raising the perfect son/daughter.

Image courtesy of acupofteaftmyselfandme.blogspot.com

So we hatched what at the time we thought was a perfect secret little plan.

So we do what we call "Divide and Conquer", I'll take one combatant boy and the Talented One will take the other and we will do things that each of them they enjoy. Call me old fashioned if you will but nothing works better than complete and un-distracted focus, even if  it's only from one parent.


Now this isn't as easy as it sounds. We are a one car family and intend on staying that way for sometime. It forces us to do things together and ensure that we all participate in each others activities. I'm hoping that the boys are learning empathy and tolerance from this little exercise. It's like learning to enjoy visiting your mother in law but when your 10 and not allowed to drink beer in the car on the way there.

So the weekend can go a little something like this:

Get up and prepare a break fast feast to power up for the day.

Clean up from this feast ( as I've used every pan and there is bacon fat on the wall)

Saturday basketball 

Come home and cook another weekend feast for dinner

Sunday get up and try to recreate prior days breakfast feast (using less pans than the day before and putting the bacon in the oven)

First Choir run for The Eldest

Lunch (by this meal SWMBO has us on salad sandwiches)

Second Choir run for Eldest which encompasses "The Sunday walk"

 to drop the Eldest at choir and then walk back the

 long way home to talk to the little guy one on one.

Not that I get a word in - with all the questions he has.

I'm pretty sure has saved up every question he had during the week and needs them all answered whilst we walk. I think he does this because he doesn't want his brother to know he has so many questions. I really see the difference in my sons when I deal with them on their own. I suppose they feel a little more comfortable with the one on one time as there is no risk of being judged when your other competitor sibling isn't present.

During the week the early morning 0800 start for the Eldest's choir is when we walk though the leafy suburbs of Melbourne just chatting one on one. Sometimes we pick a topic of discussion and then talk it through over the 30 minute walk. Sometimes we just talk about Minecraft the whole way. We never stay on topic for long and it's been a real eye opener for me.

As well as these weekly activities there are weekends planned where depending on schedules special one off excursions are planned.

For us it's all about that fine balance between together time and one on one time. The funny thing is no-one can tell us whether it's right or wrong because the final conclusion will only be known many, many years from now.

So that's our solution. Simple and so far completely effective. I'm not sure how secret it is though.

Why my sister and I have mutual respect

  I was waiting in line the other day and couldn't help but overhear (she was talking very loudly) a lady talking about her sister, about how she was such a pain and never did anything for anybody and so forth and so on.

I immediately remembered that I hadn't rung my sister for some time. I had emailed her ( to tell her about the blog) and we get updates from Facebook, but I hadn't rung.

That aside I also remembered why I had a great relationship with my sister = Mutual respect.

This didn't occur right from the start. No way. This had to be earned because we, like large numbers of young siblings, were at odds with each other to begin with. I would play jokes on her constantly and she would niggle me and we would find new ways to annoy each other and around and around it went.

It got to the point that other people would say to us when we were out with my parents, " Are you two being nice to each other yet?"

Anyway,  mutual respect was finally reached after "The Piano lesson" incident. It went down something like this........

Image courtesy of  garybabb.net

Grandma on the Go was a night Charge Sister for intensive care at the hospital and slept during the day, so we had to come home from school ourselves and on Wednesdays go to our piano lessons around the corner. We were allowed to ride our bikes there and back on the footpath.

SO, after my lesson I thought it would be funny if I let my sisters bike tyre down a little while she was having her lesson and she would have to walk home.

I let a little air out and checked, "nah not enough",  let a lot more out , "whoa OK that's pretty flat".

Off I rode.

When she finally did arrive home and found out that it was I who caused the walk home and worse, continued to laugh at her about it, a dark rage came over her.

She picked up a screwdriver that I had been using on my bike and threw it in a frustrated swoop. As she flung the screwdriver at me I tried to dodge it only to have the bladed end hit me fair square in the fleshy part of my elbow.

And the blood began to flow. As we apologized to each other over and over again, we still  had to decide what we were going to do :

1) Wake up Grandma on the Go and risk the wrath consequences of a sleep deprived mother
2) Cover up the crime and deny the blood was our doing/fault

So number 2 it was then . We hid my jeans in the clothes basket to be washed and we agreed that it was finished. To this day I'm pretty sure only the two of us know what happened.

As I look back on this now I realised that it wasn't the fact that I got hurt that changed the dynamic between us , it was the simple realisation that we only had each other and that was it. It obviously is not something that everyone gets or has because I constantly hear about peoples poor relationships with their siblings. So I count myself lucky.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go make a phone call.