Confession

Ok so here goes... neither me or my kids are perfect!!

We are only 1/2 way through summer and 2 of my 3 kids have been "at it" and I have lost most (if not all) of my patience...I'm sure if try hard enough I can come up with a million excuses: they're spending longer periods of time together because of summer, they're tired, they're kids, this is what siblings do. On and on. But my thought is they are Garcia's and Garcia's DON'T represent that way!! We show love and speak kindly AT ALL TIMES. Of course I'm a "Garcia" and sadly I fail to "represent" all to often myself.

So tonight in our small group during prayer requests I confessed this issue and asked for prayer with and for the kids. (Our small group discussion happened to be on encouraging and building others up... How appropriate!)

As I was putting the kids to bed and saying bed time prayers I had an idea. We all sat in a circle and everybody said 2 kind things that they liked about each person. It was SO great!!! Ethan told Madison she was pretty and that he liked her toys. He told Sadie she was fun and kind. Sadie told Ethan he was sweet and handsome. She Madison she was fun to play with and pretty. Madison told Ethan he strong and funny and she told Sadie she liked it when she read her bedtime stories and played with her.

It was so sweet to hear them sincerely say kind words to one another. And the best part was when it was all over they all said "Mom, this was fun. Can we do it every night?"

All three of them enjoyed being encouraged and liked hearing kind things about them. They all went to bed feeling good about who they were and knew they were loved deeply by their siblings.

Now, after weeks of getting frustrated with them for arguing and changing out the discipline methods hoping to find something that stopped the bickering I realize that teaching them to be kind and encouraging means "teaching them" to be kind and encouraging.