(This is Hannah writing) My Mom’s spiritual gift is Exhorter. I think she does a great job with rewarding us, and encouraging us to do what we are supposed to be doing (I didn’t say we do a good job of doing it, though) . Every time my Mom introduces a new idea for chores all of us think we are going to die and it is the worst day of our life. (I am not exaggerating) After a few weeks … okay mont

So ….. I am really writing on this subject??! Our kids have been struggling with this lately, so it is kind of comical for me to appear like the expert on this subject! A couple of ideas that HAVE been working this week because we have really been cracking down on bickering: If anyone has an unkind voice toward a sibling, I have been asking them to bring be a bar of soap and stick their tongue out.  One swi

I love to hear my children praise each other, but too often I hear criticism.  I think that is normal when people live in the same home! One thing that has worked for us is to have Praising Contests.  We certainly still have bickering and criticism, but hopefully it helps the atmosphere of our home to at least have a praise once in a while from a sibling! We have a laminated page on the fridge that says: Micah:__

If you are just beginning potty training, see the list at the bottom of the email.  You can do it!! I have used “she” many times in this post because some of the info came from an old email I wrote to a friend who was potty training a girl.  Please switch out the pronouns as needed!  :O) I had trouble training many of my kids in this area, and I feel like it may have been because I was too worried a

Q: What do you do about situations with siblings when one tattle-tales, yet what the sibling they’re tattling on is doing probably isn’t best. It’s like, I don’t want to reward the tattle-tale behavior, but also, how do I let a sibling that was doing something *wrong* get away with it? It’s very tough and I pray for leading in this. Let me know any thoughts you have–experience, e