Okay, I’m just going to say it… My
kids annoy the living $%@! out of me on a regular basis. Just what annoys me
can vary from day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment, but lately the
overriding issue has been bickering. It is non-stop! All I hear all-day, every
day are cries of “Mommy, he did this,” and “Mommy, she did that,” with
screams of “STOP IT!” and crying fits smattered into the mix, just to keep things
interesting. Now as a mother who is trying to work from home, this tends to
make it a tiny bit hard to concentrate. My solution? Yelling. I find myself yelling so much at times, I
wonder if I’ve forgotten how to talk. I truly understand my mother now. She had
three of us. The fact that we all survived and are more or less untraumatized
is a testament to her power of restraint, but I digress…
Recently, my mother in law gave me
a piece of advice, as to something she did with her kids, that I found so amusing
I actually gave it a try. I have dubbed it the Hug Out. It works just like a
timeout, except the children are forced to sit and hug each other for a
pre-determined amount of time. Sounds crazy right! That’s what I like about it.
Now I’ve only tried this with the kids a couple times, but I’ve threatened it a
ton. I tell the kids that if they won’t love each other, I’ll make them love
each other – to which, of course, they laugh at me. But I got the last laugh when I made them sit
for 3 minutes and hug. Actually, we all laughed out a**es off, but they’re
still young. They still like each other for the most part. What really gives me
a charge is thinking about how they’ll react to this as teens – oh yes! It will
be done.
Will this force feeding love
actually work to make them closer, more loving siblings? I don’t know, but if nothing
else, it provides me with a bit of entertainment and what mom can’t use more of
that?