A year of respect

At the end of last year I decided our family needed a theme for 2011…you know, something to work on all year and improve ourselves and our family life.  One day I was reading the Parenting magazine and read an article on respect and how most kids these days don’t have any.  At that minute I knew that should be our theme.  And so we started A Year of Respect.  This article was also influential in helping me formulate the theme: http://familyvolley.blogspot.com/2011/01/r-e-s-p-e-c-t-do-your-kids-have-it.html 

In January we had a family home evening were we brainstormed what it means to be respectful.  Here are something's we thought of:

• having good manners (desperately need to work on this one here :)
• being nice
• no hitting
• respecting our belongings
• no yelling
• respecting God
• no interrupting
• being patient
• being a good listener
• obeying our mom and dad
• respecting ourselves
• respecting those who are different

So every month we take one of these things and really work on it.  January was Respecting God and this month has been being nice…which is so generic, but that’s what the kids wanted!

It’s been great and I think it’s really helping.

This month we also introduced “Respectiballs.”  These little fluffy balls go into the jar when they are caught being respectful.  When the jar is full, we will go do something fun as a family.

Hooray for respect!!