Who's in Charge at Your House?

".....I was in a place where I had completely given up and was just trying to make them happy all the time. As hard as I tried, it never worked! They would completely ignore me and totally took control of our house. It happened so slowly that I didn't even realize it until one day I rented a vehicle that was a van. I found myself telling everyone, "I love it because I'm the BOSS!" Are you kidding me? The boss of a vehicle? It had spun out of control...."

This is a quote from one of my clients who felt that her whole house was being run by her children. I love how she said it happened slowly, because there is not a parent out there that does this on purpose, or one day just looks into the eyes of her 3 year old and says "Fine I give up, you're in charge kid". Every parent knows that they should be the ones in control, but slowly, if you let it happen, one day at a time children unknowingly gain the ground of their house, until everything is chaotic and EVERYONE is miserable.

From discipline to bedtime to going to the grocery store, to sleeping through the night, it all boils down to this.... WHO'S IN CHARGE???? Are you in charge when you child crosses the boundaries you have set? Are you in charge of bedtime? Are you in charge of mealtime? And the list goes on... I've seen it over and over again the chaos of a house that has the children in control. So next time you feel chaos rising in your home....ask yourself this question...Who's in charge right now??? Then ask yourself... How can I get back in control?? and then TAKE CONTROL. Set the consequence, set the boundary and STICK TO IT, STAY CONSISTENT and be that loving, strong, amazing Natzi mom that you can be!!!!

This will make your kids feel so much more secure and loved. We sometimes think it will make them hate us and maybe it will for a minute, but I promise eventually, they will actually love and like you more. It's amazing how much kids crave this without knowing it. It used to make me laugh inside when I would have a substitute teacher for a few days in my class who was obviously not in charge and let the kids run the classroom. So I would come back to a class of chaos and have to gain the control back. Many times this involved a lot of consequences and stern difficult conversations, but the kids would just tell me constantly how much they loved me and missed me during that week of resetting the hierarchy of my room. It was always just such a tangible example of how much kids love and feel secure in a healthy environment of consistent leadership and boundaries.

Is this easy??? No. Do you always want to again enforce a consequence when boundaries are pushed?? No. But wow does it pay off in the end. Hebrews 12:11 says "For the time being no discipline brings joy, but seems sad and painful; yet to those who have been trained by it afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness". The Bible is very clear that discipline is not easy and it's not fun but in the end you've got a house of peace and children that are obedient and respectful to authority. In the end we are training them to be obedient to God when they grow up and are not longer under our umbrella. We are teaching them about consequences that happen when we make bad decisions in life under a protected covering, so that they learn now and not when they are not protected under our covering in the real world and those real consequences start to happen.

If you need any help with this and feel out of control in any area when it comes to your kids, I would love to help you however I can. Message me, email me, or call me! I'd love to chat with you and help however I can.