Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Learning To Love

How do you teach your children to love one another?
An obvious answer is to demonstrate love through your own words and actions.

My more specific question is this: How do you successfully correct unloving behavior?
The reason I ask is that we are having some challenges with Caleb hurting Sarah.

Tonight's episode seemed pretty severe to us. He threw a small toy at her head, repeatedly. When she finally started screaming at the top of her lungs, he went to hide. He did admit to hitting her repeatedly with a toy.
We punished him by quarantining him to his room for the night, with the exception of eating dinner, which he would do alone at the kitchen table. While in his room, he was not allowed to play with any toys, only read his books. I made sure to reiterate the reason for his punishment at least 5 times throughout the evening. I reminded him that we are not to use our hands for hurting others, but for loving them.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or some encouragement?

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