I Wanna Be an Orange Rhino!

The other day I was reading the one parenting forum that I still make time for, Gentle Christian Mothers helped me figure out how to move forward from the baby stage into the toddler/preschool stage with my twins, and I still find myself turning to it for advice and encouragement. So anyway, I was reading the forum and there was a discussion on something that so many of us struggle with, yelling at our kids. . . and someone mentioned the Orange Rhino Challenge. I was intrigued, so I googled it, and found the site, and wasted spent a good part of the afternoon reading her site.

Yelling is definitely something I struggle with, and the older my kids get, the more it sinks in why yelling is such a bad idea, because it means they yell at each other, and their little sister, and me . . . and that's NOT good . . .

So, as I was reading the site and contemplating when, I wanted to take the challenge, and how to broach the subject with the girls, and how long I wanted to start out with. . . and MiniMe walked by and saw the bright orange on my screen and asked me what I was looking at. So, I told them about it, and we talked some, and decided to start right away.

And so, I'm working on being an orange rhino. I've committed to my kids to try to go one month without yelling. We haven't decided yet what the "reward" will be when I achieve 31 days without yelling . . . I suggested that, since one month from now we'll be in the middle of campmeeting, which my kids love but I . . . don't, that if I made it to the month, my reward could be that we went home and didn't say for the rest of campmeeting, but they didn't like that idea LOL. So we shall see . . .

I handed the girls a stack of orange sticky notes to have them stick around the house where they think I might need reminders. I REALLY want to get some orange nail polish (who are we kidding, I love the excuse to get a fun nail color), for the moment, I used an orange sharpie to color one thumb nail, and it DOES catch my eye (I generally have wild colored toe nails, but almost NEVER paint my nails because they chip so fast and that annoys me). . .

I know myself well enough to know better than to 100% commit to a schedule for how often I will post about this, but I do plan to post every week or so, and just let you know how I'm doing with the no yelling thing. . . and if anyone else out there struggles with yelling too much, I encourage you to join me :)