All is ready in the house for the arrival of our three new teenagers! My family had foreign exchange students when I was a kid, and this is pretty much the same thing except that they stay for a much shorter period of time and won't be attending school. We're a little apprehensive about communication, although we've met all three kids already and they do speak English a whole lot better than we speak Amharic.
The only real concern we have right now is how discipline is handled in the Ethiopian orphanages ... we forgot to ask! Not that we think we will have to discipline these kids ... not at all! We're worried about what they will think when they see us discipline Kali. The good thing is that Carson gets disciplined in the same manner, though not as often since he is now older and pretty much out of the tantrum stage. Time-out is our preferred method and it does seem to work quite well. The number of tantrums hasn't diminished, but the length and severity have definitely taken a turn for the better. Kali has learned that she doesn't get her way when she goes to time-out and we ignore her screams. However, the spitting ... this one is something that neither of us can tolerate at all. Kali spit at me yesterday and she just spit at Rick today right before naptime. I will say right now that neither of us is opposed to spanking. I am sure this will get some comments, but we revealed this in our home study and Gladney still approved us. Anyway, the spankings are reserved for the most serious offenses and when it is extemely important to impress upon the kids the seriousness of said offense. Time-out is what we use the most often. But the spitting gets the spank. Most of the time, she is being put into time-out anyway for something when she gets mad enough to spit at us. I am not sure she understands a time-out on top of a time-out for the spitting, especially with the language barrier.
So, the point of all of this is that I hope these kids don't go home to Ethiopia thinking that we are terrible people and that we are so mean to our kids!
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2 comments:
We have the same discipline methods. We would do the same thing in those cases. It is critical to set the tone in the beginning, because that stuff escalates. She still needs to learn how to manage her frustration, as I am sure that the language barrier is a huge part of that.
Maybe you can ask the Bright Futures kids about it when ya'll are together. They can give you some insight into the "true" orphanage experience, not just what we see when visitors are there.
Also, we got a book that dealt with feelings (happy, mad, sad, etc.) and the faces that go with that feeling for the boys and taught them those words so that they could express themselves somewhat. They both are adept at telling me "I am so mad!"
Rach
Rach
i think your forms of dicipline sound just right- it is exactly what we plan on doing and i was actualy just feeling nervous this morning about whether or not we should have said that in our homestudy. (we are not quite Gladney approved) so your post actualy made me feel much better and we didn't ruin our chances of getting our baby or something!
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