Holy Cow it's been a long time since I have been on here. I took a little break to do some painting/remodeling, and then just needed time to debrief from the holidays. But now I am back and have some fun new ideas and projects to share with all of my friends.
Since the beginning of the new year, my husband and I decided our kids were in need of some training in how to have better manners at the dinner table. They have always been pretty good and respectful, but there were some things we were trying to stop and we were having a hard time getting through to them. One day, I was browsing Pinterest, and saw this idea that someone had posted. We decided to give it a try at our house, and to our surprise, it worked better than anything else ever had. With such good results, I could not keep quiet about this much longer.
We found this little toy pig which we placed on the dinner table each time we sat down to eat. Whoever did something that we considered "bad manners" they were passed the pig. If, by the end of the meal, you were left holding the pig, you would be in charge of doing the dishes from the meal the whole family had just finished. Because I have a 4 year old who is a bit young still to load the dishwasher, we made him clear the table by himself. I have come to realize that kids are okay doing chores if they can do them with others. But if you make them do those same chores alone, they seem to grumble more and more. That turned out to be a good thing for us. The table manners in our house have never been so good. One day, we will ween the pig from our dinner, but for now, it looks like the pig may be a permanent guest.
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