Freeze and Silence

The Colony is made up of 7 different people, with 7 different personalities, who hardly EVER all wake up on the same side of the bed on any given day.

When Rainy was super little we taught her how to communicate that she was touchy.  I, for one, am not one to get touchy or irritable, ahem, but if I were I would want the freedom to communicate that to my little people placing their sticky little all over the hem of my shirt.

Not that we gave her the green light to stay in her funk, but at least we knew that we needed to be sensitive toward her touchiness until she got passed it.

But now, when we have 5 children, crammed in the back of one car, whether it is just to run errands around town, or going to Nonnie and G-daddy's house, we are bound to have some incidents of touchiness and obnoxiousness and even possibly some irritability on mama's part (that last one is certainly not likely though;).

So we have implemented 2 different Colony-friendly phrases: "freeze" and "silence".  Don't be jealous of our creativity, it really took a lot of energy to come up with those phrases!

Anyway, if all we hear from the backseat is "Zeeeeeke, STOP!", or "Don't do that Cai-booooo!" we simply turn around and tell them that they are on freeze.  This means that they have to sit on their hands, removing the temptation to touch or bother their seat neighbor.  This works so effectively that we have actually done this in the doctor's office, because I'm pretty sure the room with the sign that says, DANGER: RADIATION, is not supposed to be open and closed, and open and closed, and open and closed, after being told that closed doors are off limits.

If any number of Colony members are caught up in a verbal stand-off, and no party is willing to "drop it like its hot" then they are automatically put on silence.  They are unable to talk anymore until the timer goes off.

Sometimes they don't need yet another talking to about why we don't spit on our siblings or steal toys away, or tackle Jude like he is a big boy, they just need a quick "reminder".  And for a child like Cai-bo this may be all he needs.  Very rarely does he need any other kind of discipline than stern, heartfelt words and/or a quick little reminder like "freeze" or "silence".  The poor kid breaks down in a puddle of tears as soon as the words are uttered.

This won't work forever, of course, but this week it has worked like a charm:)