So we had a little set back in the homework our counselor gave us due to Miss Allison getting quite ill.  Okay, that's kind of a lie.  We didn't dot he homework because we didn't do the homework.  Allison really was sick this week, but it still should not have prevented us from getting the homework done.  We will get on that.

What I DID do, though, since Ethan is a visual learner, was create a list of rules in a nontraditional way. So what I did was I took a poster board and wrote a message about being nice that I read somewhere and it always stuck with me.  Underneath that, I wrote 4 qualities that I felt were important, followed by another uplifting message under that.  Now my PLAN was to gather my wee ones, have them sit around me, we would discuss the key quality, then make a plan as to how we were going to execute it both in our home and out in the world.  Once we had some thoughts, I'd jot them down and move to the next one until we were all in agreement.  This is how it looks:

Notice the writing.  Some is Ethan's, some is mine.  Now the picture of us all gathering around, brainstorming together didn't quite work out that way.  I had Allison on the couch, pre-occupied with her lemonade stand sign she was making for next summer, and Ethan, curled in a ball on the floor because "this was really dumb and really stupid."  Okay, then!  So I kept my cool and went through each quality and why I felt it was important.  Then I asked the kids to help me come up with ways we can follow these traits in our everyday lives.  Allison's ways were very...4 year old girl. "Give the person a flower if they are sad, Mama!"  Well, yes, but how can we prevent making a person sad in the first place?  Then I had Ethan randomly mumbling that rules were dumb, this project was dumb, and he would not be participating.  As he is mumbling this, he is slowly sliding himself out of the room and Allison has moved on from passing out flowers to me finding out if we had any grapes in the fridge cause she REALLY wanted some grapes.

I ended my attempt at regaining control of my household with a "I know stuff like this isn't necessarily fun and you might not enjoy participating, but the fact is, you WILL participate or there will be consequences and I fear the consequences of not participating might make you very sad."

We'll see.  For now, I have this GORGEOUS poster on my living room wall.