Response Requested

Yesterday I wrote about how I made the mistake of using a disciplinary system that was inappropriate for my kids and how learning to love my kids first, before expecting any kind of good behavior, really made a positive difference in our family life. Then I explained how God also loves us no matter what.

There's always more to a story than first meets the eye, isn't there? Every fight takes two. Every relationship takes commitment from both partners. Yesterday I wrote my blog on my phone while waiting for one of my sons at an appointment. As I drove home, I decided that I needed to write a part two, the rest of the story.

Learning to See Beyond Red

Back when we first brought Tadesse and Biruk home, we struggled so much to communicate. Behaviors that were acceptable in Ethiopia were not acceptable here, and without the language to explain it, we struggled. There were the big things like hitting and kicking, yes, but also a myriad of smaller behaviors like sitting on a stranger's car or grabbing a toy a sibling was playing with. 

We made a mistake—one of many, in fact—in those early days of our time together. Knowing that elementary teachers use a card system of green, yellow, and red to indicate when a child was doing great (green), when one was starting to show patterns of misbehavior or sometimes pushing our buttons both figuratively and literally (yellow), as well as when the child had really messed up (red), we decided to try it. Once  a person's red card was up, he or she lost allowance for the week. Even without the benefit of a common language, my two new boys understood very quickly how the cards worked.