Inspiration?

I believe that I have been inspired. 🙂 Earlier this week bedtime had been HORRIBLE, several nights in a row. It was SO bad one night that I was sitting here in my room at midnight waiting for Tyra and Jeremy to just go to sleep already! Wednesday night I just had this idea! I don’t even know where it came from or why I thought of it, but I just had an idea. I decided I wouldn’t say anything about it until it was time to put it into action and so the kids changed into their pjs, I gave them all a treat for having pjs on before 8 (that’s a rule in our house if you have your pjs on before 8pm you get to pick one candy from the basket), then I proceeded to sing the prayer time song:

Let us gather in a circle, and kneel in family prayer

To thank our Heavenly Father, for the blessings we all share.

Let us thank Him for our meal time, for clothes we daily wear,

For parents home and family, for His kind and loving care.

Oh may we always serve Him, in thought and action too,

And humbly kneel at prayer-time, as so many families do.

(Children’s Songbook pg 189)

Singing the song means that it’s time to come to the living room to pray, and that’s the way we’ve done family prayer for years. But here’s where my idea came into play. After we pray it’s time to go down the hall to brush teeth, go potty and go to bed, but Wednesday my idea was to add something to that. Wednesday after we prayed, I whispered to the kids to be quiet from that moment on and that only whispering was allowed. NO TALKING and NO NOISE at all!

The first night Ethan just kept, kind of giggling at me. I don’t know if he thought I was just playing around or what? Last night went very smoothly and after the kids had brushed, gone potty, and were in bed they were asleep in no time. Tonight even though some of them didn’t fall asleep right away, just the peacefulness of having no talking, only whispering was just WONDERFUL. I feel like I was inspired to initiate the no talking, only whispering after prayer, because it helps to keep ME calm at a point in the day where usually I start freaking out and getting really upset/mad that the kids are just NOT staying on their beds, or just aren’t being quiet, or they think that bed time is still playtime. No talking, only whispering sets the tone and is a transitioning from normal daily life to it’s now time to be quiet and go to bed. It also reminds me of the peace there is in the temple (even if the house is messy). And whispering really forces the kids to LOOK at me when I am talking to them so that they can hear what I am saying. 😉 (Of course that goes the other way too, I have to LOOK at them when they are talking to me so I can hear what they are saying to me.)

I LOVE it and I hope that we can keep this up and that as time goes on that it will continue to improve bed time.