Whining.
Crying.
Screaming.
Whining.
Because he couldn’t play with the car that my other son was already playing with.
Our adorable little guy has quite the little feisty personality. I know and pray that one day it will be a great trait as he learns to channel his energy in a positive direction but at this age and stage of his life, it’s all over the place.
I have been telling myself for some time to get out my “rut” with disciplining our boys. I tend to hold on to a few methods (that work for the most part) but I am personally tired of hearing myself say, “time out.” And his feisty little personality needs me to get creative with my discipline.
Creative discipline takes time because not only are you finding ways to redirect their energy but you’re also trying to figure out what works best with your child’s personality. It’s worth it though!
I have used this Calm Down Jar with all 3 of my boys ages 2-9. This is one of the creative discipline methods I will be adding to my list since it seems to work. This month I will be sharing more of my creative discipline ideas with you here, so stop by or you can follow along via your favorite social network :Twitter,Pinterest orFacebook and our readers preferred way via email.
The first method I tried: The Calm Down Jar. See for yourself how it worked.
As you can see, he wasn’t happy but eventually he got curious and started to shake it and by the end he was smiling and calm. From the looks of the 4th picture he finally reached a relaxed point and from then on his expressions changed dramatically. He was so focused on being upset that he didn’t even realize I was taking photos.
I tried out a few recipes the dish soap and glue one didn’t work for me. The one that worked the best was this:
- 1/2 cp of corn syrup
- 1/2 cp of hot water
- 1tsp of glitter
- 3-4 drops of dish soap
- peanut butter jar
Mix hot water, corn syrup and dish soap and then add the glitter. We let my oldest add the soap and he got a little happy with it so we ended up having to scoop out soap suds from the top because they were trapping the glitter.
Note: Many people use mason jars for this but we used an empty plastic peanut butter jar and I was glad we did because my son dropped it on accident a few times.
After messing up a few solutions which didn’t bother my boys at all (they were really into doing the experiment) later I discovered, The Momma Owl’s Lab, she tested about 6 solutions and she gives you approximate glitter settling times for each solution. She also explains the science behind it if you’re wanting to add an educational component to your Calm Down Jar project.
