CNN and Parenting shows what happened when one mother applied parenting skills to her husband.
By Fernanda Moore writes (excerpt):
Strategy No. 1: Reward good behavior . . . . Good behavior rewarded leads to more good behavior. . . .
Strategy No. 2: Keep it brief . . . . That’s why parenting pros recommend a terse approach. When reminding kids to do their chores, you’ll get better results if you simply say, “Laundry. Hamper.” . . .
Strategy No. 3: The time-out . . . . If I couldn’t send my husband to his room, I’d just have to go to mine . . . .
Strategy No. 4: Give quality time to get quality time . . . . To earn a minute or two of peace, drop everything and give the kids your undivided attention for, say, a quarter of an hour. When time’s up, they might entertain themselves for a few nanoseconds, so you can sneak off and pursue your own interests. . . .
Strategy No. 5: Creative discipline . . . . Instead of punishing a resentful child, you’re supposed to sit down with him after a serious or chronic infraction and figure out together how he should atone and, ultimately, change the behavior. . . .
I love these points. To me, this is the beauty of the power of small. If you want to have a happy marriage, focus on the positive. Keeping it brief is really important. How many spouses just harp and harp and harp without ever letting their spouse do (or stop) the behavior we’ve asked them to look at. I also think rewarding good behavior is just great common sense, too. If you reward what you like, you’re likely to get more.