Respectful Responses

I recently decided to subscribe to a magazine from Focus on the Family...thriving families. It's awesome!! Family, marriage, parenting...right up my alley. Here is the first great thing I tried at home. The kids loved it!

"My wife and I wanted our children to know how to respond when we say no to their inquiries. To teach them, we played a game one night around the dinner table. We allowed the children to ask zany questions, and my wife and I would say no to every question they asked. No matter how crazy their questions were, their response was to be OK."
"May I go to the moon?"
"No"
"OK"
"May I eat a light bulb?"
"No"
"OK"
We then practiced saying "yes" to their questions. They were to respond with "thank you."
"May I eat my broccoli?"
"Yes, you may."
"Thank you."

"Just a few hours of practice and a lot of silly questions later, our kids were trained in how we expected them to respond."

~Andrew Peterson

To say the least, this will be a very popular game at dinner. And I'm sure I will be repeating a very wise question the next few weeks..."was that a respectful response?"