I’m INSANE!

There’s a saying (attributed to Albert Einstein) that goes something like this:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I think this means I’m insane.

Rebecca and I have been having a bit of a battle with MrJ6 and MrX4 recently over tidying their room. We send them off to tidy it and all they end up doing is fighting and arguing, fighting and arguing. What have we been doing? – going to referee battles, and often ending up frustrated and shouting at them to get their room tidy.

This has been going on day after day after day for this past week. We’ve managed to get their room tidy most days, but only after serious yelling and stroppiness – particularly by me!

Well, this was happening again this morning, when suddenly I had a brain wave. Maybe I should try something quite different. This is what I did…

I went into their room and stopped a fight (again). I split up the mess in the room roughly in half. I told MrJ6 to put away all of one half, and sent MrX4 out to do whatever he wanted. Once MrJ6 was finished, they swapped. MrX4 went to tidy and MrJ6 went to play.

And what do you know? It worked! Within about 30 minutes their room was tidy, and they were happy because the fighting had ended. And of course Rebecca and I were also happy as we didn’t have to deal with the problem anymore!

It was so simple, but because I had been getting so frustrated, I had difficulty coming up with new ways of dealing with the situation. Sometimes it’s important to step back from the problem and look at it from another perspective. It certainly saves you from insanity!

– Nathaniel