{"id":15037,"date":"2015-10-15T16:49:17","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T16:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2015-10-15T16:49:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T16:49:17","slug":"the-giggle-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/the-giggle-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"The Giggle Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBobby make sure your shave your sister\u2019s entire leg, and put the pink boa back when you are done wearing it!\u201d<\/p>\n

I am an imperfect mother with imperfect children who sometimes don\u2019t get along. I\u2019d love to tell you my children always share their toys and show unconditional love to one another, that the older ones nurture and care for the younger. I would love to tell you they work out small disagreements without my intervention. But let\u2019s be honest, some days I\u2019m just happy one of them hasn\u2019t eaten the other for lunch. The simplest conflict used to spiral out of control. I was stuck in the awful valley of time outs. It seemed someone was always in \u201cthe chair.\u201d Something had to give.<\/p>\n

What if I doled out fewer consequences and focused more on the good? Could an experiment that bold ever work? That\u2019s how the Giggle Cup was born.<\/p>\n

One morning, while refereeing my children I quietly walked into the kitchen, retrieved a red plastic cup from the pantry and deliberately placed it on the counter. I declared it the Giggle Cup. I explained to my toddler and preschooler every time I heard them playing nicely together, I would put a coin in the cup. The friendlier and more loving they were, the more coins they could earn. However, if I heard mean words, crying, whining or selfish behavior, I would take coins out of the cup. At the end of the week, if we had collected $1.00 in giggle money, we could go to the store and buy something.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take them long to figure it out. I would be in the kitchen cooking and hear my four-year-old say, \u201cJust laugh really loud, Mary Elynne.\u201d I didn\u2019t mind them gaming the system. At least they were working as a team! We had a few moments which included statements like \u201cI\u2019m happy, can I have a penny?\u201d Luckily for me, neither one of them could count money yet, so I had some discretion, a little \u201cwiggle in the giggle,\u201d if you will. At the end of the week, I deemed they had earned enough to buy brand new bubbles. I challenged them to earn two dollars the next week so we could get ice cream at the drive thru.<\/p>\n

We had a few \u201cdump the cup\u201d moments. But I began to see a transformation. When I began to celebrate their love instead of punishing their disdain, I shifted their perspective \u2014 and mine, too.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a few years, and add a third child to the mix. The Giggle Cup had found its way back into the pantry, replaced by the maturity of older children that didn\u2019t need gimmicks to make good choices \u2014 or so I thought. In the busyness of everyday life, ugly habits of old had started to return. The object of the arguments had changed, but the tone was the same. I had seen this pattern before, but now I knew what to do. We needed a Giggle Cup 2.0.<\/p>\n

My children were older now. It was no longer my job to celebrate their relationship. When I found them pushing the limits, testing patience or being unkind, I would ask them to write a letter to one another celebrating what they loved. It could include a favorite memory, something they loved doing together, or what they love most about their sibling. Spelling and grammar didn\u2019t matter. In fact, they could even draw a picture and explain it out loud. What commenced was the most amazing, heartfelt, creative and hilarious interaction our family had ever had. We pealed with laughter as my daughter shared her favorite memories of Disney World. We cackled as my oldest son told his sister she had really nice hair. And my youngest son would sit and listen, sometimes interjecting a compliment that could only be given by a two-year\u2013old, sending us roaring into giggles.<\/p>\n

What if I shelved the ugliness and celebrated our love? It took a plastic cup, some creative accounting and a few pieces of paper, but I had found it. When you celebrate what is good, the good multiplies. It\u2019s just that simple.<\/p>\n

So, why is my son shaving his sister\u2019s legs wearing a pink boa? Let\u2019s just call it Giggle Cup 3.0. We adopted a new way to honor our family bonds this year. When the kids find it hard to get along, they have to choose an activity from the Giggle Cup. It is filled with outrageous tasks like shave your sibling\u2019s legs with a Popsicle stick and shaving cream or do the chicken dance. The rules \u2014 you must complete the task with<\/i> your sibling. No arguing or fussing is allowed. The task must be repeated until you have fun doing it together! Some days, I think they pick a fight with one another just so they can pick from the Giggle Cup. We chose to leave the place of blame and criticism, and honor all that was beloved about our family.<\/p>\n

\n

\"fall-15-cover\"This originally appeared in\u00a0Hello, Dearest<\/em>\u00a0Fall 2015. If you didn\u2019t get a copy and would like your own, you can\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to get\u00a0Hello, Dearest<\/em>\u00a0in your mailbox every season. If you subscribe, forward your receipt to\u00a0magazines@mops.org<\/a>\u00a0and we\u2019ll shoot a copy of the current issue in the mail to you for free \u2026 just because we like you.<\/p>\n

\n

Lisa Butler resides in West Palm Beach with her husband and three children. Her hobbies include tea parties, wooden train track design and professional snuggling.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBobby make sure your shave your sister\u2019s entire leg, and put the pink boa back when you are done wearing it!\u201d I am an imperfect mother with imperfect children who sometimes don\u2019t get along. I\u2019d love to tell you my children always share their toys and show unconditional love to one another, that the older […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":12683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fun"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}