Let's try to slowly reduce the amount of yelling until we get to no yelling Challenge

Thinking of titles for my posts is the worst part of blogging.

I decided I want to keep my posts about the Early Rise Challenge separate from anything else that I blog about.  So this post is about how I am doing with my "no yelling" challenge.

First off, I should probably call it the "Let's try to slowly reduce the amount of yelling until we get to no yelling" challenge since going cold turkey isn't going to happen and I'll feel like a failure if I call it that and then yell once. So we'll go with the really long title instead.

Apparently my short term memory is awful. I'm trying to recall how yesterday went and I'm not getting much.  There was no yelling while 2 of my 3 kids were at school from 8:30 to 3:00, that I'm sure of.

I'm trying to come up with a better routine for chores to get done after school, but so far I'm sticking with what we were doing until I think of one.  My kids get out of school at 2:45 and then walk home and depending on the day, get here anywhere between 3:00 and 3:20.  First thing when they get home is snack time and then they are supposed to get their chores and homework done before any playing starts.  I hadn't thought about it until I read someone else's blog recently but it makes sense that they wouldn't want to do chores first thing after getting home because they just spent their whole day at school working hard and then they spend about 20 minutes walking home; I imagine they need a rest before having to get to chores.  It just seems that around our house, if they don't get done first thing, then they don't get done at all.  This is why I haven't come up with a better plan that will probably result in less whining about doing chores. I'm trying to decide on what to let them do to rest before chores get done and for how long to let them rest before I let them know that it's chore time.  Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know that there was really any yelling yesterday, but there was plenty of nagging to get chores done and to stop playing until they were finished. Nagging is the worst and I hate doing it, but I don't know what else to do to get chores done in a timely manner.  They do have time limit, if chores aren't done by a certain time then there are no video games that day and as much as they love video games, this rule really doesn't seem to help that much.  I've thought about also taking away whatever doesn't get put away by this time limit, but I don't know what I would do to have them earn this stuff back...so, like most things, I just keep doing it the same way and don't bother finding a better solution.

Wow, this post has ended up a lot longer than I thought it would.

Goal for today: Finally decide on a better after school routine and put it into action. I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes.