What has gone wrong?

In my job, I get to work with a wide range of children from a wide variety of backgrounds. I am at a school at the moment (yes, it's the one I am always going on about - hopefully I haven't named it in previous posts?!) where lots of the children come from deprived backgounds and although that is not an excuse for poor behaviour, it is often part of the cause of it.

So, What sort of weekend am I having then, when I would prefer to be there than at home? A weekend where my own children, who are definitely not deprived of anything, are just out of control and PP and I just don't know what to do next.

When doing my PGCE I read that "All teachers need to remember that however frustrating a pupil may be, he or she is somebody's precious child." This works, unless they are your "precious" children. Then what do you do?

So, What have we tried?

1. We have house rules:
- We do not hit
- We walk in the house
- We do not interrupt when someone is talking
- If we don't eat our dinner, we don't have dessert
- We do not shout
- We do not swear
- We tidy up after ourselves
- We speak to others how we like to be spoken to
- We are responsible for our own actions
- We respect each other
- We share things
- We use our manners
- We do not throw things
- We help each other

I know, it sounds a bit like the rules you get in a classroom, but they do work, or should I say, they did work. We have had these since before Big J was born and little Z helped to make them.

2. We have family meetings.
Every now and then, if everyone seems unhappy and things seem to have got out of hand, we have a family meeting. We all get a chance to talk about how they are feeling without being interrupted and we usually manage to get issues resolved. It makes us all more aware of how everyone else is feeling. Big J has always been too young to join in. Now he is three, he is old enough to join in, but won't sit down for long enough and doesn't really understand about not interrupting and respecting others' opinions.

3. We say how we feel.
We are open about our feelings and encourage the children to express their feelings too. This is harder than it sounds as it is sometimes really hard to remain calm when you are bubbling with anger inside, but part of expressing your feelings is about saying that you are bubbling up. The other side of this is accepting other peoples feelings and allowing them to express their feelings. This sounds like a load of touchy feely nonsense, but it's not. It does work!

4. We give them a choice.
The children are given responsibility for their actions. If they are not behaving how we expect them to, we give them a choice. They then take the consequences for their choice.

I am exhausted.
~ Big J hits us and blows raspberries when we say "no" to him.
~ He hits Little Z when she freaks out at him going near her.
~ Little Z whinges constantly about how hard done to she is.
~ She encourages Big J to do naughty things when we are trying to calm them both down for bed.
~ and the list goes on and on and on....

I look at other people's children, and I'm sure some of them are worse at home behind closed doors, but lots of them seem to be much better nehaved and easier to cope with than Z & J.

We don't smack them and we hardly ever shout, so what went wrong. What have we done to make our children behave like this?

I have run out of ideas.

Thanks for listening. Feel free to make suggestions...