Toy Ban Plan Update #2

An overview of the toy ban plan as a reminder:

After getting tired of hearing endless yelling and fighting amongst my children over Christmas break, I took away all toys and privileges (including tv, friends, and everything except books) until they could go 21 days in a row - the amount of time it takes to break a habit - without fighting, yelling or excessive whining. Basically, they have to prove that they can work things out with each other peacefully and calm down without losing control.

With a little tweaking, things are going well. Brooke has 12 days in a row now, so she is doing wonderfully. Janelle and Sophie had 7 days but both had to start over 3 days ago, so they're not as far along. In the beginning, they were going one or two days and kept having to start over. So in order to keep them encouraged, I allowed them to earn one privilege back for every three days they were able to go. So today Brooke will earn her fourth thing back, and Janelle and Sophie will both earn one. I found that breaking it up helped them not feel so overwhelmed by the task, and having that one thing back made them work hard to try to keep it. I've been pretty strict about my expectations though. At the first sign of arguing or whining or anything, I remind them of the expectation and the consequence and give them a countdown to get themselves under control. If at any point I hear yelling, or somebody does anything physical (like hitting, kicking or slamming doors) it is an automatic startover. But the fact that they can go several days in a row when they're really trying tells me that they can go 21 days. I'm hoping we will reap the benefits of this experiment for a long time.

In the meantime, we're having a lot of this scene:

(which isn't a bad thing!)