I love Presidents' Day!

Monday was Presidents' Day, a holiday for everyone in our family. I'm just now realizing what a great holiday it is. First of all, everybody gets a day off from their usual responsibilities. Second, there is no extra work involved with the holiday, ie. gift-giving, costume-making, or feast-creating. Call me a Scrooge but I get tired of all the extra work associated with most of our major holidays. Sadly, Christmas and Halloween are not really days I look forward to. Coming off Valentine's Day which still had all the usual responsibilities (school, work, etc.) plus extra work for the holiday, I'm really appreciating these no-stress holidays.

I still (mostly) enjoy the holidays that involve lots of extra work (especially for moms) but I wouldn't mind lower expectations for some of them (yes, I'm thinking of Christmas and I'm as guilty as anyone in this).

Back to Presidents' Day...we got together in the morning with our college kids and went cross-country skiing, sledding, and snowshoeing in a nearby canyon park. We had a great time and it was definitely one of our more successful outings. Afterwards we had a big lunch together at our house that my 16-year-old helped me make. It was a great day!

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Do Dots Family System

The original post was written in January of 2015. I wrote an update at the bottom of this post in March 2021. A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about something she was doing in her family to help her family function better. Her teenage autistic son had been struggling a lot so they had been working with behavior therapists to help him and this "Do Dots Family System" had been recommended. As she described it, I was greatly intrigued since it sounded like something I wanted to implement at my own house. I looked into it and decided to purchase it right after Thanksgiving. Here is my review of how it has worked for us over the last six weeks or so. The basic idea of the chart is that children need to take care of their responsibilities before they get any privileges. It strongly reinforces the concept of "Work Before Play" . The chart helps children see in a very visual way that, until they have completed their responsibilities, they are on Le...

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