Mom 101: Order in the Court

Today I'm going to let you in on a little secret: All Moms really want is peace and quiet. We may delude ourselves into thinking we are doing things for the good of our children, but when it comes right down to it, we just want a few minutes of serenity. A chance to think an uninterrupted thought. We aspire to nobler purposes but the everyday realities leave us striving for something more immediate: peace and quiet. So here I share with you another one of my attempts at achieving this elusive goal:

The Gale Family Department of Justice

I actually got this idea from the Ensign magazine. The idea is, as your children have disagreements, you have them write down their complaint/concern/tattling and put it in a box.

Then, once a week at an appointed time, you hold "Family Court" and take out the papers one at a time and allow both sides to plead their case and come up with a solution.

It was a lovely idea and I basked in the peace and quiet it afforded as the children were diverted from their tattling and directed their energy toward writing down all of the injustices that were inflicted upon them by their siblings.

The best part was, they usually had forgotten all about the problem by the time their case came up in court and weren't interested in pursuing it after the heat of the moment had passed.

But, Shayla took it a little more seriously. I found her complaint in the box the first week:

Let me translate for you:

"I SUE Seth, Sam, Shane and Spencer for $50,000 for torturing me ever since I was born. "

From: Shayla

The brothers all denied that any torturing had taken place. Shayla had no evidence other than the normal shenanigans that happen when you have two older and two younger brothers.

The court expressed sympathy but the lawsuit was dismissed.