Tim and I are thrilled to share the Tuesday Spotlight with Tina Burt. It is particularly appropriate that Tina be featured as a guest blogger, since she is a dear friend we first met while living in the Duckabush Valley, for which this blog is named. Now serving with New Tribes Missions in Thailand, Tina and her family are dearly beloved kindred spirits. Wherever they go, Greg and Tina live out the example that Paul laid down for the Thessalonians:
We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. (I Thessalonians 2:8)
Kathy and Tina on the eve of Tina’s departure for Thailand.
Hello Duckabush Blog Faithfuls,
As a guest blogger today, I will try to uphold the high standards set by my dear friends. Kathy asked me a while ago to think about submitting a post on her Tuesday Tips for Parenting blog. While obviously very honored by such a request, I was not sure what parenting gems I had to offer. We have our fair share of teasing, annoying, disobedience and unruly behavior at our house.
I mean beyond what my dear husband incites of course! 
After some deep thinking, (it doesn’t take too long to get to the bottom of my well!), I thought we could share one of our discipline techniques. We like to call it the Jack LaLane method of child training.
It began when with our son, the youngest of our three children. He seemed to find the most trouble of our kids, not always out of rebellion, but from a lack of thought or wisdom. Other forms of, cough, cough, physical discipline did not seem to make much of an “impact†on him, and so we drew on DH’s army training and instituted …
The Pushup!
Doesn’t he have nice form, and a smile to boot!
We now use it liberally with all three kids, and they may find themselves dropped for pushups whenever the situation, or attitude demands. Rolled eyes at a request, rude speech, sassing a parent, slow or delayed obedience,…… The number of pushups has a direct correlation to how often the child has been previously corrected for said offense, or how severe the offense.
When beginning, we suggest only 5-10, depending on the strength of your children. Don’t want any excuses to get out of dishwashing!
We liberally used this technique while trying to break our son of his finger sucking habit some years back. Each time we would catch him with his finger in his mouth, he would ‘earn’ 10 pushups. After a particularly long car trip, the poor child sometimes owed us up to 80 pushups! (Yes, we let him take a break in between sets of 20 or so.)
Hey, it came in handy when he began wrestling, and needed all the upper body strength he could get!
There is a boy (in the #2 place – Great Job, Zach!) who has benefited from some loving discipline.
An extra tip, when an attitude is particularly bad, or you feel you need a little more oomph in your sentence, diamond pushups are great! Instead of having hands under the shoulders, they must have their hands together under their chest, making a little diamond with their first fingers and thumbs. We have found that even the suggestion of diamond pushups will improve cooperation greatly!
Zachary, Leah, and Ema.
What cooperative children, no pushups necessary here.
Tina
