Traditions and Discipline

Mood: Bleh

Listening to: MTV music videos

It’s October in NY. We have some nice, cool weather going on along with the customary beautiful display of fall colors on the trees. Halloween being my favorite holiday of all time, our family decided to head out to a pumpkin farm  to pick up some pumpkins to carve, apples, and apple cider. This is one of our traditions in my family. We do it every year. This year, we decided to head up to Lyman’s Orchard up in Connecticut. I didn’t realize it, but that place is almost a 2 hour drive from our house.

Our weekend before we left consisted of a LOT of whining and fighting from my kids. Now the question that I have is how you integrate discipline with traditions. At our house, we are constantly trying to balance what should be automatically given (i.e. food, clothing, ) with what can and should be earned (i.e. tv time, toys, etc). Traditions seem to fall in a grey areas for us. We want to provide our kids with enjoyable traditions that happen every year, but what do you do when they act like horrible little demented trolls? And how do you deal with it when it’s already happening and you’re two hours away from home? 

We ended up going home early and not stopping for donuts.  So what is the way to handle discipline and traditions?