New Math

Here's the background for this post---
Sparky and Catfish are signed up to play T-Ball.
The Little League Organization is short on coaches and managers.
Hubby and I are now Manager and Coach of eight little Marlins.

What have we done?

But that is another post for another time.

What we need to do is take some of the pre-requisite "learn to be a coach" classes that our Little League designed. Luckily one of the classes was online and so I happily sat in front of the computer for an hour last week and learned all about proper hitting, proper fielding and other coaching strategies.

Why do you care? Because you love me.

No really. You are still reading because presumably I have something interesting to say. And I do. Right now.

The piece I found to be most interesting in all of our training was that in order to be an effective coach we should remember the 5:1 ratio. According to research done by Gottman (1994) people function at their best when the positive interactions outweigh negative ones by 5 to1. In fact, Gottman and his colleagues were able to correctly predict which newlyweds would divorce 94% of the time, after watching only one 15 minute session of interaction.

FIFTEEN MINUTES!!??

(See here for more information on the research).

FIFTEEN MINUTES and they could tell whether or not a couple would make it. WOW.

Obviously the point of including this in our coaches' training was to remind us to be positive with the kids, to encourage and praise them along with offering correction. Beyond that, however, I am simply stunned by this research.

Even before reading this, I had been feeling like most of my conversations with the boys were Pick this up-Do your homework-Please empty the dishwasher-stop hitting your brother-

And it was getting old. They weren't listening to me and I was tired of repeating myself.

In fact I was so tired of it all one day, I hid in the office and did an online coaching program and let the boys run amok in the TV room. I started learning about being a good coach, and in the process realized I've been missing the boat on communicating with my family.

I realize no one is perfect, and I certainly don't think I'm a "bad" mom, but I do think my ratio needs to be a little better around here, with my hubby, with my kids, even with myself.

I hadn't hear of this research before (have you??), but it makes so much sense to me.

So there you have it...new math to work on as a family.
5:1