Bee Changeful

Over the past few months we have dealt with many various difficult situations and behaviors with our children.  It has been a ride and it is, for the time being, slowing down a bit.  Whew! One day while thinking about what I could do to change the way things were going once again I actually had an idea that "worked"! 

My 4 year old son and I sat down at the computer and printed out a beehive, some bees, and various flowers and then for FHE we colored and colored and then later I cut and cut and when all was said and done we created this:

The idea originally stemmed from President Hinckley's B's but we put our own family twist on it so that it would encourage us to work on the things that our little family needs to work on right now.  Our "Bees" include:  Be Prayerful, Be Patient, Be Polite, Be Kind, Be Brave, Be Happy, Be Obedient and Be Clean. 

At FHE we talked about all of these things we were going to try to become and we set off to become better each and everyday.

Here is how it works:  We try to do things that will help us be more like the Bees we have chosen and make an effort to notice when we are doing them and at the end of the day we head to our chart for "Bee Time".  We even have a Bee Song that we sing each night before our bees start flying around on our chart.  And if you read THIS post from a while back this song will be familiar, it comes from a cheerleading chant from Saved By the Bell.  "B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B. B-B-B-B-B-B-B. It's Bee Time!" Repeated two times.  You gotta love it. 

After our ever so lovely song we notice what others in our little family did during the day to be more like one of the attributes we have selected.  For example, if we saw someone being really patient then the Patient Bee gets to fly to his next flower (each attribute has a certain color of flower and each flower is numbered).  When all of the bees have made it back to the hive we get to do something special as a family, because we are doing this TOGETHER.  We just received our first family reward last night when we went to Chuck E. Cheese (it took us a while to redeem it we are about to reach the end of another round).

As simple as it is, it has helped a ton.  When my son is doing something that doesn't match one of our bees, I will sometimes say, "Are you being like one of our bees?"  Or "what bee should you try to be like right now?"  Or sometimes I will be specific and say, "are you being kind?"  Occasionally I will simply make a buzzing sound at him as a little reminder.  Kind of silly but hey it works (some of the time :).

It has been amazing what an incentive it is to just simply get to move a bee or two each night.  Of course the family "prize" helps as well but it isn't an immediate reward.

So here we are buzzing along and Conference comes shortly after with this perfect gem from Elder Robbins "What Manner of Men and Women Ought Ye to Be?".  It was perfect.  It helped to pull all of my thoughts together and to expand and teach me so much more.

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know that I love the word "BECOME" so our Bee Chart and this talk about Being were right up my alley.  Here are a few tidbits I pulled out of this great talk:

• To become as He is, we must also do the things He did: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel; and ye know the things that ye must do in my church; for the works which ye have seen me do that shall ye also do” (3 Nephi 27:21; emphasis added).
• To be and to do are inseparable. As interdependent doctrines they reinforce and promote each other.
• While He recognized the importance of do, the Savior identified be as a “weightier matter.”
• Many of us create to do lists to remind us of things we want to accomplish. But people rarely have to be lists. Why? To do’s are activities or events that can be checked off the list when done. To be, however, is never done. You can’t earn checkmarks with to be’s.
• Because be begets do and is the motive behind do, teaching be will improve behavior more effectively than focusing on do will improve behavior.

I hope that we can do more to become better and be more by doing better.

Oh and if you are still wondering what the title is about.  Ever since we have started doing all of this Bee Business my son has asked for help in his prayers by saying, "Help us to be prayerful.  Help us to be kindFUL."  Too Cute.  Let us all BE CHANGEFUL!