Idjutness.
My gosh, MamaBear *hates* idjutness.
We're talking "hate" as in "despise more so than spilled gourmet coffee on one's slumbering sleeping moose".
'course, kids being kids, they're *supposed* to push boundaries and make mistakes and otherwise cause agonizing opportunities for more grey hairs to emerge on our heads, so….it's part and parcel of life's little tormenting woes.
Take, for example, this morning.
Today I decided the guest room had to be swept up and neatened. Bounding happily into this refuge of weight lifting, I noticed that yet again, HS2's mind visited Hawaii after he finished chowing down on watermelon…leaving the rinds in various tastefully icky places about.
See MamaBear.
See MamaBear calmly implode!
After calling back HS2 and pointing out this tremendously idjut action, I told him,
"You're going to write 100 times, 'I will not bring food into the guest room'. Go. Now."
Allowing several minutes to elapse so I could regain what little sanity I still possessed, I noticed that HS2….disappeared.
- As in, I couldn't find him.
Until I looked in his sister's office, where he was carefully writing out all of his 100 sentences as you can see.
End result?
He completed all 100 sentences neatly without complaining.
But here's the coolest part:
He asked me to grade them. And I made sure to write:
Overall Attitude: A+!
Let's review now, shall we?
- 1.) HS2 required consequences for his actions.
- 2.) I took the painless easy way out, parenting-wise, and gave him 100 sentences to write (which hopefully has ingrained themselves in his mind).
- 3.) Instead of imploding in self-pity (which he had done, say, a year ago), he got his materials, sat down, and quietly wrote all of his sentences (also helping his handwriting!).
Do you realize what this shows?
HS2 has grown, leaps and bounds, in maturity.
You have no idea how long I've been waiting to see such growth!!
And because the consequences involved writing, they also helped him improve his legibility too. An added bonus!
Thus, to make consequences extremely effective, always ensure they *add* to your child's *overall* growth.
They don't have to know that, mind you….but they'll reap the benefits in the future.
And that, of course, is a Very Good Thing indeed.
Parent powerfully,
— MamaBear
