One beautiful afternoon I checked on the kids in the backyard. My blood started boiling when I realized they were wearing school clothes and painting the playhouse with mud. I am also working through a book called The Anger Management Workbook for Christian Parents -- it had recently stressed to me the importance of not letting the kids' actions dictate my emotions, and I was struggling with this particular situation. My mind was flipping through all the tasks that would follow the mud-painting: bathe the kids, stain-treat the clothes, wash the clothes, have a late after-bath dinner, etc. Allen suggested I implement the reality-discipline. I took two large plastic tubs outside and explained to the kids that they had about forty minutes to get themselves and their muddy clothes cleaned up before dinner at 6:00pm. They anxiously stripped their clothes from their muddy bodies and scrubbed ALL the clothes (even the already clean ones). When the laundry was done and hung on the line, they climbed into the buckets and pretended to bathe. Since it was only their hands that were muddy, this seemed extreme, but they were having fun. About an hour later, they were shivering and read to come in. Unfortunately, dinner had already started (for Allen and me) and since they had been wet and playing outside, they were even messier and had to bathe first. By the time they got to the dinner table, Allen and I were done, and everything had been put away. It was hardest on Ben and Jon to have missed dinner, but Will and Maddie shrugged it off. It was tough on me, though, too, since Mamas are trained to feed crying kids.
We have had a couple more instances in the last two months when someone has chosen not to obey when a deadline (dinner time) was attached to the request, but we have all learned that Leman's technique works. NOW, the kids all do one or two assigned chores each day before dinner. We occasionally have resistance, but since they have all day to complete a 10-15 minute task, it isn't usually a problem. If they don't finish by dinnertime, they don't get dessert, but they do have to choose an extra chore for the next day that has to be done before they get to play outside. Not only do the kids mind better, compared to two-months ago, but by doing about 40 minutes of some sort of clean-up each day, our house is in much better order. In the last two weeks, we have had company for dinner twice, and Allen's friends from work came over on a Saturday with their families for lunch -- all things we could have fun doing since keeping the house clean is easy with everyone involved.
Not everything is getting better, though. We still seem to be at a plateau with Will's behavior and boredom at school. We have spent the last several weeks looking into other options for his education -- charter schools, home school, or private school. I've researched different learning styles, and we are thinking that the traditional school setting may be part of the problem. Will is not tolerant of busy work, especially if he has mastered the concept. His grades are sliding as he takes a view-point that reminds me of those in a guy I dated (then married). Will completes a few problems, convinces himself that's enough practice, then leaves 70% of the worksheet unfinished believing he doesn't need to prove himself to anyone. It was too bad some of those were actually the recorded grades. Strange as it seems even to us and even though the last couple blog posts were about the fun he was having in school, we are considering home schooling (and I never thought I'd say that.)
This past weekend was fun. Allen took off Friday to celebrate my birthday with me. Will had a school (GT) field-trip that day to the East Texas Academic Rodeo awards ceremony. The artwork he submitted won honorable mention, and kids who submitted work got to go to the ceremony.
After the ceremony, Allen, the little kids and I went to a bookstore so I could show him some of the curricula I was considering for Will. They didn't have everything I wanted to see, so he called his parents and arranged for us to go to Dallas to look. Three hours later, we were packed and on the road to his parents' for the weekend.
Saturday was fabulous. Randy and Shelley kept the kids and Allen and I were on our own. While the grandparents and kids went to a fun indoor pool and water park, Allen and I shopped for curricula. We had narrowed down the choices to a few we thought would work with Will's learning-style, so it didn't take us that long to look through those and choose what we would use IF we decided to home school. Next we headed to a Christian bookstore (to look at a couple more options) and to Academy so Allen could find some good running shoes. We had a fabulous lunch of stuffed pizza at a new location for a pizza place we loved in high school ....mmmmmm!
Allen was in heaven, and I got the bonus points for that one. We headed to a game store, Barnes & Noble, and a used bookstore, before dinner at Abuelo's -- MY favorite, for my birthday dinner. We spent the day enjoying silence sometimes, but otherwise loving the uninterrupted conversations we could have. While the kids had a great time with Nana and Papa (THANK YOU!!), we had a great time just the two of us. I loved every bit of it!
