Kristin wanted me to write a post about my new discipline technique. BJ has been caught lying three times in the last three days. It is all nine year old boy type lies but I find it unacceptable. First he told us he didn't ride his bike to Wawa when we were pretty sure that he did (and later he admitted it). Then he broke a glass and said he didn't break anything when I asked him what broke. Finally he fed his dinner to the dog and said that he didn't. For the first two incidences I made him write a one page, double spaced composition about why lying is wrong. He said it was because people don't like liars. That isn't really what I was going for, but he hates to write and I think this kind of punishment is multi-faceted in that it forces him to practice writing and spelling, makes him think about what he did instead of zoning out during one of my lectures, and takes time away from him being able to do what he wants. For the last incident he lost his precious "watching Netflix on the iPad" time before bed.
We also have trouble with him following through with basic responsibilities like brushing his teeth and taking his inhaler. These are probably also 9 year old boy things to forget but we don't really know because we have never had a nine year old boy. I made up a sticker chart of about seven responsibilities and for each one that isn't accomplished each day he will lose 5 minutes of iPad time (he gets one hour of technology time each day).
On a positive note - BJ is very good at playing with the little boys and watching out for them in an appropriate big brother way. He has taken a lot of ownership of them as brothers and calls them his brothers in public. That might be because I call them his brothers in public and I think he is secretly desperate to feel like a part of our family. He refers to me as "Mom" when he is talking about me. Such as, "My Mom said I could come to your birthday party." However, he calls me Andrea.
I am looking forward to school starting just to get him into a more regulated schedule and hopefully things between us will return to a little bit of how they were during the school year last year. I felt much more positive about him then. I am NOT looking foward to my own school year starting.
A cute thing about ML - I knitted him a stuffed seal but I hadn't assembled it when he went to bed last night. He woke me up at 2:30 am to see if I had finished it and when I gave it to him he was full of compliments about how cute it was and how much he liked it. He is such a sweet boy.
JC - This morning he kept waving to me and saying "Bye Mommy" as I was leaving. Six months ago he would have been crying and hanging on me.
We also have trouble with him following through with basic responsibilities like brushing his teeth and taking his inhaler. These are probably also 9 year old boy things to forget but we don't really know because we have never had a nine year old boy. I made up a sticker chart of about seven responsibilities and for each one that isn't accomplished each day he will lose 5 minutes of iPad time (he gets one hour of technology time each day).
On a positive note - BJ is very good at playing with the little boys and watching out for them in an appropriate big brother way. He has taken a lot of ownership of them as brothers and calls them his brothers in public. That might be because I call them his brothers in public and I think he is secretly desperate to feel like a part of our family. He refers to me as "Mom" when he is talking about me. Such as, "My Mom said I could come to your birthday party." However, he calls me Andrea.
I am looking forward to school starting just to get him into a more regulated schedule and hopefully things between us will return to a little bit of how they were during the school year last year. I felt much more positive about him then. I am NOT looking foward to my own school year starting.
A cute thing about ML - I knitted him a stuffed seal but I hadn't assembled it when he went to bed last night. He woke me up at 2:30 am to see if I had finished it and when I gave it to him he was full of compliments about how cute it was and how much he liked it. He is such a sweet boy.
JC - This morning he kept waving to me and saying "Bye Mommy" as I was leaving. Six months ago he would have been crying and hanging on me.
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