Yesterday, as we got ready to go to the fire station for a tour, I told the boys to put their shoes on. A few minutes later, I gave them charge of K, and took a shower. Once I was dressed and had packed the day’s snack (which involved grinding peanuts in our hand mortar, because I was out of peanut butter and the o-rings for my blender are still in transit) I called them to go to the car. No shoes.
Amplify my reaction to being ignored, the futility of getting their attention AGAIN, and you’ll have the picture.
Well, fairness gets into whether little boys CAN remember to do two things at once. B calmly put his shoes on, but M’s were missing. Again. After a month or so of attempting the good habit of putting them away as soon as he takes them off. I set the timer for five minutes, announced that if we could not find them before the timer went off we would skip the field trip, and started searching the house. I found them about 2 seconds after the timer went off.
Now what Chris? Remember Saul’s decision to fast right before fighting the Philistines?
I said we would be staying home, M wailed and ran to his bed. K wailed in sympathy, B gave me the "you are scary, Mom," look and I began to doubt myself. The lady who had organized the trip had said she really wanted to know if anyone was going to cancel, so I tried to phone her house – no one answered. I phoned DH at work – what to do? Be consistent? Try to address a continuing irritation with consequences? or dish out grace because the consequences were a bit harsh to begin with?
We went on the field trip.
Oh, I recognize this whole scenario. Once I (trying to make light of my anger, obviously) said that anyone who didn't have their shoes on in 2 minutes was going to have their feet cut off. In 2 minutes, three feet were shoeless, and the kids all started crying, saying they didn't want their feet cut off. Ought I to have been happy that they took me seriously (as in, yea, I'm a mom who's consistent with her discipline?) or ashamed that they thought I even could have been the slightest smidge serious about this?
Not a high point in the history of discipline.
Love,
Annie