I will be the first to admit to anyone, when I thought about having children, I wanted girls. I’m a girl. I know girls. I never even THOUGHT about the possibility of having boys. I just automatically assumed that God and I were on the same wavelength and I would only be parenting girls and my happy little dream world would be complete.
Fat friggin chance.
Oh sure, my firstborn is a girl. Everything I could possibly want in a daughter. She was perfect, in every way. While I could not see it then, I can clearly see it now. God was sitting up on her throne, laughing her butt off, just waiting for the next time I got pregnant and SHAZAM! Boy child. I hope you had a good laugh God, because from this moment forward – I’m going to beat you at your own game. You fooled me good with my firstborn, thinking this child-rearing thing would be a snap. You got me on that one, so a point for you. But I have news for you, and for the Demon Squad.
The crap stops – as of right NOW.
I will not allow them to upset me. I will not allow them to disobey me. I will not allow them to disrespect me. I will not allow them to tell me what THEY are going to do, they will do as I tell them to do. If they do not, then they will suffer the consequences. No television, no computer, no radio, no Playstation, no Wii, whatever vice they are currently coveting, I will snatch it away from them so fast it will make their head spin.
The past two to three weeks have been a cloak-and-dagger onslaught of whispered name-calling, obscene gestures to one another, taking a coveted toy and hiding it ‘just because’ and a barrage of other torments from both sides of the camp. There has been enough fist fighting, choking, kicking, pinching, slapping, and shoving over the past few weeks to make an outsider think I am training WWE wrestlers in here.
Yesterday, they pushed the limits. Playing at a friend’s house, they were fine, each doing their own thing, nobody crying or bleeding – all was well. Not 30 minutes later, they were busting through the front door screaming at each other, shoving each other, and then the fists started to fly again. Something about mud throwing and calling each other the “N” word (something completely unforgivable and NOT allowed in this household). I’d had it. Grounded both of them for the remainder of the week and made each of them go and get in the shower and wash the mud and dirt off and sit in their respective rooms until dinner was finished.
The Man Thing came home, and I had to run off to the store. He took Mollyanna out for a walk while I was gone. Gave the two of them strict orders NOT to come out of their rooms, NOT to talk to each other, NOT to even think about each other. Pretty plain and simple, right? Wrong. He came back to the sounds of blood-curdling screams coming from Tre and Jonathan screaming at him to get off of him. (Tre has a little more weight on him than Jonathan does and he likes to try and use that to his advantage).
So The Man Thing comes in and HE grounds them for a week (unaware that I had already grounded them for the week about an hour ago) and sends them to bed. By the time I walk back in the door, all I hear is sobbing and crying and pillows being punched. The Man Thing is sitting in his recliner, steam coming off the top of his head, and Mollyanna is laying next to him, sound asleep, oblivious to the drama going on around her.
Today, fresh from getting home from school, they start in. On me.
“I’m hungry! There’s nothing to eat!” “Mom, do I have to stay in my room?” “Mom, can I get a drink?” “Why can’t we sit in the living room?”
I replied as calmly as possible. When you are being punished, you do not get the little luxuries you are accustomed to having. That’s why it is called PUNISHMENT.
That’s when they spied the two 8” chocolate cakes on the counter.
Tre, naturally, begs unmercifully for a piece of cake outright. “No,” I tell him, “the cake has to finish cooling and it is for your dad. You can have a piece later if you behave.” (insert theatrical crying and sobbing and the accompanying pissed off 7-year-old comments such as – you hate me, you hurt my feelings, you never let me have anything, etc. etc. etc.)
Jonathan asks, is told no, and proceeds to mumble under his breath that there is never any damn snacks in the house for HIM to eat. I let it slide.
Call me cruel, but I made them wait. The cake was cool. All I had to do was frost it and slice it up. But I waited 30 minutes. Until the teeth-gnashing, mumbling, fake sobbing theatrics were over with. I walked into the kitchen and was completely dumbfounded and speechless.
Both of the cakes had a handful of cake missing from the edges. Like someone had taken their little hand, grabbed a handful, and just shoved it in their mouth. Which is exactly what Tre did … and attempted to hide the crumbs he dropped by shoving them under the cabinet thinking I would not see them.
That’s when I lost it. Desperately holding back my temper and keeping my voice as calm and rationale as I possibly could under the circumstances, I asked him why he had done that to my cakes when I specifically told him not to put his hands on it.
“Because I was hungry and you wouldn’t give me any!”
“Did that give you the right to just take something that did not belong to you? That could have seriously burned you if it was still hot? No, it did not.”
Back and forth we went – him screaming at me and telling me I don’t love him, I hate him, I’m always yelling at him – until he threw out the granddaddy of them all.
“If you didn’t want me to eat it then you should not have left it on the counter. You should have hid it away where I wouldn’t see it.”
Seriously? Is this kid honestly for real? That I need to hide stuff in my own house so that HE cannot see it and therefore it will not bother him?!?
He is currently spending 5 to 10 in his bedroom with no television AND no radio for the duration. Nothing but homework and four walls.
Hide THAT.
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