Crime & Punishment

My son is in the 7th grade. The transition from grade school to high school has been a challenging one for him. The change in schedules, the additional freedom and with those, the added responsibility. His grades were excellent first quarter but they have steadily dropped ever since.

His father tried to strike a deal, pull up your grades to a certain GPA and I will buy you -insert gratuitous bribe here-. I do not believe in this method but I also don’t believe in challenging my husband in front of my children. So I advised him in private that we would never employ that tactic again, understood? I believe good grades are simply to be expected just as good job performance is regularly expected once one is in the “real world”. A boss does not typically tell you that they will give you a prize if you stop slacking, instead they remind you that will be the only way to keep your job.

So when the latest progress report came out there were two D’s. We haven’t seen anything in the 60’s ever before so to say I was disappointed would have been an understatement. I was pissed. These grades were products of pure laziness on the part of my son and I would tolerate them no more. It was at this moment that all video games, TV watching that wasn’t with the family and computer games were banned until the next report card. In 6 weeks. My son was stunned. Tears ran down his face.

But I have stuck to it. His grades are coming up as a result. He voluntarily gives me regular reports on his progress on different papers and projects he has in school so I consider this a success. The true test will of course be when the last report card comes out. I don’t expect him to suddenly have perfect scores in every subject but I did make it clear that I am never to see anything in the 60’s or lower again.

My son’s friends think I’m being pretty harsh – their parents don’t do the same sorts of things. But I have a newsflash for all of the parents that waste their time trying to be their kids’ friends by not holding them accountable – my son does not hate me for this punishment. He might have strongly disliked me for the first few days but now things are fine. And I have something that a lot of parents don’t have – my son’s respect.

Case in point – he’s going over to a friend’s house after school today. Last night he came to me and asked me if his ban on video games could be lifted for one day, for just the time that he was going to be at his friend’s house. I don’t believe in asking other people to enforce my punishment on my child at their house anyway, but I have to say I was impressed as hell that he asked me about it.

Maybe I really am doing a good job raising my kids.

Playground Tours

While the boys were at that early baseball practice at the high school the other day I took my 3 demon seeds delightful daughters to the playground at the elementary school.

I love the playground for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, in these tough economic times, its free entertainment for the kids. They can also:

• - get fresh air
• - scream & yell
• - get plenty of exercise
• - laugh & have fun
• - use their imagination for all kinds of pretend games
• - get away from the TV, computer, video games, etc.
• - feel like they’re going on an adventure

The kids aren’t the only ones that can benefit from one of these excursions either. There are lots of benefits for me too. I can:

• - get great pictures of them
• - read
• - write
• - play
• - relax
• - get away from work & the computer

Since I work outside the home and live in a pretty rural area (hence long drives to get to work), I am away from the house for 11 hours a day, 5 days a week. And I feel like I miss a lot with my kids. To appease some of the guilt whenever I am home for a vacation week with them and the weather is warm I take them on a tour of the local playgrounds.

I love that the kids burn off a lot of energy, use their creativity in all of their pretend games and best of all smile and laugh for hours at a time. I’m lucky too that I get to see new achievements like one of them making it across the monkey bars for the first time or learning to pump their legs and swing on their own higher and higher.

The whining stops for a while. They sleep better at night since they are getting so much fresh air and exercise. The advantages are endless. Of course next time, maybe I should bring drinks & snacks. *oops*

Baseball Shuttle Service

My son has decided to play baseball this year. This week is spring vacation and apparently I am the only mom in my town that’s home. The coach decided to hold practice at 11am on Tuesday, instead of 4:30pm like usual, and the phone started ringing right away - friends of my son looking for rides.

I have 4 children so after the 5 of us are packed in the van there’s only room for 2 more people. I quickly filled those spots and set to figuring out just how early I’d have to leave to pick everyone up and still get them to practice on time. The high school is 20 minutes away from us and we’re the closest.

Truth be told, I don’t mind being a shuttle service. I know how tough it is to be a working parent and try to get your children to their practices, games and other activities. I am one of those parents. I just happen to be lucky enough to work for a school so I’m home this week with the kids.

I set off an hour before practice started and picked up two more members of the 7th grade boys baseball team. When the van was full and we were headed to the high school my 3 daughters entertained the guys in their ever boisterous, exuberant, somewhat obnoxious, torturous fashion.

I heard my son’s closest friend tell another kid

“I’m going tape (the girls acting hyper), post it on YouTube and title it
This is what my best friend has to suffer through.
Every. Single. Day“.

Dude. You don’t know the half of it.

Fun With Books

Usually in our house you can hear the dull, steady hum of the TV in the background. But I was reminded this weekend what happens when you turn off the TV and let music fill the house instead.

Those that weren’t reading were either drawing, painting, dancing, writing or doing something else creative and productive. I think a media diet is in order. Look what a difference a week can make.

If I Ate More, Would I Weight More?

On Saturday I took my son with me to get the Easter shopping done. I know, nothing like the last minute right? Anyway, he had an ulterior motive - a new bike. He’s been saving his allowance all winter long and decided since enough snow had melted that you can see parts of the ground, it was time to go shopping. He set a budget for himself and only took a portion of the money he saved. I have no idea where he learned to be thrifty like that - certainly not from me.

So we scoured the department stores for Easter candy and bikes and he finally found one within his price range that he really liked and met his preset criteria - new and cool. And within his budget. We opted for a 26″ because the boy is 12, only one inch shorter than me and finally of an age to be responsible enough for the bike that it might last longer than a couple of months. This one will grow with him for at least a couple of years.

On Sunday, after gorging himself on chocolate he decided that maybe some exercise was in order - in the form of bike riding. So we carried the box in from my van, brought it into the playroom, unpacked it and set about assembling his new toy. It took us a while but we finally finished it. Nick took his new mode of transportation outside for a test spin and I commenced cleaning up the mess in my basement. As I was putting all of the plastic bags and paper pieces into the big box the bike came in I noticed the instructions across the bottom:

Apparently one isn’t required to check their spelling when writing copy for warnings on packaging materials.