Friday, December 19, 2008

Not a good start

Today was the first day of our vacation - Max from school and me from work. We had a really, really rough start after a rough evening last night and broken sleep. I can take the hyper no listening, we are going straight to bed no bath no tv no nothing thing of last night. I can handle the being woken at 1 am crying and disoriented because Max was sleeping on the top bunk with Nana on the bottom bunk. I can handle being woken by R in the gosh awful 4 am hour. I can even handle the Max waking up when I climbed back in bed and not going back to sleep. What put me over the edge was the deliberate pee'ing all over my bed while I was pumping thing and then laughing and thinking it was funny. I was not amused and I was not laughing. I was furious and he knew it. He continued to try to joke his way out of it and then blame it on being an accident, like I wasn't right there. At first, I think he was only sorry because he was afraid he wouldn't get to go to his school Christmas party this morning. I made him help by taking the sheets to the washer and then witness me taking the duvet to the dry cleaners and explaining that I now had to spend money on that instead of rolls (a current favorite food), or candy, or toys, or presents. Although, it took me an hour or so to get over it, I promiced I would not dwell on it all day as what was done was done. He knew I was angry. He knew why I was angry. I told him no matter how angry I got, I would always love him. It was dropped and we moved on until tonight at bedtime, when he told me he was sorry he pee pee'd on my bed and he would never do it again. As I told him, it wasn't so much that he pee'd on my bed as much as it was deliberate and done because he was trying to be funny and get attention, when something like that isn't funny. It would have been different if it was an accident, but it wasn't and we both knew it. Lesson learned. This whole parenting and dicipline thing can be a pain more times than not, but oh so important. Max pushes things to the limit and tests all the time, but usually will get his act together before he crosses the line. Both last night and this morning, he made bad choices and didn't like the conciquences. Tonight went much better. I hope the rough start to the vacation was just an anomoly, otherwise, it is going to be a long, long, long few weeks and no vacation. I'm holding out hope that he has learned something here. Actions have conciquences, both good and bad. I guess learning this is all part of growign up, but my word, I was really upset with him this morning.

4 comments:

Dora said...

Good parenting. IMO, good balance between justifiable anger and letting it go.

Miss X said...

Wow, that would have made me very angry, too. I agree that you handled it very,very, very well.

Thanks for the real life stories of single parenting.

Care said...

Oh boy....what a way to start the break. But you handled it well, and hopefully it is lesson learned and won't happen again. And I hope the rest of your holiday break is on a better note than it started.

Laura in L.A. said...

Oh, Max! My nephew did something similar on my sister's carpeted master-bath floor--then he one-upped it by blaming it on his little sister! His mother informed him that little girls can't make "designs!" So he was punished for the deed AND for lying about it.

I hope you have a very fun vacation from this point forward.

Love, Laura