Enforcing consequences

I'm not sure who punishments are worse for... the parent or the child.  As a parent you want so desperately to give them everything and let them love life and enjoy all that they can... but you can't, because that just produces spoiled, rotten, bratty children!  And lately, it's been really hard for me to enforce punishments that I say... but I know that I have to.  The hardest one lately was with Dude.  Mainly because he's such a good boy and his desperation to want to go was heart breaking but he didn't do what he was supposed to, so he couldn't.

The situation was during his rest time/nap time he wasn't being quiet.  He kept coming out of the room or crying and being disruptive.  Not cool.  And normally he's so good at it... but not this time.  There were different levels of telling him that he had to be good but the last one was that we were going to go to the trails later and if he didn't stop then he couldn't go.  I thought for sure that it would stop him because he loves walking on the trails, chasing birds and butterflies and playing in the water... but he kept at it, so I told him that he couldn't go.  He just looked at me like I wasn't serious but he kind of looked worried that I was.  Well, Gaetan was feeling particularly compassionate so we gave him an opportunity to redeem himself.  And this should've been a shoe in... he just had to do a good job with lunch and get some math problems done.  No biggie.  But, it was for some reason.  He sat there and wasted his time with lunch and then when it was time to go, his math wasn't finished (and these are problems that could've been accomplished in minutes).  He started to hyperventilate when Lucy was getting ready to go and he wasn't allowed to.  He begged and pleaded and cried.... it was awful.  And he only had three more problems to do but he just couldn't focus and get them done because he was to worried about being left behind.  And, well, he did get left behind.

After Papa and Goose walked out the door he finished those problems before they had even gotten to the car.  We had a talk after he was finished about why he couldn't go and why he just didn't sit and finish it so that he could go and he just shrugged his shoulders.  Luckily for me he wasn't a bunda the rest of the day about it.  We actually had a lot of fun together... which I was glad that he could get over it and didn't pout.  And I'm glad that he recognized that we weren't being unfair but that this was actually on him to figure out... so talked about it and he really seemed to get it.  :)

Lucy had a lot of fun with Papa but they didn't stay out nearly as long as I had anticipated.  She just kept saying that he wanted Ba-Boo with her and it wasn't as fun without him.

She was excited and ran off ahead down the trails

Playing in the water

Typical Lucy face

Future plumber...

She really likes to throw rocks into the water

Racing back to the car

She apparently jumped most of the way back

Sweet girl

I'm glad that my kids are generally good natured and listen well so that we don't have to do this very often.  I'm sure, as the child who doesn't get to do whatever it is or have whatever they wanted would argue that its worse for them, but I would disagree.  ;)

JVG