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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Hard Taught Lessons

    Today has been a rough day.  Not just with motivation, but with behavior and the lessons that come with them.  Earlier today my youngest, Aramis, came up to his big brother Athos and offered him a caramel candy.  Just as Athos was accepting the candy, Aramis took it back yelling "NO! IT'S MINE!!!"  Athos in turn called him a jerk, and rightfully so. No, I am not condoning name calling.
    I wanted Aramis to apologize.  But first I needed him to understand what he did wrong, and why it was wrong.  We tried talking about it, with no success in comprehension.  Even still, I gave him paper and instructed him to write out what he did wrong, why it was wrong and then on a separate sheet, write an apology letter to his brother.  After a few hours, Aramis hadn't gotten past writing out his offense.
    Intro the lesson taught, which was hard for me to teach and hard for him to learn.  I asked Aramis over and told him he was doing a good job.  I asked for his hand and asked if he'd like a smiley face stamp on his hand, to which he smiled and said yes.  This is where it gets hard.  Now, please don't judge.  We all have our moments where we don't know how else to get the point across to our child and are seemingly left with no other alternative.  I pulled the stamp away and very meanly told him "No!  It's MY stamp and you can't have it!".
    Deep breath.  He cried.  It broke my heart to see him so hurt like that.  Knowing that I just caused this pain.  But I pulled myself up by my boot straps, looked him square in the eyes and asked him if what I did was mean.  "Yes".  I asked him why was it mean?  "Because you were nice and then you were mean." he said.  So I told him to go think on that and write that down.  Now he is writing the apology letter and was not sure what to write.  I told him to write to Athos what he would like for me to say to him.
    Today my son learned that he wouldn't want to be treated that way, and he shouldn't treat others like that.  Today I learned that not all lessons will come out of a book, and they aren't all going to be pleasant.