Tough Love

Hmm, yesterday was a tough old day (hence no blog in the evening). Firstly, I appear to have infected sinuses and was in considerable pain all day, plus feeling wiped out by the medication. Secondly, it rained. Thirdly, I think that the stresses from the past month hit everyone at once.

Result - an awful day, with the boys really "playing up" and basically ignoring me all day. Didn't matter if I asked, told, ordered, bribed, punished, rewarded, cried, shouted, pleaded (you can tell the day got worse!) they still ignored me. On top of that, they disobeyed something that their Dad had said the day before, and watched a programme they weren't allowed to - even worse, it was at dinner time and S left his dinner on the table to watch the tv instead. By that time I was too worn out to turn the tv off etc - I just wanted to run away.

They truly weren't trying to be "bad" - it was just the way it goes sometimes. However, by the evening I told them not to THINK of giving me a Mother's Day card on Sunday as I wouldn't want it - actions speak louder than words and they had not treated me with love and respect.

Eeek!

When their Dad got home, he spoke very firmly, but quietly with them. He told them that they had lost the television for three days, as they had misbehaved in 3 major areas: disobeying him, not supporting their Mum when she asked for help, and disobeying Mum all day.

J and S agreed that was a fair punishment. They claimed to have forgotten the ban on the programme, so we discussed "ignorance is no defence of the law" and how, whilst we took that into account, it didn't remove the need for a consequence of their actions.

Later on, Roarke had a chat with S and I had a chat with J. I explained to J that I think some of this has built up from the deschooling. They went from school (told what to do all the time) to autonomous learning. They realised that, if they could "do what they liked", they didn't HAVE to learn. We went through the stage of them deliberately not doing anything. Until they realised that actually they wanted to learn. I think the same thing has happened now with the behaviour as they had started doing what they wanted, whether or not it was what was right or what they had been asked to do. It wasn't a conscious process, I explained to him, but a fairly logical conclusion to the above attitude.

S, at supper time, sat down totally off his own back and did a worksheet at the table, and J spent an hour on Europa Go this morning - correctly placing every country in the European Union on the blank map (more than I can do!). He currently ranks 1914th in the score table for the puzzle!

So far, today, everyone has been a lot calmer, happier, and relaxed. It really seemed as if we needed yesterday to relieve some of the tensions within us all and get us back on track.

J has built a fabulous train track upstairs which they have played with, plus S and W dig some more digging before it clouded over. As did I - the new flower beds are nearly finished. I must take some photos.

At dinner time, J picked up the latest copy of New Scientist (which I take) and started reading it. One of the articles in there led onto a discussion about dimensions. We discussed our 4 dimensions - and I was very pleased that S "got" my explanation of time as the fourth dimension. J and I then debated a few alternative dimensions, and got onto the subject of parallel universes! Where else, but in the world of HE, could he do this?