The Consequences of Bad Behavior

Ian and I have banned two children from our house. It may just be a temporary banning if they can prove that they know how to act in public and when they are guests, but if they continue to behave as they did on Sunday, they will not be allowed back.

One of them – I called him Trevor in my birthday party lesson – was a mini-misogynist on top of being extra loud and somewhat defiant. Now I understand being excited because you’re at a party and was totally willing to make allowances for that, but this went beyond that. He spent a great deal of time walking around point at or framing his crotch, cupping imaginary breasts, and talking about bottoms. He did this in front of all the other guests – two of whom were female – as well as Ian and the two little guys. I saw a bit of it, but I mostly heard about it second hand from Ian who eventually told him that it wasn’t cool or funny.

This didn’t stop him from making disgusting comments, tough. While they were eating, he went on an on about stealing all the poop from the toilets. I can understand how this can be funny to a group of 8-10 year olds…the first time. Unfortunately, he just wouldn’t let it die. Another time, he yelled at everyone to “Shut up” essentially because he wasn’t getting any attention. The worst (in my books) though, was after we handed out the treat bags. They all got a cap gun because spies need a gun. There was only one green one and Liam requested it the day before. Once the bags were all handed out, Trevor kept going on and on about how he wanted the green one. When I wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he took it…twice (I caught him the first time and made him give it back). The second time, he went so far as to wait until Liam had put it down and then tied it in his bag. I was not amused. Aiden even mentioned in the morning that he thinks that Trevor took the green gun.

The second little guy I referred to as Sam. Sam showed up with a broken nose. His mother asked me to make sure that he wasn’t around any rough elbows or anything else that could re-break his nose. I assured her that we’d make sure he was careful. When she was out of sight, he started moving and I swear he didn’t stop until I yelled at him to sit down after he almost knocked me over (this was near the end of the party). We caught him snooping in Ian’s office and in Liam’s bedroom. He had a habit of being in the opposite part of the house from the rest of the kids: if they were in Aiden’s room, he was in the dining room and if they came upstairs, he tried sneaking around downstairs.

Sam ran circles at top speed around the wall dividing the kitchen and living room and didn’t care who he bumped into…he also didn’t apologize. He ignored us when we asked him to stop. He didn’t listen to instructions (and consequently shot his grandmother during training…you don’t fire as soon as you turn the corner) and pushed his way to the front when they lined up to try not to trip the laser beam (streamer) alarm hallway – he also does not understand the meaning of one at a time.

Apparently, he jumped on Aiden’s bed as soon as he got in there. He mucked with Aiden’s Darth Vader bobble head and wound up ruining it. He opened the map of the Enterprise which had been given it Ian by the guy who designed it (that had been hiding in a closet). Over all, he respected nothing and no one.

Then there was the incident where he pushed me out of his way while I was holding Callan. I nearly fell over and he didn’t even have the decency to apologize. As it was, there was no need for him to go in that direction. The rest of the kids had come upstairs and turned left into the living room. He decided to go for another lap around the wall. I yelled. I yelled at some other mother’s son and I do not at all feel sorry for it. Granted, I should have just sent him home when he proved that he couldn’t behave, I didn’t want to do that to Aiden.

Those two are also the reason that the entire group didn’t get the invisible ink from the treat  bags. We figured if they were that horrible at listening to instructions then they’d probably burn their parents’ houses down trying to make a message appear.

When the dust had settled, Ian and I quickly came to the conclusion that neither of the two boys should be allowed back in our house until they settle down and can behave in modern polite society. We won’t, however tell Aiden that he can’t play with or be friends with them. That would only lead to defiance.

I broke the news to Aiden at breakfast and he seemed understanding. He was rather upset that Sam had broken one or two of his toys as it was. I imagine having his parents say that Sam is not allowed back saves him from the embarrassment of – at some point – having to say that he doesn’t want Sam to come back. When it comes to Trevor, Aiden said that he, “kept talking about yucky stuff,” and he didn’t like that.

It ended up being the perfect lead-in to how we expect the boys to behave when they’re in someone’s house as guests. It all boils down to, “better than you would at home.” I also laid out the consequences for him should he ever behave like Sam and Trevor did: he won’t be allowed to visit anyone until he proves to us that he knows how to behave.

Lesson of the Day: Birthday Parties Are Not For the Weak

Today’s Lesson: Birthday parties are not for the weak or next year they’re going bowling.

We now have two kids in the house who were born in January. This is unfortunate. Why? I’m sorry you thought that, now I’ll have to tell you.

For starters, our children are spoiled. Between us, my parents, Ian’s mother, his father, his Aunt and Uncle, and Aiden’s grandfather, the three of them come out of Christmas looking like bandits with all the presents and cash that they get. This leaves us with the problem of trying to figure out what to get for them immediately after they got everything they wanted and some things they didn’t realize that they wanted (I swear next year they get clothes…but then they’re spoiled and they don’t need clothes either).

Lesson of the Day: Children and Refrigerators Don’t Mix

Today’s Lesson: Children and refrigerators don’t mix or why breaking your child of the bottle habit is a good idea.

The air balance turned way down

Almost a year ago, Liam got into the habit of opening the fridge just to see what was in there. I learned afterward, that he had also been playing with the temperature control dials. Who the heck places them in an easy to reach place in the first place – I recall many fridges where they were on the side near the back not right up at the front where any almost 3-year-old can touch them. I found it odd that everything in the fridge seemed overly cold so I had been adjusting the fridge temperature up. What I didn’t notice until I went to get something out of the freezer was that he had also increased the freezer temperature up causing all of the ice cream to melt and the frozen vegetables to thaw. I believe there was some meat in there too, which I ended up cooking over the next couple days.

After I fixed the settings for both the fridge and the freezer, I made extra sure to make sure that Liam wasn’t touching anything when he opened the fridge to get something out. I eventually got all of the caramel cleaned out of the freezer but I still haven’t replaced the ice cream…that can wait.

Control instructions

Now, Liam is three and a half. Liam is a huge three who looks like he’s five…but he’s not, he’s still just three. Despite our efforts, he still loves his bottle. We’ve been told for nearly two years now that he should not be using it any longer but we can’t break him of the habit. In fact, in September, when a doctor told us to take it away from him, he stopped drinking altogether and I had to give it back. This bottle is pretty much the bane of my days. Every time I get settled down nursing Callan, Liam wants more milk. I get him tucked into bed and he wants more milk. He refuses to drink milk from a glass because he wants it from his bottle.

Usually, we take his bottle away after he falls asleep (he wasn’t actually drinking from it anyway) and he’s none the wiser. Sometimes, he wakes up and cries because he can’t find it. Then he makes one of us get him a fresh bottle. Last night, I took the bottle away shortly after he fell asleep and put it in the fridge for morning (as opposed to wasting perfectly good milk…heh). I finally got Callan and I settled in bed around two and by that point he hadn’t woken up. This morning, when Ian woke up for work, he found the fridge door open about 6 inches…enough to keep the light on. The bottle was not in the fridge. It was, in fact, on Liam’s bed next to him with the lid still on it.

Our spoiled milk collection

There was a full 4L jug of 2% milk in there, a full 1L carton of 3.25% milk, about half a 2L carton of 1% and another 4L jug of 2% with less than a liter left. How fridge has this strange ability to freeze the items at the back while keeping at the front cool. I figured I’d try that full 4L jug since it had been at the back. If any of the milk was still good, that would be it. Sadly, Aiden informed me that it tasted a little funny (all milk tastes funny to me). So here I am with approximately 7L of sour milk all for the sake of a few ounces.

When he got up this morning, I informed him that he may no longer (not that he was allowed to in the first place) get his bottle out of the fridge during the night. He must get a parent to get it for him.

I hope we’re not in for another round of refrigerator wars. I also hope that Callan won’t cause as many problems with the fridge as Liam has. It’s not even a full day after I declared my intent to make sure that we’re not wasting very much food and now I’ve got to figure out a way to use all that milk so that it doesn’t go to waste.

Lesson of the Day: Lying Just May Be a Bad Idea

Today’s lesson: Lying just may be a bad idea or if you’re going to lie don’t be obvious.

Our oldest (soon to be 10) has developed a little habit of lying. Last year, he told me that he had eaten almost all of his lunch in about 15 minutes – the same child who (at the time) took over an hour to eat a meal. He had given his sandwich to another child (and after he had been caught lying had tried telling me that he was going to get it back…except it turns out that he’d been giving his sandwiches away for over a week). He also, at one point had told me that peanut butter was no longer allowed in his school instead of telling me he didn’t want peanut butter sandwiches anymore (hence the reason he was giving them away). What he didn’t realize is that the school would have to send a note home with the kids to make a change like that. I had checked with the school in September since at the time, all he wanted was PB&J.

Now, thanks to a couple instances where he had lied about pushing his little brother, we’ve run into a little problem. The middle boy (months away from 4 years old) has taken to calling wolf by accusing his brother of hitting him, kicking him, or pushing him. Alas, if we didn’t witness it, we can never be too sure who to believe: the child who would deny it whether he did it or not or the child who would just as soon blame his brother as his own clumsiness. I do not at all encourage lying, but this is an excellent example of when to lie. When it comes down to he-said-she-said (or in our house he-said-he-said) you can’t prove anything either way and either everyone gets punished or everyone’s off the hook  (unless it’s a criminal case…then it’s different…don’t break the law).

This weekend, though, the oldest managed to give us a couple examples of when and how not to lie in the same day. The boys generally get up before me because, thanks to the baby, I don’t really get much sleep until the world starts to wake up (I swear I get my  best sleep between 8AM & 10AM). As a result, I require them to have a small breakfast as soon as they get up to tide them over until one of us is up and ready to make a big breakfast (bacon & eggs, pancakes, french toast…). Saturday was a miss, but Sunday, at least one of them actually ate something. I ask every morning on the weekend so I know how long quickly I have to get food on the table.

In response to my query as to what he ate, I was told, “Toast…a banana and toast.” The kitchen didn’t look any different from when I went to bed, so I asked him what he did with his plate. After a lot of pausing and false starts, he told me that he put the plate in the dishwasher…the same dishwasher that I had run Saturday night and not emptied. Oops. So I checked the dishwasher for the dirty plate (and noticed that there was indeed a banana missing). There was no dirty plate. The dishwasher had exactly the same dishes in it as when I ran it and there were no used knives or plates anywhere in the kitchen, dining room, or living room. Then it hit me…the toast is a lie. So I confronted him, presented him with the evidence and reminded him that a piece of fruit was an acceptable small breakfast for the weekend and he hadn’t needed the toast anyway and he admitted the lie. At which point, I informed him that it would be in his father’s hands after breakfast.

The second case came within an hour of the first. Sunday was Ian’s day to deal with the kids in the morning, so when the middle one came to me for assistance with getting his controller started to join his older brother’s game, I sent him to his father (horrible, yes, but I was half asleep and Ian had agreed to be the go-to parent for the morning). When I got up and saw them both frantically mashing buttons, I thought nothing of it. I figured that he had gotten his father (which he didn’t do) or that his brother had helped him. We had added a second controller the previous day so both of the boys and I knew it could be done, and the older one knew how. He also knew that in a single player game, you could switch the character you were using – which you had to do to get through all of the levels. In the two player game, you each control one of the characters and have to cooperate to get through the levels.

At one point, around the time their father came upstairs, they asked for help with something. I took the middle boy’s controller and tried to do something with it. It was at that point that I noticed that it wasn’t connected to the game. No one had helped him connect it after all! I immediately felt horrible, but it turned out that he hadn’t known the difference. His brother had though, and hadn’t done a thing about it. It made the game easier for him if his little brother wasn’t ‘helping’ and since the second character is controlled by the game in single player mode. Sadly, he hasn’t learned the concept of plausible deniability and therefore tried denying knowing that his brother wasn’t actually playing. There is no way his father would believe that he didn’t know that it wasn’t a two player game (he even admitted to switching characters which can’t be done in a two player game).

I went back to frying bacon (mmm…bacon) and left Ian to deal with the boys…which he did…after breakfast.

Now that he’s proven that he can and will lie rather easily, I find it difficult to trust him when it matters. I know that this will pass, it may not be a phase that he’ll grow out of but we will break him of lying. At least, if he ever wants to be allowed to stay home alone, he’s going to have to build that trust back up. At the same time, though, I have to laugh at how obvious his lies were and how he’s lying over small things that he wouldn’t get in trouble for. I mean, if I were going to lie about something, I’d at least make sure that it was worth it if I got caught.

So what glaringly obvious lies have your children told?

New (Calendar) Year’s Resolutions

The new (school) year’s resolutions didn’t hold for very long so I figured I’d take another stab at making a few changes now and do it again at the beginning of May so that maybe I’ll get three good months in a year. If I keep it up, I just might make some of these changes stick for good. So here I go again with another list of changes for the good of all…who am I kidding? They’re for my sanity.

1) Turn the TV off and the music on – Last time, this one both worked and didn’t work. I certainly watched less of my own TV shows, but the TV didn’t seem to be off any longer than before – at least not after the first few days. I also didn’t manage to fit in much music since Liam kept telling me to turn it off. I know I’m the boss of him and not the other way around but the little, nagging voice that won’t go away makes it difficult to enjoy the music anyway. This time, though, I’ve got a couple tricks up my sleeve: Liam goes to preschool twice a week which gives me a guaranteed four hours a week without that voice, and I got an HP Notebook for Christmas so I can now play my music all over the house and not be forced to listen to a billion commercials for things I don’t care about.

2) Kick the kids out to play more often – Alas, I did not make it to the park all that often (if ever) over the last few months and since it’s gotten colder out, I’ve hardly sent them out to play in the backyard either. This is unacceptable. Aiden seems to think that the outdoors is boring; I’m of the opinion that he’s just not using his imagination enough. It’s my hope that being forced to go play will lead to creating games or something. I remember having hours of free play time outside as a child and I always had something to do. Kicking them out will also get them away from the TV.

3) Clear my desk off and keep it clean – I gave myself a new desk for Christmas and insisted that no one put anything on it but me. I am not the only one to put things on my desk. Just yesterday, Ian put a couple cables on it “for now” and left them there. Now it’s covered in pictures, cords, movies, batteries, controllers, bills, wrapping paper, and a sticker book. I may love organized chaos it its place but that place is not on my desk.

4) Be more efficient with food – I managed to plan some meals in advance over the past few months (I just turned the TV off!) but I realized that I ordered out weekly and wound up throwing out more leftovers than we ate. No more! Not only am I going to plan in advance, but I’m also going to work leftovers into the plan so that a) the kids realize that they have to be eaten and b) I don’t have to throw them out. I read in Canadian Living recently that we throw out approximately 38% of the food we buy. That’s almost 2/5 of what we buy. To put that into perspective, consider that we spend about $600 a month on groceries. If we truly are throwing out 2/5 of that food, that’s about $240 worth of food a month that we don’t eat. That may be a bit high, I’m more inclined to say that I throw out no more that 1/4 of our food but that’s still $150…whatever that wasted food amount is, it has got to stop.

5) Bake more – I know how to bake. I like baking. I don’t do it nearly often enough and then I find myself picking stuff up at the grocery store for Aiden’s lunches that I normally wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Why? I’m not willing to admit that answer just yet. It comes down to economy. It’s cheaper to make my own cookies than to buy them. I can make bread that Liam will actually eat which will therefore not waste the bread he won’t eat. I can bake a tasty, nutritious dessert that will keep us from eating other, less healthy, more expensive foods. I have the power and I should use it.

6) Sew more – I managed to get Liam’s quilt finished before Christmas (my mother can tell you the story of me kicking everyone out of the house on Christmas Eve so I could finish it in peace) but hardly did any other sewing. Sewing used to be a creative outlet for me (along with knitting and writing) and I’ve realized recently how great it is to know that you made something. I miss the joy of creating something. I need an outlet.

7) Do crafts with the kids – I bought white glue sometime between September and now that I intended to use with that construction paper. I haven’t used either yet, but I still intend to. Not only do I need a creative outlet, but Liam does as well. I should get Aiden crafting, too, so he can stop saying that he’s bad at art. They don’t have to be difficult crafts, just little projects that let the boys cut, glue, and colour or draw. I really should get on that.

8) Exercise more – Apparently, dancing around the living room with the baby is not enough exercise. I got an XL (PINK!) pajama set for Christmas this year. As a rule – when I’m not nursing – my tops are size S-M and my pants are M-L. I am not an XL. I refuse to be an XL. But apparently, I looked enough like one to someone that it seemed acceptable to buy me clothes in that size. Here’s the thing: I’d rather look healthy than skinny and I would rather feel healthy than be larger. I have nothing against people of most sizes with the exceptions of those who take up two seats and those who don’t eat (though I also take issue with parents of larger children when I see them eating fast food). I just prefer to be somewhere in the healthy range than in either at risk range.

9) Convince Ian that we need a clothesline – More on this in another post at another time,  but I think we need one and Ian doesn’t. I’m right…he just doesn’t realize he’ll have to cave in yet.

So these are my good intentions for the next few months. I’d like to say that I’m posting and then going off to do something about any of them, but chances are that will have to wait for a little while since I’ve got a table to clean and a bed to make.