Today was one of those days when it doesn’t just feel like all you’ve done is tell the children off all day - you know it’s all you’ve done all day.
After various escapades throughout the day (when I was trying desperately to work in our study), the middle daughter capped off her day’s performance while her Mum was out at the opticians by letting out all the recliner chairs, and shouting at her younger sister “Lets slide down and jump on them like a bouncy castleto “run down the slide!”. A fifteen foot long metal slide. She was going to do it too until I bellowed across the park.
Every kid in the place froze. It was like the scene from Jurassic Park where Alan Grant shouts “Freeze!” in front of the Tyrannosaurus.
The lesson was finally learned at dinner time when little miss trouble decided she liked nan bread better than curry, so stopped eating her curry and rice. “When you’ve eaten some more curry you can have some more nan bread”. Shrug. She then watched while the nan bread was slowly shared between everybody else. With one piece left, I held it up and warned her “if you eat some more curry, you can have this. Otherwise I am going to eat it.”… shrug. I ate it in front of her.
If looks could have killed… lol
We do have a rule in the house though - nobody goes to bed in trouble. I ran the youngest’s bath, and played with them. We talked about lessons being learned, and that we would try much harder tomorrow to be nice to each other.
Of course, little madam has no idea what “big school” is really going to be like - or that she starts in two days. It will do her good to get pushed around, and to lose. To lose friends through unthinking actions. To try and win new friends. To find her place.