the blog of the angry mommy: i'm sending this with them when they bad mouth me in future therapy.

[ms_pooka]

i have lost sympathy for my children.

this sounds terrible, but it's actually a workable tool. with sympathy, i sound like, "i know he didn't clean his room, but i'll feel so bad about him missing activity X."

and i sit here and think i'm completely not serious as my catchphrase is pretty much, " that's it, i've had it, i'm totally done with this

Comments

[emily_swank]

I read a thing about a family that had a gunny sack and the rule of the gunny sack is, if you leave shit out, the gunny sack takes it and you won't see it again for a month, six months, end of story. And supposedly it worked. You could be like, "Here's where your things can be and they can not be anywhere else". Crumbs on the counter, I don't know. One of the houses I clean the teenagers, who all have gotten into good colleges, cannot clean up their crumbs, or anything, used maxi pads "near" the trash, feces on the toilet, food waste, lollipops sticks. I mean, that's going to be them when they're teenagers. ACT NOW! (or not).

If Violet "can't" or "won't" hear you I'd say put up signs explaining the new world order and Oliver will read them to her and they will both shake their heads and think you are pulling their legs. But then you won't be. And then Oliver will put up his own signs. And then you guys will get on the news when they find you on the roof spitting this magical roof gum off.

I'm just curious here... have you tried a star chart or a chore chart where they get a sticker when they complete the job and then at the end they get... a Jamba Juice or something? I tried these many times with very limited success but I was never ever ever consistent and now I have a child who thinks he can sit on my sofa in Carol Burnett's housedress and a pink baseball hat and stare at Toontown until blood pours out of his eye sockets. An adult child. I'm just saying. You have to get them while they're young. Eventually you go, well, fuck and just throw up your hands and hope they have a lucky rabbit's foot in their glove box.

[ms_pooka]

we've done different versions of stuff disappearing for amounts of time. turns out, they don't seem to give much of a shit about it. like, out of sight, out of mind. we do have some success with saying it's going away if not picked up in two hours, or i'm going to throw your clothes out on the lawn. i would just like to not get to that point all the time.

we've also had chore charts a couple of times. their shininess tends to wear off after a few weeks. the latest round ended a few weeks ago when oliver had tallied up their tokens after running out and, instead of taking the tokens down and starting a new round, he was just taking them off of violet's part of the board and adding them to his own. and i gave up. so now, i'm reading "the opposite of spoiled" and preparing for phase 28.

things did go a little better last weekend after going unsympathetic on them. i got to rub thai food in their faces twice when, on sunday, we splurged with a trip to taco joint and oliver kept suggesting thai and i reminded him that all the responsible people already had thai for the weekend.