Well what better way to start my blog, than with things not going the way you want them?!! A few weeks ago my son Harry started going to basketball practice. He loves it and is doing pretty good. Last week the team announced a three day camp during the holidays to improve the kids shooting skills. He liked the idea, his friends were going, so we signed up.
This morning was the first day of camp and my phone rang at 8:15 in the morning. It was harry facetiming me. Great i said he can't wait. But by the look on his face i quickly realized things weren't so great. "Whats up buddy are you exited for camp? I don't want to go. Is everything ok?What happened? Nothing, i'm tired" TIRED...TIRED...What the fuck could he be tired from? All he's been doing these days is playing hours and hours of that stupid game Minecraft. I was ready to start SCREAMING.
Now here is the interesting part. Do you start yelling at him calling him lazy, worthless and all that other crap parents say, or do you let him decide what will be the consequenses of his actions?
I told him i will stop by the house in an hour to talk about it. When I got there he knew he wasn't going to get off easy. I asked him to explain to me what is it that caused him to be tired and couldn't go. He finally admitted that he stayed up late playing minecraft and he had a headache in the morning. When asked how this could have been avoided he said maybe if he had gone to sleep on time and not played so long he would be with his friends at camp now, having a great time. So now the kid himself is admitting he made a mistake, he is telling you what the right thing to do was, the only thing missing now is the consequenses of his actions so it doesn't happen again. "CONSEQUENSES THERE IS NO NEED FOR CONSEQUENSES, i learned my lesson. So if i leave now and go to work everything will be fine? Didn't you just lose the chance to hang out with your friends and improve your shooting game? So what, you think if i didn't have these games i would be at camp now? You said it not me. So he packed his ipod, ipad, playstation and laptop in a big bag and we agreed he will get them back in 3 days, and that we will set a daily time limit so it doesn't happen again.
How fucking easy was that???? He did everything by himself!!!!! He even packed it in a bag for me to take home.
I don't even want to think what the result would have been, had we started arguing and fighting. Instead he taught himself a lesson and then we went out in the yard and shot a few hoops and had a great time!!!!! Piece of cake.
PS. My daughter told me that after i left he sat on his bed for three hours upset and misserable cause he had nothing to do and was bored. But after that he started drawing which he hadn't done for a while, and actually finished a book that he had started months ago. And since he was such a good boy i told him tomorrow he can go on the house computer and play for one hour cause he did such a great job handling the situation.
Harry 1 - Punishment 0
