Friday, June 20, 2014

Extreme Lesson Teaching

We had some severe weather around these parts this week.  Wednesday morning was no exception.  On the way to daycare, the national weather service issued a sever thunderstorm warning over the radio, and by the time I was headed out to my car after dropping Alex off, they had upgraded it to a tornado warning and Sam, Aiden, and I were instructed to get back inside the building and sit tight in a tornado shelter room.  For Sam, this meant he stayed in his car seat and hung out in the bathroom nearest to the infant room with all the infants and toddlers that were there for the day.  Alex was in one of the other bathrooms with all of the kids from his room.  The dog initially was going to have to ride out the storm in the car.  She had on no collar and I had no leash.  Not to mention, the daycare center doesn't moonlight as a doggy daycare, so it's kinda a furry pet free zone.  But, lucky for the mutt, the director and teachers are pet lovers, so they had me bring her in and stuck us in the kitchen because it was the only room with a door and no windows that was not currently filled with small children.

During our little camp out, the electricity went out as well.  And it was not back on by the time the tornado warning expired.  So there the teachers sat with all these kids and no power.  I figured since I was just going back home, I should probably take Alex with me so they had one less kid to worry about in the dark.  He was excited to come home with us, so off we went.

We were having a great day.  Alex was in a great mood, Sam was doing all normal baby things, the dog was happy 3 out of 4 of her humans were accounted for, and I wasn't fighting to stay awake at every turn.  After a while, Alex wanted to watch a video and since he was being so good and going outside was not option, I happily complied.  The fact that the video gave me a quick 20 minutes to focus on a crossword puzzle was a nice benefit as well.  After the video, I was feeding Sam and Alex was coloring on the newspaper page that my puzzle was on.  And then out of nowhere, he crumpled the whole page into a ball, looked up at me and said, "I ruined your game Mom."  I was surprised to say the least, but I was also very upset about the look he gave me and the tone he had that was proving he did that only to see if he would piss me off.

So, I sent him to sit in a time out on the steps.  Why the steps?  Because if I send him to his room, he not only strips himself naked, but he also pulls all of the sheets and blankets off of his bed for some reason.  So then I have to get him redressed and remake his bed.  Too much work for me...to the steps with you little man.

Anywho, he was all mad and sassy about being in a time out, and was clearly not getting the fact that it was not alright for him to ruin my puzzle page.  He was making that very clear by telling me that it didn't matter to him that he was in a time out.  So, I acted on the first thought that popped into my head.  I grabbed the suction cup arrows from the plastic bow and arrow set he won at the carnival with Travis the previous Sunday, looked him square in the eyes, and I snapped the arrows in half.

The amount of "why would you that?" and "those were important to me!!" and "I loved that toy!" was fairly quickly squashed when I explained that I did it so he could understand that it sucks when someone ruins your things just because they can.  Not a leading by example moment, but I'm pretty sure I made my point.  I hope anyway.

After everything had calmed down, Alex told me a couple different ways he had thought of to fix my puzzle.  And had he immediately followed that with ways to fix his arrows, I would have been skeptical.  But he didn't.  The arrows were not brought up again.  He just seemed to genuinely want to fix my puzzle.  So either is he getting really good at tricking me, or he did actually understand.

And yes, I am currently Googling where to buy plastic bow and suction cup arrow sets...

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