Teaching Heart Blog

Has discipline ever ruined your day?

My what a day… a day that I had hoped to get lots done and unfortunately ended up trying to teach my kids a lesson. One thing that sucks (excuse my french) about being a mom is that if you tell your kids you are going to do something, you better mean what you say! How else are they going to learn that if you say something, you mean it. It drives me nuts when you see a child misbehaving and the parent gives a warning that goes like this… “If you do that one more time, we are leaving!” Child does the undesired behavior again and they don’t grab the child by the neck (Ok a good mom may grab the hand — I think I may have grabbed by the neck today. Oppss!) and leave. It gets worse, the child does the undesirable behavior again and the parents restates the statement… “If you do that one more time, we are leaving!” STOP… do you think they believe you and how often do you say things and not follow through? If you really don’t want to leave, then you should have never said that statement in the first place and if you made a mistake (like I did today) and said it, you still need to follow through…

Here’s why my day was messed-up due to me trying to be a good mom… Day started with a run on the trail. All was well, kids were good and well behaved! Next stop a quick jaunt through TJMAX to pick a birthday present and then on to my children’s favorite place (the grocery store playarea/daycare). Finally we had planned to meet friends at a pool… Unfortunately, we made it to TJMAX and then our day stopped! Why? Because as we are walking through the store my son is pulling on my daughter and my daughter is using her “nasty voice” to yell at him and get him going. Everyone is looking at us. Behavior gets worse as we go through the store… Things get knocked over… Both are being terrible and then I say, “If I have to talk to you both one more time, we are going home and we will not go to the playarea or the pool later.” Opppsss… maybe, I should have just said the pool because I really needed grocery’s. Too late, it happened my son and daughter are screaming and pushing each other and being terrible. I leave my cart and drag them out of the store. People are staring… I start thinking that they all must be thinking I am a terrible mom and I begin to pray I do not run into someone I know. At this point, both kids are crying and begging to go to the playarea… My daughter is screaming at the top o her lungs. I am sure people could have thought I was abducting her. I almost go back on my word and take them to the grocery store playarea so that I can get my shopping done… but as much as I need milk, I want them to learn a lesson more. Hopefully our next trip out will go smoothly. It just really is no fun using discipline. Sometimes it would be easier to just ignore the poor behavior and go on with what needs to be done or what I want to do… but then would my kids really have horns?